{"id":1527,"date":"2022-06-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-12T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo.sidekick.be\/itenium\/european-women-in-tech\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T13:31:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T12:31:44","slug":"european-women-in-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo.sidekick.be\/itenium\/blog\/productivity\/european-women-in-tech\/","title":{"rendered":"European Women in Tech 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did this trigger the urge of visiting the European women in Technology event in Amsterdam? Yeah\u2026 slightly afraid of being the only one in the conference\u2026<\/p>\n

\"Conference
The conference building<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After some issues finding the correct building in the Amsterdam RAI (Don\u2019t start with the typical: \u201cYeah, woman and orientation\u2026\u201d Because I worked so closely with men for over more than 2 decades, I know this is not gender related \ud83d\ude09 ) I was amazed by the quantity of female attendees.<\/p>\n

The second thing I was amazed of was the number of keynote, deep dives and workshops that were given by, yes: Only female leaders.<\/p>\n

\u201cDiversity and Inclusion (D&I) should be embedded in the WHOLE company, not only HR\u201d<\/h1>\n

The biggest topic of the conference was Diversity and Inclusion. This is all about the value of having gender, race and age diversity within your company. Gillian Tans, former Ceo of booking.com phrased this very well by stating \u201cDiversity drives more innovation and more creativity in your company. It should be embedded in the whole company, not only in recruiting new employees.\u201c<\/p>\n

Why do we need this focus? To be able to represent a more realistic diversity, a diversity more in balance with the real world\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

The question is: How? Tine Slabbinck, Manager of Toyota Belgium, explained how Toyota managed to double their female managers within 3 year by endorsing and guiding all female IT employees with mentors and starting a female community.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuotas are good because they give attention to the issue, but can also scare potential female candidates away from applying\u201d<\/h1>\n

A lot of companies focus on raising the diversity with quotas and mentorship. Gillian Tans commented: The Quotas are good to give attention to the issue, but with the risk women might fail because they are only hired because of the quotas. Watching these women fail can scare potential female candidates away from applying. Quotas are also most of the time a \u201ctop down\u201d strategy, the advice of Gillian Tans is to try \u201cbottom up\u201d, as this is the only way it can be owned by the whole company.<\/p>\n

Taking more time in the hiring process, at Vinted this takes up to 2 to 3 months, also increases the chance of hiring a great female employee. Taking time in the hiring process prevents you from having a lot of headaches in trying to move an underperforming employee towards another team so it\u2019s not your issue anymore, or efforts in saying goodbye after a hobbling journey.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t receive a diverse selection of potential candidates, send your recruiters back to work\u201d<\/h1>\n

Carol Parillon, chief data architect at Shell, stated in her topic \u201cData driven architecture: The rise of the data product\u201d that a strong data culture puts employees in the center.<\/p>\n

Shell worked for over 10 years on the data foundations and are now in the stage of a data driven governance: This is when the business owns the data, not the \u2018data department\u2019 somewhere hiding in a dark corner of the company\u2019s building. Some numbers to really get blown away: Shell owns 2.7 trillion rows of data, 100 million customers and has +150 data architects. The next shift they are facing now is the move from centralized to decentralized data and bringing Data as a Product towards the customers.<\/p>\n

Because of this data driven governance, employees will make data driven decisions and endorse the company\u2019s growth. By having diverse employees you can accelerate your business even more as they will represent, again, the global humanity. \u201cSend your recruiters back to work if they only come up with male candidates, they don\u2019t represent the real world\u201d<\/p>\n

Another topic that really got my attention was from Aurelija Pletiene, Director of engineering at Vinted: Drama free collaboration between Business & IT. Drama queens and kings can block your business development and decision making process for ages.<\/p>\n

\u201cEliminate the drama between business and IT: put them both in one team\u201d<\/h1>\n

If you ever worked in, or with, an IT team you will for sure relate to the drama that can be created by communication issues: The IT team thinks they work so hard to develop and support a service and business doesn\u2019t understand a word of what they are exactly doing.<\/p>\n

When including business in the team, Vinted learned that the issues in communication decreased severely. Even in the Infrastructure team they added a business representative and ended up with: Work hard, Have fun, No drama.<\/p>\n

This approach fully supports my idea of what a best performing agile product team should look like: able to design and develop a product without the need of a crowd of \u2018business stakeholders\u2019. Business should be included in the team. Stakeholders are the customers \/ end users.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet into the heart of the onion to understand the value of your project\u201d Rita Kaur, EMAE sales leader of Tiktok, enriched us all in her topic \u201cWhat Could I Possibly Learn From Salespeople\u201d with 3 great tips to enhance your career as a woman in Tech.<\/p>\n

1 Ask better questions<\/h2>\n

To be able to communicate better to business it\u2019s important to understand the real value you are bringing, not just the task you need to execute. Peel the onion until you get into the heart of it, what are we really trying to accomplish? If you understand the real Why, the best solutions will come up.<\/p>\n

2 Listen, to the unspoken<\/h2>\n

The majority of communication is non verbal: It\u2019s not WHAT we say that matters the most, it\u2019s HOW we say it. We are all emotional human beings, also the ones at c-level \ud83d\ude09 If you listen more actively, slow down the communication and really listen, you can build trust towards each other. If you ever read Patrick Lencioni – The FIVE Dysfunctions of a Team – you will know trust is the base of good collaboration.<\/p>\n

3 Communicate the value, not the task<\/h2>\n

If you can communicate on the value, business will understand at last what you are doing behind those big screens the whole day. Communicating the added value to the business will endorse the value you and your team are bringing to the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you kill your darling but don\u2019t lose the team\u201d<\/h1>\n

The third main focus was Empathy: One of the major values you bring in the company when hiring more women than a handful of outliers. (A side note to this was stated: also don\u2019t switch the balance: You really don\u2019t want to have 90% of women in the company.)<\/p>\n

Some great deepdive was given by Claudia Vicol – director Of Engineering at A.P Moller – Maersk – \u201cHow to kill your darlings\u201d<\/p>\n

We all know someone that created this great tool, a long time ago, that became the backbone of the company, and that single person is keeping the tool alive. If you are lucky enough, the tool is kept alive by a team, not a single person. A good leader should, if it\u2019s only one person keeping the tool alive, have big red alerts all over the place and create a way this support would be taken over by a support team. Reducing risks has a high value towards the business.<\/p>\n

\u2018Keeping the tool alive\u2019 is not always the best solution: If the tool doesn\u2019t have any reason or value to stay alive: Kill it with fire!<\/p>\n

But be aware and conscious about the risk it\u2019s someone else\u2019s baby: For this person\/team this is personal. Don\u2019t make the mistake of assessing the value by yourself: Involve the team\/person, so they understand they matter, also without the tool they supported for a long time quantified with the number of empty pizza boxes and hours late at night. They will feel appreciated and have energy to move forward to the next great product with more value for the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I will\u201d<\/h1>\n

I didn\u2019t manage to follow all the sessions and for sure I forgot to mention half of the great inspiring talks, as they were with so many in a very short timeframe. Also very interesting topics about the value of the new web 3.0: the Metaverse and all topics related to products, gaming and observability instead of monitoring reached my brains in 30min\/topic. Time to process these wonderful new insights for some days.<\/p>\n

Am I willing to dive again into the European Women in Technology summit next year? Hell yeah, Girl power in tech rules!<\/p>\n

\"Believe
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Extras<\/h1>\n

Other interesting reads<\/b><\/p>\n