 Welcome to all of you. Thank you for joining by ladies India experience sharing sessions. We have with us, Lakshya, who is the program lead for women intake India and who will be speaking on our first category, which is women leading successful communities within India. Over to you, Lakshya. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much, Kanya. Indeed, a real privilege to be speaking at at pi addressing attendees. So I'm Lakshya Shivram Krishnan. I manage the women tech makers program for India. I work with the Google developer relations team and I've been doing this for about three and a half years now. And when I was reached out by PyCon India to talk about communities, I was like, wow, women plus communities. I think they mean a lot to me, both personally and professionally. And I truly, truly believe that this is a superpower. And here's my attempt to share with you why I believe so. So with that, I would love to also, you know, hear your thoughts on the chat. It would be lovely to make this an interactive session. Before we start, I had one question for you, which is, what do you think is a community? I would love to read out some answers in the chat box. And then I would also go about and say what I feel about it. Okay. I hope that I'm still waiting for your answers. A comfortable space where we can learn, share and grow together. Absolutely. And yes, I would say that community is literally if you break the word community, it is common unity, which means minded people getting together for shared interest or a common goal. And that's precisely what this setup is, right? We're all getting together, celebrating with the Pilates lunch, getting together in discussing and hearing women from the tech ecosystem sharing their insights and experiences. And basically, we're also trying to learn from each other. So I think, yes, Manaswini, you, you covered it pretty well. Yes, share knowledge. I see more answers coming in, group of people being like minded. Absolutely. And that exactly is the intent of any community, right? Here, for example, I gave a Pilates example, which is a women in tech community. Now, communities can also be very focused on a specific technology, or it could be specific to say a group of people having similar identity, right? So, yeah. And here are a few of the communities that I have been a part of. I think my whole community journey started off as a student, you know, at Tripolite Bangalore, as a Google Student Club ambassador. And that sort of actually gave me an exposure to what community life is and what community building is. And I joined the industry later went on to lead the BLR droid community, which is the Bangalore Android user group. And that's where I learned a lot of things hands on. A few years down the lane, I started managing the women Techmakers program, and also overseeing the Google Developers group program for a brief time. So, and while I have been primarily for about three and a half years managing women Techmakers, I think it has been an absolute privilege and honor to work with a lot of other communities, which are looking to achieve the same thing. We either end up as speakers in each other's events or sort of become outreach partners, because here we're not competing with each other, we're all coming together for a common purpose of having gender equity in the technology industry. More so that so that we can have better products, we can have more diverse products, more, you know, diverse people who are making decisions on products. And I've had, you know, I've had some great relationships with, say, the women who code community or Pilates, or women in machine learning data science, equity, there, I mean, there's, it's all there, right, lean in women and tech. A lot of communities today exist, and most of them have very similar interest of having gender equity. Now, few of them, like for example, Python is the, is the common binding factor in case of PyCon or Pilates, right. But if you see communities like women Techmakers or women who code or lean in, it's more broadly people interested in technology and who are part of the tech industry. What this collaboration has sort of given me an opportunity is what started off as a professional relationship with few of these ladies leading, you know, other communities, I think now we have become, you know, we've got each other's back. Right, we sort of go, they are our go to people in case we want to know more about a certain issue that we're facing. So it's also helpful to build have them as your support system in this journey. I asked a lot of people I closely work with on what do you think community means to you. And I don't want you to see this. I want you to just take a stab on the comment on the chat box on what is that feeling that you associate when you think of communities, either just communities in general or through the communities that you've been part of. What is that sentiment? What is that feeling? I would love to hear from you. So I reached out to a few folks whom whom I've been working with for the past few years and sort of ask them saying what does community mean to you? And here is a word cloud of all the answers that I received from them. The two things that personally really stands out for me is a sense of belonging and also an opportunity to pay it forward. It's like you have got so much from this whole experience and exposure, it's your time to pay it forward. I'm still waiting to hear from you all on the chat box on what is that feeling that you associate with communities, but just for the want of time I would like to move ahead. So I also want to take a couple of minutes to talk about what is the program all about that I run and where is it that I've learned all the insights and learnings that I have learned about women in tech communities. So for about three and a half years I have been sort of overseeing the program strategy and execution for women tech makers and it's not star mission is to ensure that we as a global program provide visibility, community and resources for women in the tech industry to join, thrive and lead. So we sort of spread across 35 chapters in India right from the north to the south to the east to the west. We also have about 17,000 members who have access to curated content based on their skill set, based on their experience, based on their aspirations as well. So yeah, that's that's pretty much about women tech makers, but I also want you to talk about why are we together. I spoke about a lot of communities and that I have collaborated with and what what is it that binds us all together why is it that we are all interested in this mission. Why is Python India so focused on having a diversity and inclusion track in a in a Python conference like this. I think it's because all of us, most of us really are looking forward to building diverse products working with very diverse people getting to know people from different cultures. And I've sort of experienced this working, you know, within people in India across various cities on how how certain manualisms and cultures are so different from one city to other, right, we're like, so unified in our diversity. And also that sometimes I think we're also looking at the bigger picture on how can we go beyond the boundaries of organization go beyond the boundaries of our own communities. And see what is it that we need to do to get together and ensure that there's gender equity in the technology industry at large right so I think we all have a strong role to play in this and probably that's also a reason why you are attending a session like this. I also want to throw some light on a research that we did way back in 2018 we tried to look at the Indian tech ecosystem space with respect to women in it and we thought that The reports that were there with India as a section, but there wasn't anything specific for women in tech as such. So we commissioned a research with, you know, we went and spoke to women across eight Indian cities, just filtered by, you know, where there is higher developer population of women, spoke to about 1000 plus women in a quantitative plus qualitative study. And what we exactly wanted to do is for women who are in their early career, we wanted to ensure that we are supporting them, either to make the transition or to help them rise higher in their career. With a lot of women who are already in this field, the challenge is often to stay in this field to continue to grow and take more leadership positions. And finally, we also have a very strong cohort of women entrepreneurs, and often they need help to build and start their startup or, you know, ventures. So we thought, what are the experience that they are undergoing. And sort of two, you know, key data points that came out that I want to share with you all is this. So the first one is 34% of the tech workforce in India are women, but only 20% reach senior levels. And if you are looking at the executive boards, it's probably a single digit. And we totally understand this trend because India being such a culturally rich country, we often see women who are still the primary caregivers, it could be childcare, elder care, just, you know, setting things around at home. And often what we also fail to do is leverage some of the women friendly policies that exist in various organizations. We sort of, you know, attend the first day of orientation or induction, sort of hear about it and then forget about it, right. Sometimes we are not seizing the opportunity to see what is it in it that I can leverage to ensure that I have enough support for me to, you know, excel at work. And we sort of also thought, what can we do as a community? And we thought having a lot of influencers facilitating these interactions would be a great thing. And it's ironic that it's only today that we release the Women Techmakers Spotlight Series where we want to talk to a lot of women in tech. We just recently spoke to Geeta Kannan who is the founder of Bequity and understanding her tech journeys because often by looking at role models, living their lives, understanding the do's and don'ts could serve as a great motivation for us to stick on and hold on, right. The other interesting data point especially from a community standpoint is unfortunately only 17% of women participate in communities where they can network and upskill. And often very sadly the reason is not directly about commitments but more around lack of awareness. Many women are not aware of communities where they can grow, network and upskill themselves. And hence in the process they also fail in being very relevant to the present trends and technologies. So what we found out was when we saw that women are not coming to our events and they're not aware of it, we thought we'll go to the place where they are, which happens to be a lot of organizations. So Women Techmakers as a community started collaborating with a lot of employee resource groups which were women focused to reach out to them and say, what skill do you want to give your employees? Is it a tech skill? Is it about building a chatbot? Is it about setting your GitHub repository? Is it about speaking on issues like unconscious bias or facilitating conversations or just promoting self or just talking about self promotion skills? And we thought that this was an important step in ensuring that we move the needle and make that number of 17% go much higher. So from data points I would like to sort of segue into some stories which I think would be very impactful for you to know on why communities can be a superpower. So the first story I want to tell you about is about finding your voice. I want you to meet Dhruva from Ahmedabad, Purnima from Koi Kot, Varsha from Jalandhar and Aditi from Indore. They're all Women Techmakers ambassadors from different parts of the country but they had something in common. They would stay small and hidden and really be afraid of putting out their thoughts, not feeling too confident or really self doubting themselves. And just by spending some time in the community, gaining that confidence, speaking at events, meeting more people, I think over time they have really transformed themselves for good. Today they can confidently say, hey, this is what I feel, not having the fear of being judged. And recent times I've had conversations where they're able to convince me why their idea is better than mine. And this sort of gives me a lot of joy to see them growing from strength to strength. The second story I want to tell you about is empowerment. So meet Ananya who is the ambassador from Bangalore and she joined the community a couple of years back not knowing what exactly would come out of it, not expecting anything much in return. And I was talking to her the other day where she was telling me how much she owed her current job to her community experience because that's where she got her soft skills, really understood some real world technology. And today she's doing a role that many of us would aspire for. She calls herself a developer experience engineer. So when communities can play such a key role in providing economic opportunities along with the exposure and the experience, it's certainly going to be worth the try, isn't it? I would like to sort of segue into the next section from stories by saying that recently I gave a TED talk on exactly this topic, leveraging communities in general. And I've covered a few more stories there where there are people who are finding ways which are really altruistic ways in which they're paying it forward. So maybe it would be a good start for you to join a community that you're interested in, be an attendee there, see what actually happens and then slowly you could take off, say, take up volunteering opportunities, speaking opportunities and whatnot. Like the scope is endless. It's more a function of your interest and time. With that, I think I want to leave you with what exactly can a community do to you? One, it gives you a strong sense of identity. As I said, a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose. Seeing you are there to see as a developer wanting to do XYZ. And this community that you're associated with sort of gives you that identity. The second thing is, as I spoke about empowerment, it enables you to do more, to know more, to get to know more people, to expand your network. And you never know where that leads to. You could find your next job, you could find your next mentor, your next co-founder for your next startup, etc. The most important pillar that we cannot discount is contribution. While it's very important to get from the community, it's even more important to give back so that this model sort of sustains. Look how you can collaborate with other people, with other communities. Look how you can co-create. It could be a conference paper. It could be a CFP for the next Picon India. And in the process of collaboration, co-creation, you will also learn a lot of things in addition to giving back. So get yourselves involved, leverage communities, any community of your interest. And that will help you not only build your network, but build genuine relationships with people. This quote from Helen Keller beautifully summarizes almost all that I've been speaking about with women and communities. Which is, alone we can do so little, but together we can do so much. And that's exactly how the power of people coming together is a very strong concept of communities and community building. The last thing I want to leave you with, since we're speaking about attending, participating. I want to talk to you about a developer festival event that is going to happen on October 16, 17, 18. It's called DeafFest India that is primarily hosted by Google Developer Groups. This time in the virtual setup, 50 communities from India are coming together to put together this developer festival along the tracks of machine learning, cloud, mobile, flutter, web. And we have slotted, be it you're a beginner or an intermediate or an expert, we've got you covered with hands-on workshops from expert speakers, all belonging to community, all looking forward to pay it forward. I think with that, thank you so much for this opportunity.