Last Friday, over one hundred people attended the Gender Equity in Technology Conference, or GETConf, at Metropolitan Community College’s Center for Advanced and Emerging Technology (CAET). The event sought to celebrate and amplify the voices of women and gender-expansive individuals in tech and featured a diverse cast of speakers, with topics ranging from designing against domestic violence to recognizing cultural bias in artificial intelligence.
Liz Dross, director of IT solutions development at Creighton University, was impressed by the quality of the speakers. She especially enjoyed Eva PenzeyMoog’s presentation on how companies must integrate anti-domestic violence safeguards into their technology products.
“I thought Eva’s talk was really an unusual one, something that we don’t normally think about,” Dross said. “I really appreciated her thoughts.”
GETConf was offered in partnership with Mystery Code Society, a 501(c)3 in Omaha that provides coding workshops for girls in fifth through twelfth grade. Rachel Fox, owner of Catapult Consulting Solutions and founder of the female empowerment organization You Go Girl, emceed the event.
Missed it? Silicon Prairie News has you covered. Here’s our GETConf recap:
Noni Williams: Data Science Is (And Should Be) Intersectional
Noni Williams, Manager of Solutions and Continuous Improvement at United Way of the Midlands, discussed data science as an intersectional force that can help organizations understand their business problems, create buy-in for change, and build trust in the organization and its mission. To build trust, for instance, companies should be mindful of the identities and perspectives of the people analyzing the data. One person might discount or overlook a variable that someone else considers important. “You don’t know what you don’t know,” Williams said. “You don’t know what you’re missing, and you don’t know what’s relevant if you don’t have that experience.”
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