I have the greatest respect for those that organize and create user group tech events. It’s an incredible challenge, especially having to compete with today’s huge, heavily funded, cloud vendor events, and due to this, one of the biggest challenges in running a tech event is driving attendance. The formula is familiar: great speakers, strong technical sessions, networking opportunities, and engaging social events. But somewhere along the way, as technology has advanced, one outdated tactic has lingered: using the presence of young women to attract a male-dominated audience. For women in tech, this is not a trivial issue, but can…
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“Kellyn, how is it you always find the bullies/narcissists if there are just a few bad apples?” I was asked this question this last weekend at an event, and I’ve often wondered what it is about me that drives some individuals, particularly workplace bullies and narcissists, to implode shortly after working with me. It’s a great question, so let’s dive into it— We often think of bad apples as rare, but it’s really about percentages, personalities, and work culture. Encountering a bully, or even a narcissist, is something I expect at least once every one to two years. How I…
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In two hours I am honored to be the guest of the CSME Women’s Book Club event at Microsoft to discuss my book, “Crushing the IT Gender Bias.” In celebration of this, I want to discuss the importance of Women in Technology, (WIT) initiatives and the mistake many groups continue to make these days consolidating them into Diversity and Inclusion, (D&I) groups. A few years ago, when Women in Technology, (WIT) initiatives were the newest, coolest thing for business to be a part of, I was awarded an annual WIT award from the state’s tech organization. I was quite humbled…
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There are busy times for everyone and if you speak at conferences, the busy times are March,May and November. I am recovering from the early spring rush, and now it’s time to prepare for the late spring one. I’ve been fortunate enough to be accepted to speak at the following regional SQL Saturdays and look forward to speaking and meeting new folks, along with catching up with conference friends: SQL Saturday Raleigh, April 27th Optimizing Power BI, Taming of the Shrew, (Analytics) SQL Saturday Jacksonville, May 5th GDPR, The Buck Stops Here, (data governance) Be a Part of the Solution…
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There were two trends in topics that repeatedly came up at RMOUG around women in attendance that I felt deserved a deeper investment of time. As I spend a significant amount of time in a more progressive atmosphere, I find I’m even more aware of them than previously. I hope that my words of support and any advice I offered was helpful to those who sought me out this week. “Be Happy With What You Have” or “You’re Never Satisfied” Trend Numerous conversations touched on the common thread around discomfort with women’s ambition. I honestly believe that most individuals aren’t…
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PASS Summit 2018 is the 16th annual WIT luncheon. Many of the men are wearing kilts in support of the women in the SQL community, (it’s a thing here…) there’s a luncheon, there’s special panels and highlight on the women authors and speakers. Women in Tech Speaker The WIT speaker was Lauri Bingham, the Director of Technology Engineering Project Management at T-Mobile. Lauri shared her early life, the challenges her mother went through as a single, working mother without an employment history. She said she made a promise to herself that she’d never be in that position and…
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The first of three books that I’ve been working on this year is out! From Melody Zacharias’ “Let Them Finish” series, this is the Stories from the Trenches, a collection of stories about diversity in tech and how to survive and overcome the challenges. The book can be picked up via hardcopy from Amazon and a Kindle version is around the corner, if like me, paper is against your religion. 🙂 I want to thank Rie Irish for recommending me, Melody Zacharias for allowing me, an Oracle girl, to contribute to this book, and Tracy Boggiano, Angela Tidwell, Brian Carrig,…
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The only thing that stays the same is change…. As the time flies by and the world turns, I often am jarred back to reality when I discover how the little things we do can have a larger impact on the world around us. Flying back from Interop ITX and StarEast conferences last week, I was reminded of this. While reading the latest copy of Wired , I came across a story on D-Tech High School. This is the school that resides on the Oracle headquarters campus, in its own building(s). The story was interviewing different students to discuss how…
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This weekend I’m not going to have to say, “No, this is not my husband’s code” for a change. This weekend will be about supporting everyone in technology and how technology will benefit by making everyone part of tech. This event is the brain child of my peer, Elaine Marino, owner of Equili. Equili’s mission is to “To build a stronger, more diverse tech community that levels the playing field for all underrepresented and underutilized groups in technology.” This event experienced some challenges as planning got underway and it’s not surprised. Considering the little investment that females founders receive, it’s…
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The support of Women in Technology at Oracle is a fine line and a careful argument. I receive between 20-30 communications in any week on the topic and I think the challenge as I speak to people is the importance of education over persecution. I’m at DOAG, (Deutschland Oracle User Group) conference this week and it’s common for someone to ask to speak to me on the topic of WIT. These valuable conversations have lead to deep reflection of what it means to offer support and how we can improve diversity in the Oracle community….then again, it may just be…
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Just in case you wondered, if you do a search for #ThanksODC and leave the “C” off, you get a lot of stuff on the boy band, One Direction…. You can thank me later for that warning…. The sheer amount of thank you posts for Oracle Development Community Appreciation Day, (#ThanksODC) and the historical hashtag for reference, #ThanksOTN are impressive, but I waited a day on mine so I could continue the support for the Oracle Women in Technology, (and @ORAWit). Here are the ThankODC blog posts from the great women of the Oracle Community! I’m going to start with…
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I receive about 20-30 messages a week from women in the industry. I take my role in the Oracle community as a role model for women in technology quite seriously and I’ve somehow ended up speaking up a number of times, upon request from different groups. Although its not the first time the topics come up, I was asked last week for some recommendations on Oracle’s CEO, Safra Catz and her opportunity to be on President Elect Trump’s transition team. I wanted to ask your opinion about Safra not taking a leave of absence to help with Trump’s transition team? I…
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Last night I attended our RMOUG WIT’s movie night. We partnered with Regis and the choice in movie has received a lot of great reviews, titled, Code- Debugging the Gender Gap. The movie resonated with me profoundly, as I was able to connect with not just the women involved in the interviews, but the girls who reminded me of myself when I was young. There were a number of initiatives that made me proud to be part of the IT industry and opportunities still needing our contribution towards change. Once the movie was over, we held a short WIT panel session.…