 Thank you. Thank you everyone for coming along to the talk today. We have got 45 minutes which is not very long and we've got such a lot to cover. We're going to be talking about scaling up and then a number of topics within that. What we'll do is we'll have a chat and then we'll ask you for questions at certain intervals. If you do have a question it would be great if you could direct it to the expert that you'd like to answer that question and please keep the questions as concise as possible. That would be brilliant. Thank you. So we're going to talk about scaling up. Starting any kind of business is difficult but scaling up is even trickier I believe. What I want to find out is about how you make that initial leap from one to two and then beyond. Vanita. Happy to. I've been told that I'm going to answer that question. That's why I'm happy to as well. Commitment and attitude is what we looked for in the first few people but why you hire people in the first place is when you fall short of hands and skills. When you realise you're working ridiculous hours and the money in the bank is adding up that you can hire someone. It sounds obvious but that is when you start scaling up. Find a person with the right cultural fit so they feel about the world the same as you do or about the projects that you're taking on. They have the determination to complete it whatever may. That's what you want really. That's when you start scaling. I think growth itself requires a clarity of vision. Did becoming a B Corp help you to find that vision? I think we had a vision before we got certified as a B Corp organisation but yes you do need a very clear vision. My husband is in charge of the vision. I like to get things done so we both complement in that way. So yes we had a clear vision of making sure that whatever projects we take on from day one in 2007 this is going back. We only took on positive projects and people who joined us in the business as we took new people on. We were looking for passion, whether that be passion to save animals, whether that be passion to reduce poverty, whether that be passion for better mental health or whatever it be. They need to have something that takes them and makes them feel like I'm going to do something positive and that's what we looked for. Fantastic, thank you. Louise you have around 11-12 people in your team now. How did you start to grow your team? Did you look to outsource or did you hire initially? Initially I was introduced by a friend to a local recruitment company, 10-to-2 and they specialised in part time, well mainly working mums. So my initial person who worked for us was just doing admin and doing the bits I really didn't get around to doing was things like sending out invoices and chasing for about 5 hours a week. Initially because I was worried about all the employment law and all of that I actually paid 10-to-2 and then they paid her but eventually she came on the payroll. The second person it just got to the point where I couldn't go on holiday and the family were a bit grumpy so I thought I'd better hire a developer. Again that was through word of mouth but that was part time. I always made sure that I had two or three months' salary in the bank but you don't need a whole year's salary because you know the work will come to fill the time that you can sell. That was coming to my next question actually. How did you demonstrate stability to the people that you were hiring to let them know that this was a stable company that would be growing? At the time I was a working mum with two small children who were growing up and one of the things I wanted to be was a good employer. So my first two hires were both women with school aged children and that was about just being, I was expecting a certain amount of hours a week but actually being quite flexible if a kid was off sick. Well that's fine you know can you do something from home or if a child you get a call from school you need to go. I think actually it's about being a nice place to work and being respectful and not treating your employees in a way that you wouldn't want to be treated yourself. And then also quite early on before we even needed to we had a company pension scheme that at the time I contributed the whole amount to. So I was just trying to make us a nice place to work as well where people would want to stay rather than just move on because I could see that it was cheaper to do that than even the cost of recruiting somebody else through an employment agency. If you actually look at the financials around the cost of recruitment they're eye watering so it's about keeping the employees the good employees that you have as well. And how about yourself so when you do start to hire and you grow your team your role does change quite dramatically from a leadership perspective what have you had to learn and develop yourself? When I stopped developing websites I sort of grieved for about 18 months but then I'd realised that I'd hired people who were half my age and better at it than me. And that was actually quite nice because then I could sell stuff that I didn't even know how to do which was fun. And I think the other thing I've learnt is that when you delegate it doesn't have to be done your way it just has to be done in a way that's good enough. And I think the final thing I've learnt which is still a work in progress is that people are weird and they don't always react in a way that you expect. But I did have a good piece of advice from a very good friend of mine who said Louise don't hire people like yourself because you wouldn't want them working for you so that's worked quite well as well. I can't possibly comment Louise I think you're fabulous. Marika I'd love to have a chat with you. So Yoast is now a team of around 80 I believe. 80 in our Netherlands results and another 25 I think around the planet. Incredible. So what I'm really interested in is how you build and develop company culture in such a large team and then also how you bring the people that aren't in that core team in various other countries into that as well. So our entire HR strategy comes down to we believe that if you're good for your employees they will be good for you as well. And we don't have any other well that's just how we feel about it. And when we started out we were pretty much a small family and you want to we want to keep it that way but that's impossible. But we want people to know each other and to feel part of that Yoast family we still try to do that. So we do a lot of fun stuff. We do Lego building days every day after Christmas everybody comes in brings their families and we build. I don't know how many Lego blocks my husband will know but we build like tons of Lego everybody gets his own box and we'll put them out in our office. So we have we have crazy amounts of Lego in our offices. We do barbecues every now and then we do the know your colleague quiz in which you have to answer questions about your colleagues in order silly questions like what's your favorite color and what was the sport you were best in when you were six or something. But it allows people to talk to people they normally wouldn't talk to. And that makes the stepping up to someone you're not normally working with so much easier and with 80 people you want people to know each other and to get that. And I think we're succeeding. We're hiring we've hired 23 people this year so it's been amazing stuff stuff. That's amazing. Yeah. And what about bringing the people that are kind of in different different locations. How do you involve them with part of that process. So the people who are all around the planet. These are mostly our sport engineers because we offer 24 hour support but we want to sleep as well. So we have people in the United States but also in Bangladesh and the Philippines who do support for yours. So well they they came to our conference at Yoastcom and they will be next year. There will be another Yoastcom but we couldn't take care of them during Yoastcom because it's really busy during a conference and having those people around. And if people travel from the Philippines or Bangladesh for the first time to the Netherlands you need to take care of them. We know that now. So we are bringing them in another week and then they will come and work at their offices and know each other and during the normal period of time they have Skype calls. So we have someone, Taco, everybody knows Taco. He's our community manager. Oh no he's not our community manager anymore but he does all the support engineers and make sure that everybody talks to each other and knows each other. Brilliant. Thank you. I'm just going to make a quick point that I didn't explain earlier is. Please don't feel that Meg is being left out of this conversation but we've actually looked at topics and who is going to be the best person to speak on those topics. So Meg's up next with a little question I've got. But does anyone have any questions for any of the experts on the panels at this point? Any questions about scaling up or growth? Is one there? Yeah it's about growth. Marika said at some point we wanted to stay a small family but that was not an option. Is it really not an option? Or is it a choice? It's a choice of course. So at one point just to make the choice do I want to hire people? And I like growing I think. Not about money but making an impact and yeah we still like growing. But we sometimes stopped now and looking at them more. We decided not to hire anybody and we didn't hire anybody for weeks now. And we are afraid to tell our employees that we decided not to hire but they don't believe us. So it's a choice. You can stay small if you want to. But if you have a plugin with over a million users. Yeah that's hard to make sure that's being taken care of if you don't hire people. Are there any other questions at this point? That's one at the back there. Thank you. It's to Marika again. When you talk about getting your staff together in a remote working environment and you bring them over for the conference from a commercial side of it. Do you pay for the flights and the accommodation and everything? Yes. Very enough. Yes we do. Thank you. Any further questions? No? Okay great. Let's move on. Let's talk about highs and lows. Robert Cheese we have learnt to celebrate the highs and commiserate the lows together as a team. But there's often defining moments that shape how your company does grow. Meg I want to talk to you. Can you tell us about any of those real kind of best moments that you've had so far and maybe something that's given the organisation that huge lift that it's needed. Okay thank you Kelly. One of our best moments so far was being finalist in the Sussex Digital Awards. But it was also one of our lows as well because we were literally the only company at our entire table that didn't actually win an award. Which was kind of funny too at the time. But it was a real high to be recognised for that award. And it inspired us to work harder, to do better, to serve our clients better. And it also gave us a real lift. Like yeah we've done something really good here. And in terms of the low about it it was kind of like we were able to get over it quite quickly actually because we just thought okay we're just going to do better next time. And we should really recognise that we got this far this time. And in terms of other highs I think it's really kind of a combination of lots of little things that happen that almost in a way happen every day. So for example getting an amazing feedback form filled in by one of our clients. And you read it and you think wow yeah. One year in the project you don't really think about the outcome and their reaction to the outcome. You just want to get the project done and you want to do it really well for them. And you want them to be happy with it. But you don't actually think about the impact it's going to have on their business and their company. And when you see that in front of you and you read that amazing feedback you think yeah. We're going in the right direction. We've solved their problem and we've done a really good job of it and they've recognised it and now it's public. And people can see it on our Google reviews or whatever. So that's another example. Also if we've come up with a really good idea that we're not really sure it's going to work out and then it does and it takes off. One example is our help hubs that we run in Sussex. And they're open to anybody and people can come and just get help on the day. They can talk about any problems that they're having with their website. They can talk about marketing plans. They can talk about strategy. And we'll help them for free. And people come and get to know us and they can see what we're all about. And that was an idea that was generated at the very start of our company and we didn't know whether it was going to work or not. And it's actually kind of been amazing for us because I'll walk into a room and people have already heard of us before they've even met me. And that's a really good high for you when you spend 24-7 working so hard and you have no idea whether you're actually getting anywhere. Oh, that's wonderful. That's really fantastic. I had no idea that you did that either. I really liked what you said about the email feedback that you'd got. And it is all about celebrating those tiny little things that make that day a really, really great day. Thank you for sharing that with us. Let me just talk to you again a little bit because we had a discussion previously about how creatives have a tendency to be quite self-critical about their work and potentially sometimes about themselves as well. Do you think that's a trait that you see in you and has kind of an effect on maybe the lower times in your organisation? Yes, definitely. One of the things I do is I do graphic design and I do web design as well. And I think when your design is rejected by the client and that's almost a simplistic way because it's never just a straight rejection. There's always a conversation and everything. But when you feel like you haven't done your best job and they're not happy with it and that it doesn't represent what their brand is, for example, then you kind of think, you know, I'm not good enough or I need to go an upskill or I need to, you know, my creativity isn't there. And it becomes almost a personal criticism of yourself. And that can contribute to some of the lows that you have. Perhaps it is a trait of creators that you want your vision to come across and you want people to understand that vision because the design that you create is supposed to communicate something and if it's not being communicated then that's down to you and your lack of ability. So, yeah, definitely. It can be tough. I totally understand. Vanita, I'd love to talk to you about what's been your defining moment so far. When we started the business, we wanted three specific clients on our books. One was Marks and Spencer's because they had a plan A for sustainability. One was Solar Century because they are the largest European solar panel manufacturers and the third one was ECOVA, who are the plant-based cleaning products. We got all of them on our books one after the other and by 2014. So that was a real high, I would say, very, very high about it. And then you sort of think, right, what next? So you start looking for where you can go. So that was a very great start. And then there was a point at which I was like, I'm running faster than I can run emotionally, physically. And that is when in 2016 I had a burnout and it was a real low. And people, especially clients, were really understanding about it. So it was a high and a low in a way. And the burnout was just before Christmas really well planned, I think. You know, when you're heading to Christmas, you're trying to get everything out of the door. And my husband Tom is fantastic. He gave me loads of breaks and I reduced my working hours right down and I went through CBT and then practised mindfulness. It doesn't stay with you all the time. You have to actually practice. But it really helped over time. But that was a low in spite of such a fantastic high. So I had to sort of start thinking about how to celebrate those small successes. And then I started realising how that nice testimonial from a client, on the phone call saying, oh, thank God you saved us today. You cleared a hack from XYZ. And, you know, small things that happened, I started celebrating those rather than waiting for that big high that comes. And so, yeah, there's highs and lows. There's always things going on. But it's about celebrating the highs so that you don't sort of self-criticise on things you didn't win or didn't go right. Definitely. Thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate anyone that has the ability to share kind of a time that's been really tough for them. And I think it's really important. I think obviously Dan, what he talked about earlier with the WP and ARP, this obviously highlights that there is a very definite and clear need for that. I don't think it's just me. I'm sure many people and not just in the audience, but business owners are so self-critical about getting everything right for their employees, for their clients. It's almost like we make it our mission to do everything perfectly. And it's really hard. Our self-criticism is just not good. Louise and I were talking about this just before we came on stage, actually, about how when you are the business owner and you have a personal challenge that you're trying to overcome at the same time as one in your business, it's incredibly overwhelming because you need to be that person that paints on the perfect face every morning and gets up and goes out and sees those clients and still does those sales meetings and takes those calls. Yet inside you can be completely falling apart. So it's a huge responsibility and a huge pressure constantly. But when you speak about it to your clients, they are actually not that difficult to handle. I remember during that process, this was in November 2016, one of my favourite clients, we've worked with them for seven or eight years, they came in to talk about their website and I said, actually, I don't think I can absorb any information. Would you speak to someone so instant? He said, what's the problem? I said, I'll burn out. He's like, go home, I'll talk to anybody in your team, that's fine. And I had to learn to trust, delegate better. So actually being completely honest and authentic about your situation helped with your client relationships. They were really nice about it. They just said, go, find your groove and come back. Brilliant, thank you. Does anyone have any questions for the panel at this point? It isn't a really interesting topic. Any questions? Hi, I think a couple of you have got business partners, your actual partners, is that right? And a couple, I don't know about you guys. But I'm just wondering, you've got a low and you haven't got anybody to talk to about it because you haven't got a business partner. No, you can't really embed on your actual partner. If you're not doing business together. How do you cope with that? Or have you got any tips? I'm a sole director and one of my best friends used to be my accountant. But she's my friend on a Friday afternoon. Do you think it's... I have a business partner. So, you know, we do have someone to bounce off all the time, but I think my tip would be surrounding yourself with a support network, so finding other business owners or agency owners or put yourself in that in a peer-to-peer group where you have those people that you can turn to that will completely understand the situations that you're in. That's really important. Yeah, I've definitely needed a person and it's not a family person who's in the business. Thank you. Good question. Is there any other questions? I've got one here. In terms of, like, burn-outs, that obviously happened, it crept up, but in hindsight now, are there ways that you can put preventions in place thinking, like, for you and even your staff, thinking this is what we can do to make it a better environment to stop burn-outs in the future? Yeah, it's very personal for our team. We don't make people say, you know, we don't tell them that you have to be here for nine, you have to be here till five. That's not the way we work. So giving them flexibility, if someone's mum's not well or they're going to go and visit their family member in the middle of the day, so be it. Being flexible as an employer is really important, but your employer can do everything right, but you have to watch your thoughts personally and watch your energy levels, watch your motivation that morning to come to work. If you're feeling really not so motivated that day, go for a run. Come back an hour later. You might be a better person to talk to. So it's about dedicating time for exercise for, you know, watching how your endorphins levels are is very important. Does that answer your question, actually? Thank you. I could go on, so I should. Don't worry, I'll shut her down. Is there any more questions at this point? No, okay, well let's talk about WordPress, because it would be a bit weird if we didn't at WordPress conference. So Louise, Indigo Tree, you specialise in website design and actively promote WordPress as your chosen CMS. Have you ever looked at alternative solutions and what were the reasons for those? Yes, we have. When Guttenberg was first announced, I was like, okay, all developers better start learning React. So they all learnt React or learnt bits of React and then said, actually we're a bit bored with doing WordPress themes. We'd like to do other interesting stuff. So we've been looking at other ways of building websites static. We've also got some Laravel resource in-house, so we've built a large Laravel website. But particularly, the workshop we did this morning with Gatsby and using the REST API, that's based on React. So I'm really interested in using WordPress in different ways. That's partly to keep the team engaged so that they can progress their skillset. But in going down the route of looking at static sites, we've also looked at other CMSs. So there's one called Netlify CMS that somehow does something clever with GitHub and then links to Netlify and it publishes things. And we've actually taken some open source code from Yoast and implemented the Yoast traffic lights within that as a plug-in in an open source. So basically you can have a good writing experience because I think one of the best things about WordPress is the ability to edit the content for users. And I go out and train all our small business clients and they like the fact that they can log in and see their posts and their pages. And if you go to another CMS, a lot of the other CMSs really aren't as easy to understand. So it's trying to work out if we didn't use WordPress what would be a good solution. And we've now got a few clients with static sites that don't use WordPress. But it's still sort of 80% of our work, I'd say, at the moment. Because actually it's a good experience for clients. If you look at the lifetime cost of owning a website, it's the cost of keeping it updated as well as the cost of actually doing the development. Do you think that that's going to change how you define your company offering moving forward and maybe also how you hire and who you hire? Yes, because we'll definitely have a core of people will like a WordPress website and people will come to us because they know locally we're the go-to people for sorting out pickles in WordPress. But actually there will be other stuff that perhaps WordPress might not be the best solution or it might be a clever solution with a REST API that might need a more advanced skill set than perhaps a junior developer would have. But a junior developer might well be perfectly capable of building a very good custom WordPress theme. So we're definitely looking at how we can split our offering and do some really nice, higher-end, more expensive stuff but still keep the everyday WordPress stuff that we've actually got a really good local reputation for. Brilliant, thank you. Meg, how about you? You're a full service agency. Shake it up creative is full service. So you offer marketing, PR, design, web development. But you're not WordPress specific. So you already do offer alternatives. How do you approach that? How do you approach that in your kind of day-to-day world? Well, I mean, we do love WordPress when we use WordPress a lot and we will recommend it to clients. But some of the time the clients will come to us and they've already got a system in place or they have a system that they want to use because of the type of product that they're selling or service that they're selling. So it really is so much part of the initial conversation with the client of what we're going to build on, what platform we're going to use and if it's WordPress, then that's great. We love it. And if it's not, if it's something else, for example, you will code in Shopify or BigCommerce or something like that if it's an e-commerce solution. So it really is part of the conversation at the beginning and we won't say you have to use WordPress or any other kind of system. It's about finding the right solution that's going to solve their problem Does that answer your question? Yeah, it does answer my question. And sometimes as well, sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you, sometimes as well, some of the projects that we work on because we are marketing NPR and SEO, some of those projects don't involve WordPress at all whatsoever because there's no website involved in the project. Have you had to find more kind of outsourced support to support the different things that you use as well? Yes, yeah we have at times. But also I'm very, I'm quite, I like to work things out myself a lot of the times and so I'll try and upskill as well because I think going forward the future I'll be doing less and less upskilling probably and just hiring people who I know could do the job and I don't have to learn how to do it. But yeah, I have upskilled myself and we'll try to find developers who work in whatever system it is and get them on board for that project. Brilliant, thank you. Any questions for the WordPress section from the audience? There's a man touching his ear, I thought that was a question. Okay, we'll move on. So I'd like to talk about diversity and I'll talk to Marika. I'm looking around actually and it is relatively diverse in here today but I'm still often quite surprised at the lack of women that there are at tech conferences. So I want to talk a little bit about how that's changed over the years and how it might have affected you. But Marika, you've been carrying out a little experiment today, haven't you? So I'd like to hear what that is. I've done it yesterday actually because today I had my own talk and I was away but I've been counting the number of questions that were raised by men and women during this conference yesterday and that was because when I was in work in Europe and I didn't attend every talk, I didn't attend every talk here so it's just a little experiment in work in Europe I didn't see a single woman raising a question and I knew that I wanted to ask a question but I was scared too. So when I started counting and I saw so very few women who did that. So yesterday I counted the total of 36 questions and six were raised by women and there are fewer women here than men but I still think that's under representative. But all in all, writing is really good in diversity. This has been the most diverse conference in women on stage and women in the organisation that I've ever been to so that's great. But still something very dear to my heart to have more women in the WordPress community. Well that's something that I'd like to talk to you about because I know that and we've touched on it a little bit by one of the questions in terms of having a partner who is also your life partner in your business. So I kind of want to understand I want you to tell us what your experience of that has been so usually and there's nothing wrong with being a secretary but usually people assume that I'm your secretary and so also inside of our company I often have to claim my position and say well actually I have a PhD and I can do this and that's hard so I stopped doing this I don't know how to say this in English so when I pick up my children from school I stop talking to people about what I do because they just assume that Joost is being the boss and I'm just some employee or something and that really isn't the case and that's just a prejudice and that's normal but it's hard because I have to I face that on a daily basis and trying to tell people that I'm actually more than just like an assistant Have you had to change your kind of management style or learn or be more adaptive to cope with that? Yes and I don't know whether I'm learning I guess and I'm getting better at it and I think I actually did a talk at Joost I think two years ago in which I said in which I showed them my resume and in which I did some talk about about how we all have prejudice and it's okay but still now there's somebody working in our office oh this is going to be online now we have to talk about it some more and there's someone in our office and he's talking about the gentleman of the board and we have a board and there are four people and I'm in it and I'm not a gentleman so I'm like oh I have to address this to him and that's hard because then you have to claim your position but he's talking about us and Omar also thinks that he's only talking about Joost and Michiel so we're the four of us and not about him and not about me and I have to say something about that and I have to do that on a daily basis and Joost never has to do that because he is the founder, he's really important but we wouldn't be here if I wasn't here Thank you Vanita, I want to talk to you about it as well so how has diversity and digital changed for you over the years and how has it affected you? There are more people applying for jobs from across the world but there are always people applying from across the world in terms of diversity I think we have less diverse people applying at the moment because of Brexit I would say I know I'm not trying to be all blamie about it but when it comes down to it the number of candidates coming through the door have reduced but that's again European issue I suppose across the world we get more men apply for jobs so more men get the jobs you can't that brings me to the principle that I don't like positive discrimination just because I'm brown, because I'm a girl I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to just say I'm going to hire the brownest person, the girliest girl it's not fair so as a company owner I have to be and I am really conscious of always hiring the right person for the job it doesn't matter if it's a girl or a boy or whatever their choices are in life as long as they are passionate as I said and equity over equality is how I look at things it's something that my grandfather went on about that it sounds weird to bring this up but he didn't give equal inheritance to his children so he had five children and he decided to give different amounts to different children because he didn't believe that my father needed anything he didn't give him anything and that's fine because he didn't need anything and the same thing applies in our business where it doesn't matter how bumpy or how uneven the container is the water looks even on the surface so somebody might need more training they get more training somebody doesn't need it they don't need it so they don't get it so it's not that I'm being prejudiced towards this man versus this girl or anything like that so that's how I've always looked at it's not equality, it's equity that's my bread training or diversity principle and I have to be extra conscious because people can make judgments about it Thank you for sharing that just to top it actually this hasn't been pre-planned this question but while we're on the subject of women speaker panels this has been fantastic this conference it's been an equal number of women and men speakers which I think has been fantastic and this is kind of to everybody do you actively put yourselves forward for speaking opportunities like this or is this something that you still struggle and hold yourself back from? I'm just nervous that's why I don't put my name forward once I'm sitting with if I'm sitting and everybody else is sitting that's fine if I have to stand and everybody else is sitting that's not good for me but that's nothing to do with man and woman that's just I think I'm just nervous What about you Meg? For me it's about well facing challenges and pushing the boat out and also if you're out there and you're in front of people you're representing your passion in your company and what you're all about and that's never a bad thing because you want to raise awareness and you want people to know about you and to have heard about you and so yeah my business partner and myself we both try and put ourselves forward when we think we would be a good fit in whatever event or conference whether large or small and I think I've mentioned this to a couple of people here but I've put myself forward to speak at the next Brighton SEO conference which is seriously scary and I'm really nervous about it and it is a massive challenge for me personally and also professionally too and I've been planning it for months and months and months and it's one of those things that you kind of think I can do it, it's scary but I'm going to challenge myself and I'm going to do it because it's for the benefit of my company at the end of the day and also on the note about female speakers I think in particular at tech conferences tech type of conferences and at Brighton SEO for example it's great I think it's fantastic to see women up here speaking and representing what they love and what they do and what they love and their passions Thank you I don't mind speaking but I get really nervous making small talk and asking questions that I didn't know I was going to be asked Sorry Louise, pressure One of the reasons I was happy to do this and I like the word camps is actually it's a really nice friendly place to do it as well and for good or bad there's not going to be any clients probably watching this unless we share the video with them so from that point of view it's fine and it's good to practice In terms of generally I do a lot of networking and I have a very specific strategy so I'll always be in a bright jacket because I know all the blokes will be in grey suits or hoodies I try to check the cricket score I know the ashes have started I don't know what the score is at the moment but I will make sure I know what's going on with the cricket, the rugby and the football and I try to read a newspaper to make sure I can make small talk about stuff because actually to get into a conversation with a group of men if you can know something about sport or cars or something that usually helps We've got five minutes left Marika I really put myself forward I think I always hope even if my talk isn't that good and I hope there's somewhere in the audience there's women sitting there and thinking I can do that better than she does and maybe then gets up but from the moment I got my daughter she's eight years old now I have three sons and one daughter I want her to grow up in a place in which people are exactly the same and we need more females on stage in order to make that happen and even if your talk is really bad then somebody thinks I can do better and that's great so you always have something there I love that attitude, thank you we've probably got four minutes left now so just open it up to any last questions from the audience yes we've got one there, thank you Thank you so much for speaking at the conference this weekend if there's anything in particular that tech conference organisers can do better to start encouraging more women to apply to speak or to even attend that's a good question I know but in the raising questions we can have if a woman asks the first question research shown that more women will follow but I'm going to play with that but I'm not going to say in which word because but that could be like a simple solution to get a woman well, she knows I'm going to ask the first question and then other people will follow and as far as applying I think asking I think a lot of women are afraid to apply so if you ask them then they may they will and then if you reject them you should let them know this is a personal thing but if you ask someone and then they apply that could be like a boundary and you could be like oh no I'm not going to do this but then you should let them know that's something that word camp organisers sometimes forget to do That's really important feedback absolutely I think you guys are doing really well I get approached almost every other word camp and I freak out there has been a point when he didn't get an opportunity because they wanted a brown woman on the stage which I felt was reverse of that's when I say I don't like positive discrimination and I want to be here for my credit not because of positive discrimination that's the way I look at it so I do understand you want more women here and yes you should approach them but don't refuse the ones that want to be here they might have something important to say I hope that answers your question thank you, is there any other questions just while we think we've got like two minutes left your questions is one there I just want to address it interested if you had a view on, I've worked for companies before where mothers as soon as they have children they're kind of treated very differently almost like you said that they're seen as being working less or going home in the child circle picking up from school and I just wanted an experience you've got for children which is amazing and a partner how do you think we can shift attitudes in the businesses towards mothers so when I got my first child he's 12 now I got my first child very young I was totally treated differently but I was working at the university now and then it was over so I had my PhD and I finished my PhD because I became a mother I wasn't in for my what do you call them promoters I wasn't interested anymore because I couldn't work full time anymore I didn't want to work full time we take care of it at Joes but that's because I have children myself we have four children so we understand how to work with that but I think a lot of employers tend to have like a bias against women who have children or women in the age of maybe getting children and that's hard and I don't know what we can do about it women will always get children I hope so because otherwise we don't have people anymore Thank you I think that's all the time that we've got I believe Have we got any more time? We've got one more minute Is there any more questions? Yes, if they ask for any breaks for anything the default answer has to be yes find out what happened later it's fine when a woman with a child or a father with a child either way when they say I need to go and you know they have a child let them go they will respect you and come and tell you what has happened later I think that's the policy that any employer should adopt and then I think that gains trust and people don't take they don't take the mickey they come back and tell you what happened I think if you can be a really good employer and I've got a 19 year old and 21 year old and there have been occasions where I've literally had to just walk out the office and say clear my diary for the rest of the day I think if you can be a good employer to your employees in that sort of situation you will get a good employer staying longer you will get great retention you will get great loyalty and actually all the companies that aren't that works in my favour because people won't be moving to them Fenina made a really good point it's about the fathers too so just let I am the secretary Yoast is forgotten that he is the father he is at home exactly the same amount of time as I am but still everybody thinks that I raised the children that I decided to get four children we did that together so fathers should be allowed to get out as well and that's something that's at least in the Netherlands isn't that normal so maybe the solution is with fathers at least as well thank you are we done now thank you so much everyone we're out of time