Dan Langille: The cloud space needs women in cloud

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The transformative power of cloud can only be fully realized by the big idea solutions built upon it. We would be doing the world – organizations and individuals – a massive disservice if we failed in our collective duty to make certain that women have equal opportunity to bring their disruptive and innovative ideas to market. 
 

I initially joined the Women in Cloud community out of admiration and respect for its co-founders Chaitra Vedullapalli and Karen Fassio. I am immensely grateful to them for sparking my awareness of the desperate need for solutions and companies to be evaluated solely on their merits without regard to the gender of their creators.
 

The thought that my own daughter, herself an aspiring tech entrepreneur, could be denied the chance to succeed solely because of her gender is both unfair and infuriating. Women in Cloud is changing that for hundreds of women around the world, and I am excited and grateful for the opportunity to lend my voice to the ever-growing chorus for economic inclusion.
 

As a panel member on the topic of Male Allyship for the third annual Women in Cloud Summit 2020, I am looking forward to witnessing and discussing the growth of our mission as a community.  We will be close to achieving fair and equal economic access when we have progressed along the spectrum from conscious bias to unconscious inclusion.  
 

Women in Cloud is about to host entrepreneurs with excellent solutions from our industry. Purchase tickets today, to join us in Seattle on January 25 to learn, understand, contribute, and grow with everybody during and after the summit. 

To get more information visit the summit website, and don’t forget to apply the 20% discount code: JOINME@WIC

See you there! Take action by joining our online network to get engaged today!

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Karlin Kappala: DevOPs QA – How the world of testing in the cloud world has changed

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Chaitra Vedullapalli, Founder and President Women in Cloud, is my Linkedin Connection. I vaguely remember crossing paths with her at a summit similar to Women in Cloud back in 2015. Since then, I have been sincerely following her through the journey she has been and taken Women in Cloud on. I am part of WomenWhoCode, WomenWhoBuild, GirlsWhoCode and ChickTech communities and have had the opportunity to talk at a couple of conferences and meet many of them. I jumped on the opportunity with Women in Cloud. I knew I had to be a part of this community which is on a journey to make our industry inclusive. 

All throughout my career, I have had the opportunity to wear different hats. I have worked as a business analyst, project manager, a coach, a mentor, a performance tester, an automation tester and a solution architect and strived for automation at every level. I have built teams with quality engineers and worked on various kinds of projects. With the vast experience I have gathered over the years, this Women in Cloud Summit 2020 I will be speaking about DevOpsQA, Cloud Testing and how the world of testing has changed in Agile teams.

In the session I plan to talk about what is DevOpsQA and the prime definition of this term. A decade ago, QAs primary responsibility was finding bugs, write test cases and make sure there are no bugs in production. Today, testers are the quality advocates, influencing both development and operational processes. They don’t just find bugs, they look for any opportunity to improve repeatability and predictability. CloudDevOps has enabled QA to do this with Faster time to market, Higher quality and Increased organizational effectiveness. QA is achieving this is by Continuous testing via automation. Attendees will walk out with an understanding of Quality Testing and how automation plays an important role early in the cycle and how to define a proper test strategy that defines a single path to production.

I have had the opportunity to attend several summits offered by WomenWhoCode, ChickTech, Google Summit, AWS Re-invent Summit. Every time I attend these conferences I am surprised to see the ideas and opportunities out there in the world. I have come across hundreds of people and we connect, we exchange and we enrich each other with the knowledge we possess. It is an exciting experience every time.It is no different with Women in Cloud. I am excited to run into everybody with an idea, good or bad, learn from them and excited for the energy, passion and fun instore for us. 

I hail from the IT background and communities like Women in Cloud gives me hope for our industry and our future. As a lifelong student, I am thankful to have found this community and cannot wait to explore the immense knowledge people from Women in Cloud are waiting to share during the Summit. I urge to purchase tickets tickets for the summit and experience the best the community and the industry has to offer this January. 

To get more information visit the summit website, and don’t forget to apply the 20% discount code: JOINME@WIC

See you there! Take action by joining our online network to get engaged today!

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Genevieve Desautels: Collective intelligence empowering women in technology

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My desire to meet people – men and women alike – who understand my reality as a female entrepreneur in technology led me to Women in Cloud. The community of  people who, like myself, want to instigate change and evolution and allow our daughters to evolve in an entrepreneurial ecosystem focused on equality in various spheres that englobe female entrepreneurs in technology.

This year at the Women in Cloud Summit, I have the responsibility to shift minds as a speaker. As women, when we build a company, we plan at some point in our strategy to either be acquired or to grow faster. The problem is, chances are quite high that we will be acquired by a company owned by a man. Therefore, all the work that we put in to lead and change the landscape will most likely be pushed aside after our acquisition, since we will probably end up owning merely 5% to 10% of the newly merged or acquired company’s stocks. At the summit, we will discuss this topic and share ideas around it, especially in the tech industry.

In a space where collective economic growth needs to be a norm, we are fighting for it to be a reality. The changing times demands collaboration – it means that men would have to collaborate in order to create networks, access conditions to capital and potential solutions in other spheres for women in technology to grow their companies while expressing the full potential of talent diversity that they can bring within the global community of technology.

Women in Cloud is now my community. As members of the community, I want us all to reflect as a group and tackle strategic and tactical challenges that directly affect female entrepreneurs in technology throughout the world.

The third annual summit excites me and I hope to meet female entrepreneurs who, like myself, are both mothers and entrepreneurs in technology and are aged 45 years or older. Purchase your tickets today and I’d love to exchange ideas with women who were able to find investors and acquirers in order to understand how they were able to keep the bigger part of their companies’ shares.

To get more information visit the summit website, and don’t forget to apply the 20% discount code: JOINME@WIC

See you there! Take action by joining our online network to get engaged today!

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Lena May: Bridging the gig economy with cloud computing

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As an entrepreneur, I see opportunities developing in cloud technology in the United States market. After personally struggling with difficulties of buying and selling tech services, I realized there had to be a better solution. This discovery led me to create a common central marketplace to bridge the gig economy with cloud technology to monetize and modernize these business transactions. This year at the Women in Cloud Summit 2020, I will discuss the opportunities for increased innovative cloud technologies and ways to get started. Currently, there needs to be utilization of the cloud technology; researching the service sector for cloud opportunities will result in opening a global conversation and entrepreneurial options. 

The Women in Cloud network has provided PSE Consulting with a broader, more strategic view of the potential that my organization has over the next year. I’ve gained insights on how to leverage relationships and transform them into real business leads. In the future, I would like to leverage the WIC network to work through next steps to launch the IT Marketplace in international markets, specifically in Mexico and Latin America.

I took a risk when I saw the opportunities for independent consultants; the same must be done for women to rise in countries with emerging technologies. There is a shift happening in technology around the globe, and I want to empower women with equal opportunity to join the movement and accelerate the shift.

As a resident of south Texas, there is a gateway of international opportunity at my fingertips. My vision for collective action within the Women in Cloud program involves creating IT opportunities for women in Mexico and Latin America through education and IT careers. One of the largest populations in North America is in Mexico City, with roughly 21 million people. Imagine the impact if 5% of women in CDMX had access to IT opportunities and training certifications for cloud technologies. The results could and would be life changing!

If you are thinking of breaking in to the gig economy and are ready to think outside the box, I want to hear your stories at the summit. Purchase tickets for the summit today and let us get to work. We are truly in a global inclusive economy and the gig services market is the key. 

To get more information visit the summit website, and don’t forget to apply the 20% discount code: JOINME@WIC

See you there! Take action by joining our online network to get engaged today!

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Countdown to the new year and the Women In Cloud 2020 Summit

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As we wind down 2019, we can’t help but think of all the things we have to be thankful for this past year. Although we still have a lot of work to do in order to see gender equality in the tech industry, we’ve also accomplished a lot of things this past year. 

  • We’ve grown our WIC active network to over 1500 members, more than double where we were one year ago and, as a result, we’ve tripled our audience during this time. 
  • We launched the online WIC Network community to give members an exclusive space to communicate, network, share ideas and help each other through mutual generosity. 
  • We build an Advisor Network comprised of industry executives and subject matter experts.
  • Our Accelerator impact generated $50M in pipeline opportunities and $6M in investments.
  • We’ve expanded the Cloud Accelerator into 8 countries: Canada, UK, France, Germany, India, Kenya, the US and Dubai.
  • We now have 60+ major companies directly participating in the community. 
  • And we’ve garnered major media coverage for WIC on Microsoft, GeekWire, TechNative and more. 

And as we move into 2020, we know we can accomplish amazing things. We’re going to continue launching our community in new countries and territories, add new programs like Executive Dinners and Innovation Hacks, continue to evolve our community into a true Generosity Network, and much more.

We kick off the year with our annual summit, and this year’s promises to be extra special. We’ve added a number of amazing new experiences that not only accelerate growth for women-led technology businesses, but also inspire, connect and harness the amazing power of the community to help solve other major problems we’re facing across the globe. 

Here are our top 5 reasons why you can’t miss out on the 2020 summit:

  1. Learn from relevant industry leaders: there are so many amazing speakers at the summit this year including critically acclaimed performer and author Patti Dobrowolski, and corporate vice president for Microsoft’s One Commercial Partner business, Gavriella Schuster, and many others. You’ll wish you could listen to all of them!
  2. Change the world and yourself in the process – #AISolutions2030 Innovation Hub: Women In Cloud and IdeaGen have partnered together with industry leaders and policy makers to further the 2030 UN global goals through AI-based solutions by launching the #AISolutions2030 Innovation Hub. Leveraging the UN Knowledge Repository, WIC will be bringing some of the sharpest tech and business minds together in one place for a greater purpose, and promises to produce strategic AI solutions directed at solving the UN’s SDG goals.
  3. See up-and-coming women entrepreneurs and women-led business emerging into the spotlight first hand through the #CloudInnovateHER Pitch Challenge: women-led companies developing an enterprise-ready cloud solution that’s earned less than $10M in the past 12 months qualify to enter the pitch challenge. Four finalists will have an opportunity to deliver their pitch during WIC Summit 2020. The winner will be selected at the pitch competition and will receive a prize.
  4. Join in on scintillating conversation with industry leaders at the #CloudExecConnect Executive Roundtables: an intimate group eating together and inspiring through meaningful dialogue around one topic. Each table conversation is facilitated by an industry executive, and you can pick the topic that interests you most. 
  5. Multiple opportunities to network: in addition to the #CloudExecConnect Executive Roundtables, there’s also Collective Action Lounge, as well as the #CloudCommunityConnect: Community Roundtables that are community lead roundtables similar to the executive roundtables. With over 1500 attendees, there are bound to be a number of influencers you can get connected to. 

There are several more reasons to attend, so be sure to register today!

Also, there are other ways to get involved if you’re interested:

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