 Live from Las Vegas expecting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE covering InterConnect 2016. Brought to you by IBM. Now your host, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Las Vegas for IBM InterConnect 2016 exclusive coverage from Silicon Angles, Media's theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of Silicon Angles. I'm my co-host, Dave Vellante, founder of wikibon.com. Our next guest is Adriana Gascoin, who's the CEO and founder of Girls in Tech. Great success in the industry. Has really, from early on, started storytelling, talking about the data around entrepreneurship and success. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you so much. Great to see you. Great to see you again, yeah. So, obviously, girls who code STEM now, it's STEAM because art's added in there, that buzzword, which I love, I like STEAM better than STEM, that it's science, tech, education, and also arts. So, design, all this is merging together. Engineering, yes. Engineering, all this stuff is now part of it. Tell us what's going on with you guys. What have you been through? Some of the successes you've had, share your story. Yeah, so in the past, I would say two years, we've experienced massive growth and mainly in the emerging markets. So, we've perfected our curriculum in Silicon Valley. We pilot the programs out. So, coding courses, anything from Ruby on Rails to Droomla, Duple, PHP, and then perfect it and test it out with that market and then customize it to the emerging markets to make sure that it is, we have the cultural nuances in mind that they can learn in the best way that they know how. So, we've been expanding a lot in African countries and Latin American countries, some European, Eastern European countries, and it's really exciting to provide these resources, skills, and curriculum to people in places that have very little access, access to the education, access to the role models and access to devices even. So, that is very inspirational to me personally and has sort of fueled the next generation of girls in tech and expanded the opportunities. We've known each other from the web, 1.0s and 2.0s days, and a lot's transpired now with social and now with the connectivity option, certainly outside North America, a huge on-ramp. Talk about that dynamic. What's your observation? What are you seeing? Cause now it's completely democratized. There's some more demand for coding. See the Apple example here at IBM was an absolute surprise for me in terms of validation for IBM, the Swift programming languages, it's super easy to use. It's not like C++, so a huge tsunami. Share some observations about that particular point, the on-ramp of new coders, the diversity angle, some things you've seen, observations, learnings. Yeah, so girls in tech was one of the first, I think, women in tech organizations that existed in Silicon Valley, specifically for the more cutting-edge, I think, participants or women coders. And so it was really exciting to see the growth and demand not only in the United States but around the world. And I feel that now that more women are getting into coding and really experimenting with different coding languages, it's seen as more okay. And it's actually seen as cool. They're getting really excited about it. So you have product marketers and product designers actually learning more about Ruby on Rails because they wanna be able to, one, learn how to do it themselves. And two, they want to understand what their counterparts are working on so they could better understand product development in total. So I think it's sort of this wave of excitement where I can do it too. Hey, it's not as hard as everyone thinks. And so everyone's a part of this coding party, so to speak, and in sharing resources and collaborating and really making. And collaboration is a big part of it. With open source, you're seeing that aspect, that social dynamic big. Has that been a big growth area for the connections and the evangelism, the fusing of these relationships? Yeah, and we see that since we're a global organization. We're the largest women in tech organization in the world. So we see the fusing of collaborations in terms of building new products, sharing curriculum, educating one another, making those connections from one country to the next. We have an exchange program that we do at Girls in Tech where we bring over 20 to 30 female entrepreneurs to experience Silicon Valley. And we're doing that with Nigeria, with Singapore, with Paris, so that they can really understand what goes on, what makes Silicon Valley tick. And then they bring those skills back to their home city country to grow companies there and to really empower people to really focus on socioeconomic development. You're exporting that knowledge in the Valley. How did you get into this? I mean, are you a coder yourself? I'm actually not a coder. I have a product marketing background. Actually, I started at JWT, Consumer Brand Marketing Company. And it was around the time that we met and I was plopped right into the middle of Silicon Valley and thought that this is the most exciting thing I've ever experienced in my life. So working at a startup, you never really look back. It's a flat environment. It's people collaborate. They respect each other. It's a very sort of nimble type of opportunity where you can move the needle and be a part of something bigger and build a family too, essentially. So I really just have enjoyed the experience and realized because I was the one female in the company of 50 people when I was working at Guba, I thought we really needed an organization like Girls in Tech to really make an impact, bring women together. There's a talk and also a share. I mean, and the impact that you guys are inspiring is also profound because now you're seeing a whole new generation of my daughters, a freshman in high school. One of my daughters, I have two, and she says to me the other day, that I really want to learn how to code. And I'm like, oh, that's awesome. And you can see the twinkle in her eyes. She really likes it. But she wasn't, I won't say scared, but you can see a little tepid. I'm like, oh, here, so let's, I was walking through it. So the starting point is key. And I felt like, not that she felt like, is it a guy thing? Is it gonna make me different? So that was kind of her vibe, right? So how do we, how do I, as a father, help her? Do I get her involved with Girls in Tech? Is it, how do you get that step, that baby step to get people hooked on the excitement of coding? Yeah, well, I think that you can expose them to organizations like Girls in Tech, take them to workshops or hackathons, or we do iOS building workshops for young girls in middle school and high school, to really expose them to what they can do in creating an iOS app, and then actually getting it into the iTunes store and saying, hey, dad, I really did this. And it's sort of cool when they actually have their own app in the store, right? But there are books out there, there are different blogs. It's as simple as, What's the website, what's the website, URL? GirlsinTech.org, and you can see all the programs that we have. We also have chapter websites. Yeah, there's an event schedule on there as well. But I think it's, even just taking your daughters to the Computer Science Museum or Computer History Museum, to the Exploratorium we have in Embarcadero in San Francisco, exposing them being a part of their exploratory experience in getting to know the STEM fields and getting excited about science. The curiosity's there, right? So nurturing the curiosity, getting them exposed. Is there a language that you've seen just from a pattern standpoint that the girls get interested in first? Is there, I mean, it's kind of a random question, but I mean, is there like a trending, you know? There is, that is actually a good question. Ruby on Rails seems to be very, very popular and not only amongst girls and women in the United States but also around the world. It's a very nimble language. So people are now using it, or I should say companies are now using them a lot, this coding language in their products. So that's why girls and women. And there are a lot of digital natives, a lot of, and we had Tanmay on 12-year-old Coder. We were just talking, he was talking about hyperthreading and he actually had a database problem. He solved the move to Java, oh my God. So the talent is natural. It's not like when we went to school and I was a computer science major. I mean, it was like laying bricks, it was hard work. Heavy work left kind of like thinking. It's work but there's so many resources and organizations and companies like General Assembly and Girls in Tech, we do coding classes and whatnot. I think it's a lot more tangible and easy to access. And because we're in a community where everybody likes to share and collaborate and serve as mentors, I think it's actually a lot more digestible. And people are making it more DIY. So WordPress, for example, making it a lot easier for more layman folk to actually build websites. So you've got what, 25 chapters around the world? 58. 58, yeah. Oh, okay, great, you gotta update the website. Oh, it's not, oh yeah, because that is, we're actually rebuilding all of those websites as we speak. So 58 chapters, so these are sort of self-sufficient chapters. They're sort of, and how does a chapter incubate and get off the ground, how do you see that happen? So we start by, they send me an email, so I've never had to reach out to anybody around the world to start a chapter. If they're really interested in bringing the Girls in Tech model, they will email me or call me or Skype me. And then we have three interviews. And then once we get the green light on everybody, we do background checks and we do reference checks. And then we have an EPK, it's an electronic press kit which basically has all of our curriculum, messaging, guidelines, everything that you need to know in one package and a PDF. That's your product marketing hat coming out. Yeah, yeah, I know. Exactly. Who started that? We try to make it as seamless and easy by keeping everything branded and correct. And then they take that and customize it. We don't want to give a cookie cutter approach. What Silicon Valley does is great for Silicon Valley, but it's not great for every other city around the world. It's not a replica, exactly. It's a little tweak. Exactly. It's a cultural kind of. It's a cultural tweak, cultural nuances. It's customization based on the aptitude, I would say, or the maturity of the tech ecosystem in that city. So we basically allow them to run with it and then we, especially the first six months, we plan the launch party. We have them get calendar events together based on what the need is there. We get the government involved. We get institutions involved. We get incubators, accelerators. Both the hell out of it. Get the distribution going. Yeah, it's about community. It's about building ecosystems, right? It's like you can't do it alone. We need the help and support from all of these other industry players. And that's the case in Silicon Valley, too. But we just have so much. We have a community oriented, very community driven. That's their charter, is to build that community. Exactly. And grow it, learn, share it back with everyone. Exactly. All right, so what's the most exciting thing that you've seen in your experience? Has there been a aha moment for you personally or has there been a fallout of your chair? Oh my God, I can't believe that person built that product. What's the coolest thing that you've seen come out of the chapters? Well, we did something really cool recently, the Super Bowl hackathon. So with ESPN and with IBM, actually, IBM Blue Mix and Watson teams came out and they supported us. And we had over 175 applicants. We had 14 apps that were actually built and launched to sort of enhance the experience of enthusiasts and football fans during their visit to San Francisco. So it was really neat to see over a three day period, people spent the night, worked really hard, got into teams. We broke it up with some yoga and meditation just to make it a little fun. And it was really neat seeing everyone collaborate and build real time. So that's really awesome. We do things, we have a lot of support from the US State Department, especially in our Middle Eastern chapters. I recently went to Jordan to speak and we had three ambassadors come out and actually do speeches in support of girls and tech. So you could see the government really, really emphasizing STEM education for women, not only in the US but around the world. And they're really supporting by funding these programs and also by having these phenomenal women come out and speak to talk about. It's so impressive and so inspiring. Share your vision. As you look forward, obviously you got a lot of work done. Your head's down, you know, moving the needle. What's the vision? Share with the folks out there, your vision. How do you see this thing unfolding? So that's a really good question because if you would have asked me five years ago, I think it would have been a little bit different. Now it's more about building these communities, holding companies accountable because I think everyone wants to be a part of the dialogue and not a part of the solution. There's so many companies, IBM Excluded, because they're a huge partner and advocate of girls and tech that are talking about compensation parity, they're talking about workplace diversity, time off for moms, paid leave for moms, et cetera. And really, they're not doing anything about it. So how do we act? IBM? No, not IBM, but a lot of other companies. A lot of high tech corporations, a lot of the ones that we know. And it's important for us to hold everyone accountable. So those are two of my main agendas, bringing the community together, holding companies and other entities accountable. But most importantly, scaling the organization so we can educate women all over the world in the STEM fields, coding, design, product development, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, and really have them start their own companies. I think that'd be really exciting. So for the folks out there that are watching this, hey, you know what, I love it. I want to be part of the solution because you have the haves and have nots, you have the rhetoric and certainly it's trendy to talk about women in tech and whatnot. And then the reality is who's got their feet to the fire. So we're a working example of that. You can see we have no women on our set here, no women anchors, and we have no women coders in our company. So one of the things we get complaints, certainly Grace Hopper was, where are the women? A couple thousand women at the conference, we were all guys. You say it ourselves all the time. So what we want to do is, we're busy, certainly we're building our business, self-funded, a lot of action, but we need help. So where do we go? How do we tap into that telephone? How do we get involved? We would love to. Is there a recruiting program that you guys have, a vehicle for people who really want to be part of the solution? So we do have a recruiting program. Well, first we have our jobs board, which is a global jobs board. So if companies want to list their listing, then they have access to all the talent around the world. We just launched an SVIP program. So it's called the Silicon Valley internship program. Basically through the British government, we give them J1 visas to female software engineers and match make them with startups. So they have the experience of working at the startup, get paid $60,000 a year, and they're there for a year, and these are women top of their class from all over the world. We had 950 applicants this year. That is amazing. 950 applicants that are at the top of their class from all over the world, female software engineers. So we're focusing on that, and we're focusing on working with high-tech companies to provide recruitment strategies. So what are different ways that you can recruit? Rewrite all the job descriptions. Have 50% women, 50% men in your recruitment panel. Find different channels to actually promote your job listings and things like that. So there's various different ways we're working with them to increase the pipeline, get women excited, and once they're in the company, teach these companies how to retain them. How can they stay there? How can they be happy? What are the flexible work environments that you can provide women? I don't agree with Mirsa Meyer in that Yahoo! should have all of the employees working there full-time. That's just not going to make them happy, you know? And so I really feel that we need to have- Flexibilities to keep things. Maybe that was a point. Yeah. Well, they can lay off Tuesday, too. I mean, she has that going on. But this is a good, this is the modern era right now. We are living in a modern era where flexibility on situations like how you work, come in the office on certain days for meetings, but give people the flexibility. That seems to be the top thing. So who's doing it right in your mind? If you look out on Silicon Valley, is there names you can point to in saying, hey, you know, obviously Grace Hopper's doing some great conversations around that. They've got a whole organization around. But what companies? I mean, we talked to Intuit, they're doing amazing stuff, a lot of mentorship, a lot of cool things. Who's got it right in your mind? Well, I think Etsy is doing a really good job of recruiting. They now have 50% of their engineering staff is women. So the ways that I would just mention in terms of finding different ways to test women in tech and coding to get to the end results. So not expecting it to be a cookie cutter approach, but really finding a way to get to the end goal, that's what really matters. So Etsy did a great job of this and now as a result has 50% female engineers. I would say in terms of high tech companies, there's two that really stand out and that's IBM and Cisco. And I've worked with them and it's not just because we're at the IBM Interconnect Conference. Oh, it's true, it's true. But I have worked with them extensively and their teams come out and work hard. So in the hackathons that we've produced with them, they have about 15 of their Watson IBM Bluemix staff come out and they have booths, they have mentors, they engage, they teach lightning talks. So they're very interactive with these people who are hungry to learn. And guess what? Most of these people don't know that much about IBM Watson and Bluemix. So it's a discovery tool, right? And they're like, wow, we can actually do that for the app, you know? So it's really exciting to see that. And a shout out to Meg Swanson, she's awesome. She's a real player. She's just doing the mark. Now she's got a bigger role. Bluemix has been great. IBM is great with Bluemix and tech. So it was at IBM that we, did you want to mention somebody else? Cisco. Oh, you said Cisco, right, right, right, sorry. Yeah, yeah, so I would say another company that obviously does a good job is Google. So they have specific women tech maker type initiatives and they're more focused on female entrepreneurs. So they're Google entrepreneurship type of division. They're the ones that probably teach most, the most of the courses and get more women through the programs. Yeah. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. Great to see you. It's been a walk in and all your success. Thank you. I'm so inspired by that. And again, anytime you want to come on theCUBE, we have to take a look at the event. Come down, share. Certainly we have women on Wednesday. So every Wednesday we feature women of the week and guests of the week on theCUBE. So go to SiliconANGLE.tv to check that out. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. More exclusive coverage from IBM Interconnect after this short break.