 All right. Hello, everybody. For those who don't know me, my name is Julien, and well, I'm the organizer of this. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Let me skip this slide. So, yep. So, well, what we do at Women with Code, right? We are a meet-up group, essentially, and what we want to do is we want to help women in the industry basically excel in your technology careers. Right? That's what we do, and we want to be able to network with each other in sessions such as this so that you know more like-minded people out there, and you can discuss, you know, all the issues that we can't discuss with guys at work, of course. Right? So, we have not just our meet-up group, but we also have a website as well. Our email address is there. If you have any questions you want to ask us about, we have a Facebook group, we have a Slack, and of course, we also have a mailing list. We haven't broadcasted that recently, but we do have a mailing list, and I tend to do an email telling you about events such as this. Yeah? Some of you have got the invitation through the mailing list. And yeah, we also do events such as this, and we are always on the lookout for speakers because we would like to encourage more speakers to step up and speak. So, if you would like to do a session with us, whether it's you want to do your own panel, feel free to approach us as well, or if you want to do your own workshop or give a talk on a certain topic, feel free to let us know, and we'll organize everything for you. And thank you to Facebook. This is our Facebook page, so do join us. So, it's pretty fun. I always put out interesting information that some of you might like to know about on there as well. So, yeah. And in preparation for our CONNECT conference, so this year in August, the 31st of August, we are doing a women's code CONNECT Asia. This will be the first one of its kind tech conference in Asia, and our goal is to make sure that we have more female speakers than men. So, if any of you have ever been to a tech conference, one of the biggest problems is there's no female speakers, or not enough of them. So, our goal, if we can get more female speakers than men, we have reached our goal, we have shown that we can speak. It doesn't have to be a guy. So, do submit a proposal for the women's code CONNECT Asia. It's on the 31st of August. It's a Saturday. It will be fun to come down. All right. And if you're a speaker, you get a free ticket. It will be happening in Singapore. Yeah, it will be in Singapore. And we have organizers from these five different countries, basically the five different cities in Asia. We are collaborating together to make this happen in Singapore. So, the first one here. Next year, we might have it in Kuala Lumpur. But, you know, this year, it's in Singapore. So, make the best of this chance that we're doing it in Singapore. Submit the CFP. That would be great. Great stuff. All right. Okay. Yep. So, just to recap a bit, in the past two years, we have already, we have organized quite a number of events in the past two years. I think we have hit more than 100 sessions, made up sessions. And that's really great. That was really cool. So, round of applause for everybody. That is great. And we have lots of different sessions. We have the hackathon last year, of course. Yeah. Speaker sessions, workshops, panels, all these, and these are great stuff. See if you can catch yourself in any of these photos. Yeah. Shemin Nisa has went and now she's working in New York. Huijing is an organizer of JSConf. Lydia is still a director at KL. So, again, just to remind everybody, we are doing this on the 31st of August. Submit a CFP. And hopefully, through the panel session tonight, you'll learn more about being a speaker and you'll step up. So, if you want, feel free to, you know, do a try-around on any one of our meet-ups if you don't want to jump straight to a tech conference. You know, just do a meet-up with us first. And then you can do it on the tech conference. Right? We'll be your guinea pig. We want to thank Facebook for doing this for us, for collaborating and organizing such a great event, celebrating IWD. And Kailah, she'll give a few words about Facebook. Thank you. Hi. Good evening, ladies. And happy International Women's Day. Yeah, right. So, I have a question. How many of you it's your first time at Facebook today? First time ever. Wow. Okay. We need to do more of this. How many of you it's your first time celebrating International Women's Day? Of course, right? Okay, some people, yes. Okay, great first experience. How many of you came here for the food, to be honest? The donut wall was amazing. Okay, I see hands going out of the back. Regardless of why you came, we're so happy you're here and we're so, so honored and so happy that we can, you know, really host this event today. So, I just wanted to quickly share a little bit about, you know, what we do and who I am. So, my name is Kailah. I lead diversity programs at Facebook. Aside from my day job, I am also a co-lead for community partnerships with our Women at Facebook network. So, you can tell I'm big on community. I love community. And I think it's so important that all of us come together in one place where, you know, we can make each other stronger and together, we really are stronger together. So, Facebook as a company, like, why are we doing this today? Why do we want to host Women Who Code? We love community. And to be honest, like, today I had like three events in the other building. If you follow our Facebook Live Instagram page, you will see we've been hosting events with Linan, he for she. And today, right now, we have Women Who Code. And this is our mission. Our mission is very simple. We want to bring the world closer together. We want to give people, you guys, you ladies, the power to build community. And that's important to us as a company. And so today, you know, we're so happy to host you all of you here. And we hope that through this community of Women Who Code, we'll all be stronger together. Thank you. So, without further ado, let me introduce our amazing panel to please come up and get in. You can take it. Yeah. Welcome. Great stuff. Okay. All right. So, thank you. If you can find your name, if you can sit accordingly, that would be best. So if Vanessa can sit. So that Vanessa, you have to sit here. We don't have enough seats. Oh, that's okay. Then I'll sit on the side. I'll sit here. That's great. So I think we'll have it more or less. Okay. Thank you. Great stuff. All right. We have Vanessa. So, I think you guys can read. Vanessa, Rampreet, Aditi, Vin, Amanda, and Samana. These are great, great, great panellists we have. All right. Yeah, I think, yeah, the names, you can read the names quite okay. Lovely. Great stuff. So first off, we are doing this panel to basically tell your experience about speaking at the Women Who Code session and also your experience speaking in general. And hopefully some of these girls can gain some of the insights from you and maybe even speak soon. So very quickly, do you mind basically tell us a little bit about how you started speaking for Women Who Code? So I run a non-profit called Exile Alliance and also the virtual reality women group in Asia. And I like to get more women in tech into virtual reality and I hear a lot of women saying, oh, it's really hard to learn new technologies. But I say, you know, why don't you just start somewhere, come and join our meetups. And Eulina has been great as well, building this community here. And she's been persuading me to talk about Webbexar. So, and that's how I got started. Hi, I'm Rampreet. I took a break from work in 2017 and I got to know about this meetup in my inbox. And I came to meet, I saw a group of ladies building a mobile app. I found it to be inspiring and that's how I developed my interest in joining this. And I did two sessions. One was on Scrum and the other was on Git. Very helpful. I'm great to be part of this community. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Hi, my name is Aditi. I actually started becoming part of Women Who Code. I met Eulina actually at one of the events where there were like nine to ten year olds trying to learn Python. Like they were really little girls and like I saw them code. I saw the kind of the passion they had to understand what was going on with an integer and a variable. And that kind of told me that, you know, there's just so many people who want to learn when they're so young. And like some of them were telling me that, you know, they're still told that it's probably, you know, science is not for them or it might be too hard and, you know, things like that which I thought was very, very shocking. And I thought if I can, you know, go tell them that it's okay. They can try it out for themselves and see if that's what they like and go ahead. I think that would mean a lot to me. So that's how I got here and, yeah, did a talk. Hi, my name is Bin. And I started to code because I started to speak because Eulina asked me to. Yeah. So honestly, like I think it was like, I think last year there's another Facebook event that is called Powerful Woman in Tech. And then that's where I met Eulina. And then I was showing her, like, oh, I really interested in like animation in CSS and stuff and show her what I'm doing. And then she was like, oh, do you want to speak about CSS? And then I was like, oh, I'm very uncomfortable about doing it anyway because I want to grow. So that's why I started on this journey. For me, it's like a growth journey. And I do encourage y'all if she ever asks you or if you just approach her to, you know, speak up, it would be great. Hi, Amanda. So I was just talking to Bin and Leon. I said the same thing. I just say yes to you. No, but so I was, I did a talk about cloud technology. So I'm basically working a lot of, I was working towards my solution architecture for AWS. So I thought it was a good way to kind of revise and go through. Because once you speak out to the public, you kind of go through all the things you have in your, mentally. You don't even need to refer to your notes that much. You have, you know it inside and out. So that was a good way to get that experience. My name is Samana. I am a mobile developer. I met Yulien in one of the social coding session. And I like the whole concept of that they're open to people from different backgrounds to learn. And they want more people to hold some workshops. So I approached her and shared my interest that I wanted to share my knowledge with people. And we held together and she helped me for the first IOS workshop for women who can code. Lovely. Great stuff. Great stuff. Thank you. What is it for each of you? I think some of you have a different incentive to become a speaker. Any of you have something different? Okay. I can go. I think one of the things when I started speaking publicly, I realized that it's a very difficult experience. It makes you quite nervous. And I think at that point you can make a call as to whether you're not going to do it because it's harder because you feel like that or you can take it the other way. Now I think about it because I'm nervous that means I'm doing something challenging and something important. So I'm like, okay, you know what? I want to do it because it's just harder than not doing it. So I think that's kind of how I'd get into this and try and come out and share my ideas. And any different reason you're speaking? So I just came back from a conference as well. So I think at least there's really interesting career advice from this Trisha from JetBrains. A lot of people talk about being 10 times programmers. You'll be rock star developers and stuff. But if you really want to skill your skills, you have to share them. So I think if you're speaking and sharing with other people, that's actually one step towards helping your team grow bigger, your company grow bigger and the community grow bigger as well. To me I feel that writing, I have a writer's mind. But I also find that as I started learning, I find speaking is a good outlet for me to reinforce what I'm learning and sharing out to the industry as well. And the best things is so I get to meet like-minded people and to me growing my network, to find mentors as well as well as help others, that's the motivation for me. Great stuff. So how much time do you spend preparing for a workshop? Depend on what kind of a workshop it is. If it's more like a deep tech which you're not really familiar with, then you have to gain and research or have enough knowledge that you can speak. And if something that you are very strong in it, then I think lesser times. Depend on the topic you have chosen or what kind of a workshop it is, you have to prepare accordingly. Anybody interested to know a ballpark figure on how long they spend preparing for a workshop? No? Okay, I can say that I spend 27 years. Because I mean like for me right, knowledge is something that you build years upon years. And like once you get familiar with it right, any moment you have to come out. So I think that like for me, I build my knowledge, I really study my stuff and like I make sure that I know I understand it well. But then to be honest, to prepare for a workshop, I think it will be about 2-3 weeks. Yeah, I think to Ben's point, I usually take up topics which I have hands-on experience on. So it takes for me around 4-5 hours over a couple of weeks. So that is a ballpark figure I think. Thank you. I seem to be the outlier. Maybe I'm just too busy at work. I think I spend about the weekend before at least a couple of days. I think that's bare minimum because you need to go through all your material and stuff. Is there a difference like doing a talk or a workshop? I think workshop is a bit different because you have to kind of prepare your, make sure the materials that people are participating, they actually understand as well. Whereas in a talk, it's still more of a one-to-many, whereas in a workshop you're working back and forth. So I think a workshop definitely takes a lot more time than a talk. Well for me, when I do an industry talk about the virtual reality trends, it takes me about one month to actually go through all the points for the 20 overslides or so. That's really interesting. So through your experience being a speaker, is there a lot of difference, any of you find a lot of difference giving a talk, other than what you have spoken and what was the one thing that surprises you, whether given it's a talk or a workshop, something that you've never talked about before being a speaker? I think one thing that when I didn't used to do that much public speaking was I used to get a lot of advice, like you should try to be confident, you should try to say the right things and maybe crack a few things that would help lighten the atmosphere. But I think one thing that surprised me was people like to see you yourself, like they connect with you the most while you're talking or whatever you're sharing when you're just being yourself and just sharing the thoughts that they want to listen, but at the same time understanding where they're coming from and then sharing those ideas that way. So I think that was quite surprising for me that it's not so much about the confidence or not even about the highly technical content, it's about understanding the audience once and just being honest about it. For me it was learning that it is not just what I share, there is a big learning that I get out of these sessions. So when I did the session on Scrum there was a QA session whereby many participants shared the challenges they face in adopting Scrum. So that kind of insights enriched me and I took them back to my work and that really helped me. For me the fact that I get chosen to be in front of people actually is a surprise by itself to be honest because when I go for a meeting when I go for talk and I see all this lady, all this speaker that is up there and I was like wow, never be there. And then just one day out in the world I'm just an ordinary person but then ask me oh do you want to do it or not and I decided to set up the comfort zone and I realised that the first time is scary but the second time the third time it was better. So yeah. I feel that as you start speaking if you do the first time and you continue at it, it might be really daunting but you find that you start to lead projects better as well as the industry and again you get to meet like minor people. So what was the one biggest challenge you have to overcome to be a speaker? I think when you were having your first workshop then it's a bit difficult. You can say you get more nervous and you think okay whether I would be able to communicate and share my knowledge in a very simpler way because this woman of quit is open for all. So the first initial challenge which I thought that I'd need to be very simple so that even a person who doesn't belong to a tech background can understand and can build that project with me. So I was nervous initially and when I had the experience of them then it was easy. I think for me again it's always a nervous speaking habit I think. Actually I did especially when you were asking I was like okay it's just a crowd of strangers maybe I'll never see any of you at me again and it's fine but I do see a lot of you today so I think it's at least that's helping as well. Then after I gave the talk I actually went back to my office and said okay I told my boss actually I did do a talk the other day and then I actually did show my colleagues and I said my boss was like oh so why didn't you like show in front of us before that because I was still really nervous about it so but it helped a lot as Ben was saying and you know just practice and then you get the injections, foreign booster shots I think it's really brave of all of you just to do the first step and do your first speech. That's great stuff I feel that women who quotes meetups and events are fantastic because you actually learn something concrete and not just talk about you know what the issues or challenges but you're building something so it's fantastic community Thank you. Okay so from this right do you gain anything from being a speaker any you know opportunities that come your way just because you have spoken in public? We usually don't get paid. Yeah I think like you know from doing this right I get to reinforce my like I need to understand before I work prepare for the workshop right before I come for the workshop I make sure to understand the concept well and while I'm doing that right I learn more and I become more confident I can defend my points I get more respect I get more credibility so it out into like you know when I go for interview for clients project for example then when I go for those kind of interview I'm more confident I have I have things to show them like instead of saying like oh I know CSS I know Angular I know React I tell them that oh I conduct a workshop in this in that yeah so in in doing all that right I think like it's beneficial for me to grow as you know to grow into like into the role that I wanted yeah. Okay definitely it gave me a lot of visibility through speaking in women who can code now I'm more confident I whenever I'm you know in a way it has helped me throughout my startup journey and throughout the meeting different people and plus when you are holding a workshop I've realized that you learn from people who are making or with you in that journey a lot then it seems like you're teaching them something but you learn from them a lot that okay this thing I need to work on it from their questions and stuff so it keeps you motivated. I also feel that as women start to speak at the technical events or industry events you again get to build the credibility and you get to also build a career and rise up in management senior rank positions and I think we need more women in management levels especially technical women I see a lot of social media experts coming to the industry and saying that you know this is what industry is about but I think we really really need technical women out there. So let's see what is the one thing you wish you had known before you have spoken before you know you become a speaker one thing you should know and you wish you have known I think one thing that I wish I had known before I went and spoke was like when I was preparing for my material I thought like I have to be the know everything about the topic that I'm presenting or I have to be the smartest in the room about the domain that I am or I should know everything about you know whatever I'm presenting because it could be that they ask me something and then I'm like okay you know maybe I have to check but I think one thing I've realized is that probably that's not needed like we are all here to learn and I'm just presenting an idea and as everyone said that during the event we realized from the questions that there's so much more to do so I think one of the things I wish I knew was that I don't have to self over understanding everything about the domain that I'm presenting like it's a matter of being in the same room sharing ideas and then just learning from each other so I think a lot of people don't take it because they're like okay if I'm the speaker I'm the center of attention like I should know everything about what I'm presenting so I think that was something that we don't need to know so I agree with what she just said I had the same fear that unless I mean how can I become a public speaker if I'm not expert in a particular topic but think about it when you want to learn a new topic you don't know that topic at an expert level now I have knowledge about Java but if there is a session on let's say python what is my aim my aim is to maybe bring myself up from zero to let's say five to six level out of ten so the speaker doesn't need to be expert but rather the speaker should have the ability to bring the audience from zero to let's say five or six average level so that was a surprising thing I learned through this definitely I agree exactly to you ladies I wish I would be would have been less fearful and thought that okay I should not be less hard on myself that it's gonna be fine and so so one thing I learned is I wish I should have done this much earlier like ten years ago so it's never too late to start start now so it's stuff that you know to learn that it doesn't have to be stressful at all it's no such thing as perfection and definitely no such as perfect speaker alright any advice you have for the floor for the members I kind of anticipated this question I would say one of the things would be that just start small like I think for me I started with just doing like a presentation for my team just telling them you know that I've been reading about this thing outside of work like I would just like to share get your opinion on what you feel about it so I think it's good to start somewhere for me it helped that I shared it with the people I knew and like felt a lot more comfortable so I think start somewhere and the other thing I would say is that just try it out you might feel it's not for you or you feel quite nervous but again like when you are in that uncomfortable zone is where you will try to push yourself and become a better version of yourself so I think just keep that in mind that it's okay to be nervous and just still do it I think that don't have any mental barrier or stuff like you know if you don't have a certain scale or certain experience if you want to learn something I think women of good good is the best opportunity it gives you it's open for all anybody from any point of time they are in life they can start doing and pursuing and do the stuff they want to do yeah for me it would just do it because I remember like the Virgin Airlines CEO he actually say like even if you don't know how to do it if the person present to you the opportunity just take it and figure it out yeah it's actually today before I joined this when really asked me I would never do a panel before it's so scary and all the ladies are like so high up there and so established what I'm going to do yeah but then I decided like okay I've just got to commit to it first and then I'll figure out later so maybe you can do the same thing as well yeah alright one last question before we open for Q&A right what is any of these what is the best question you ever answered in a Q&A or the worst question you have ever gotten in a Q&A I think one of the best questions that I've been asked is like you know where can I start and I think that is very good because it gives the audience as well as the person who asked the question the ability to know that you know you can start at anywhere whether it's a technical concept so I remember like I was talking about building a chatbot for one of my talks and like the person stood up and she's like okay I've only played with chatbots like you know where can I start and I think that question really helps because it that's in the minds of a lot of people who are there in the audience like okay you know you're presenting this technical concept to me sounds good like but where do I start so I think that was something that I thought was good for me to share my experience and also make the audience feel like you know sometimes the concepts we're discussing might be very technical you might not have knowledge about it but there are places you can begin and start your journey so I think that for me is like one of the best questions to get the audience to feel like we all can do it okay so I guess when you work on a lot of cloud stuff and then you hear the marketing people will be like oh you know it's just a few lines of code you can just put in there and then you run and then it will work so someone was asking me so I think they were asking something like is it really or is it really so simple as that much code so I had to I mean it is sometimes it is as easy as that much code but you always have to remember your building on top for other people's work layers on layers and layers you're just as long as you do something new you're adding to the knowledge around us as well and then we can all be on that as well yeah I think that's a pretty good question I think I have a question once before when I'm on stage and somebody come back come out to me when I'm off the stage and say who do you think you are to you know lead industry or say these things about the industry and say well I think I'm able to do it why can't you know women do it it doesn't matter I mean and sometimes it's also really because it's International Women's Day I never really reflected how it actually affected me being a woman I thought that it's just usual go out and do things but I do think subconsciously how people perceive me on stage as a woman and I didn't know how much actually whether I can be myself humorous or being a professional setting how would they perceive me so that's always in the back of my mind so that's been a challenge for some times too so for the sessions I did I want to thank everyone who asked the questions because there isn't one single best question it's the discussion that stimulates further discussion and some questions that I may not personally like are the questions for which I didn't have the answer because that was a pivotal point from me becoming a speaker sharing my knowledge to become someone who knows who becomes more self aware and knows the gaps in the knowledge and can go and get better about them yeah that's great stuff alright any questions from the floor if you wanted to have a question thank you very much for sharing all this it was really interesting to know how you find a topic to talk about because personally I quite like doing talks or I would like to do more talks but then I don't really know what to talk about so yeah how do you find a topic I think initially start with something which is you are interested in which you are passionate about it for starting in my opinion you should do something which you think you are good at and you have knowledge of it and you're passionate about speaking about that topic so something is related to the area of your interest maybe I'm not sure it's each to everyone one thing I can really suggest if you are passionate about a particular charity to volunteer your time speaking about that course and that actually when you have the passion lead you it actually makes it easier to think about what to talk about and yeah be out there speaking about it also thank you for sharing your knowledge I have a question do you have any tips how is to encourage your audience like sometimes do you feel like audience is boring what should I do what should I do all the time yeah it's really challenging I would say yes it's not just a crack jokes and people have poker faces right so very interesting session that I did actually at Facebook itself where the audience was a bit too diverse it was just very diverse and the three speaker sessions during that session was one on mobile one on web and mine I was talking about data science and agile so and most of the audience they were not from the same field some are web developers some are backend developers a few data scientists some practice agile maybe not and when I asked the question on you know who's actually practicing agile or who's a data scientist like maybe two or three hands popped up and that was scary for me I was like what what am I doing here right but so I just plowed through the talk basically just went through it because I realized that you know not everybody is going to be interested in listening to the talk itself I just plowed through it but surprisingly after the talk a few of the people actually approached me and said oh they really appreciate that I actually given the talk and that was quite surprising for me so it doesn't really matter whether or not your audience look bored actually you'll be surprised they are actually quite attentive yeah I think one of the things that I would generally do like if I feel like I'm losing my audience or probably I'm either going too fast or too slow or maybe I'm just being too technical for the audience or maybe less technical because that's also a challenge right like people who are already in the industry might find like okay that's just touching on the surface like I could have found that on Google like so I think you kind of have to gauge the pulse of the audience as well sometimes I would just ask some questions like how she was talking about like maybe just like what's your experience level just so that they feel like okay you know the fact that they're there that's being accounted for so yeah just take a pause just ask some questions or maybe for one of the smaller events I even took it to the place where you can just ask them to stand up and maybe you know introduce themselves and then take it from there and make it more of a discussion rather than just me talking so I think there are various ways to do it it really depends on the audience as well like for such a crowd it might be very hard to do it like if you guys are disinterested but it would get easier if it's a smaller crowd so I think you really have to gauge it like asking them some questions understanding their experience level and also maybe I think something that usually works is that if I have some videos or demos to show then I'll just bring them up early on like in my earlier slides rather than me going through the theory or the approach I've taken to solve that problem I'll just bring up the solution up front so that people know okay so this is what she built okay now let's understand how she built it so sometimes you just have to maybe tweak it a little bit what you would have planned and yeah I guess that would be the way to go yeah so I do workshop right then like you know I try to be scary on social work down one round they'll check like oh you do already or not oh you do already or not yeah those kind of things I guess like finding out like how people are like what level they are and like are they doing the thing are they bought or not ask them question I think that would help yeah I think I didn't I haven't done any workshops but I've been workshop helpers and I think like you said I think it just helps to go around and make sure because don't really want to say they have a problem so it's easy to go online with them as well yeah same yeah be interactive go on and see everybody is able to produce and we'll be with you on the workshop so most of the tech topics can seem boring to people who are not from a technical background one trick that can help sometimes is to just prepare to have a bit of try to inject a bit of sense of humor if you can in the whole group I think that helps to sometimes awaken the audience yeah so I was also just telling them again about a non-technical background because I mean I do work in a non-technical company so they were doing some tech awareness and stuff like that so it was actually a really big crowd it was like very long room it's very hard to look around especially a setting and then I think a lot of it is like even if they are not of a tech background you kind of can still relate to their everyday life especially nowadays I mean everyone has a phone everyone has Facebook so you just kind of bring the concepts to them and I think it works very well with analogies and metaphors and just dry tech talk sometimes here Any other question? Hi, hello I have a question so my name is Sarah so thank you so much for sharing your views around public speaking I had a question also for Ye Lin also for the rest because she brought you guys onto the panel and asked some of you to become speakers what is your advice around how do you bring people around you to become more ready to speak I mean I don't want to force anyone but I've seen people around me who are really really good and I sit there a few times like oh you should totally speak at this thing and then they're always like no no I don't want and it's gone on for like a year but how do I get more people into the foe of getting into the action of speaking right how I do it you call you Lin I get them to commit to a date so I literally I just bring up my diary and say what about next week Thursday I think that works in life as well just you get people commit to a date I say oh yeah that's that's how about next next month you know next month you know we are not doing anything special in this particular week how about Thursday what better for you and I think one of the other things that I feel helps especially when she was asking me to speak at the event where she was like you have the ability to choose a topic so you can decide what you want to speak about you can decide how technical would it be like there were like really no constraints that I was working with so that was encouraging because if she was like okay we are looking for machine learning speakers only then I'm like okay you know I've done a bit of it but I don't know I'm eligible to speak about it so I think just letting people around you know that you know it's not about being really good at what you're going to speak or knowing you know again being an expert at it but just making them feel comfortable that people are there to hear you to just understand your perspective I think that helps the other thing that I really found pushed me to public speaking was watching a lot of tech talks like I was just amazed with how those people used to impart ideas and like I remember watching so many tech talks and feeling like wow like I've been influenced my life has been transformed after watching those and I feel like you know if I can do that to somebody that's really motivating for me so like if I'm able to convince someone or just have some sort of impact on their lives simply by presenting my idea I think that's a big motivator for me so just letting people know that it's free form you can choose what you want to speak about and also tell them that even the small amount of impact you can create can go a long way I think that really helps people ease out and you know volunteer themselves to speak up yeah I think it's also quite similar with all our experiences where the first talk is always the most daunting right so there's always our various different types of talks out there not just a full 30 minute talk with remote code but there's also lightning talks in a lot of tech conferences they do lightning talks as well and we might actually I might consider doing a lightning talk sessions where I can just grab as many sign ups as possible and I can talk for five minutes there's other meetups groups not just remote code there's junior deaf there's other talk CSS and I think they don't have one recently but they used to have a hack and tell session where you only talk for 10 minutes and you only have 10 minutes and you have to talk at 10 minutes so that's quite interesting as well so it doesn't have to be a full length talk yeah one of the other things I can remember is like I was asking someone to be a public speaker like just to share their ideas because I thought they were very interesting and then I just let him know that you know what like you finish your talk and then during the Q&A we both will be there and take the questions together because sometimes like they feel like you know maybe the Q&A section can be quite daunting okay what will the crowd ask me so I just made them feel better saying that okay we'll just take it together like we'll see as the questions come in like one of us can volunteer and you are also feel free just to tell them that you know I don't know and we can get back or something like that so that kind of gives them the comfort level okay because some people are like okay what can they ask me right so I think just being comfortable with saying I don't know is fine like you're not expected to know everything definitely you can always share a session basically saying I'm willing to do a cold talk with you think Charlotte had a similar experience talking interview with your colleague yeah hi to the panel and everybody here so actually I have my first big talk on Monday I'm delivering a talk at NTU as an alumnus and I'm actually looking for some advice so I am going to be addressing a crowd of about I think 300 people and I'm super nervous so I noticed that all of you here are from different tech backgrounds and different stages of your career it would be great if you could maybe share one advice each that I could carry home and pass it on to my audience when I deliver the talk so I'm addressing the school of triply undergrad and post-grad students so it could be some advice which just helps someone new someone fresh in their careers these are tech students yes okay that would be I would give you very stereotype advice but that works if you know whenever you're just following your passion if you're passionate about something you are interested in learning that and pursuing your career in that then even if you don't know few things you will be able to learn it and you will be able to enjoy and give up things or the things you love doing so definitely if you're passionate about doing technical stuff follow that but if you think you don't feel happy doing programming then don't do it no pressure I would say that probably if you're addressing like students one of the things that would be good would be to use some examples from your workplace if possible like maybe take it back to your experience you said you're an alumni and how you really felt maybe start there like because especially when we just graduate out and we are looking for opportunities there's a lot of you know apprehension and nervousness with where we'll get in what will happen to your careers and then just tell them that in the long term it wouldn't matter as much as you think it would like so I mean I guess just take it back to where they come from like just put yourself in their shoes like when I was thinking about today's event also I was like okay what if I had never spoken before and I was sitting in the crowd what would I want them to say like I don't want them to say that it's not for everyone or I don't want them to say that you need years of preparation till you can become a speaker right because that's going to be discouraging and that's not true either so I think it would be helpful if you can just visualize yourself as one member in the audience and imagine that if I had an alumni who was coming in to speak to me what would kind of made me feel good but at the same time get me well prepared for whatever I'm going to do next so I think that's usually how I decide what to cover really. Again no pressure. So I did a similar talk in a secondary school where I was sharing my thoughts on choosing a career in IT industry and it's surprising that many of the students they don't understand much about what technology is all about. So one thing that I example I gave them was about smart nations. Singapore is all set to become smart nation and there is a lot of videos and documentation on internet which talks about how the government plans to set up the sensors across the island, get the data, analyze that data and make smart decisions on that basis. So if you could somehow condense that in a few minutes and share with them I think it would help them. I think I can relate well to the student. When I'm still in my year 4 I still don't know what I'm going to do. I really don't know. Year 4, 7, 1 I was like oh am I going to be a developer, am I going to be a project manager, what am I going to do and then I guess at that time there is this module called IDP. So it's about phototyping and I realized I didn't even have to try. I'm good at it by natural. So I discovered where I want to go in the very last sem of my entire 4 years and I mean just maybe for them for me back then if somebody would have told me it's okay, you don't have it together, you don't figure it out, it's fine. Eventually you figure it out and maybe just ask them to stay open and hopeful that one day you'll find something that you really like. I guess I'll say something about maybe just go beyond your comfort zone. It's not necessary that you need to, if you're happy your comfort zone maybe, I mean that's fine. But the only way to grow is to move beyond it. If not you're just limiting yourself. I think 10 years ago if I was thinking oh I'll be staying where I am now but I mean as in I mostly regret the choice I don't make rather than as in even try for it. Letting those I actually did, I made the decision to go forward so I think that's one of the key lessons to learn. I think the ability to relate to people, the team the colleagues around you, it's super important. It's not just about studies and technology. I think during that period before they actually go into the industry they might not realize that this is one industry you have to keep learning after you graduate. Maybe they might appreciate knowing that up front. Any other questions? Hi, good evening. Thank you for these amazing ideas. I'm still a student myself but when I think about my home country and we're all about women in tech, I feel that there are a lot of smaller cities where a lot of girls don't have access to quality education maybe so they don't have somebody teaching them math or science with the right concepts. It's like being road learning or something. So they lose their passion and then it is anyways like the stereotype, the males domain. So I feel a lot of people with the aptitude are lost at a young stage. So how would you say engage in an audience of say young teenage girls who you know like I started liking science when I saw the Flintstones cartoon thinking that maybe I could build a future someday. But like in your opinion what could be a good way to gauge somebody's aptitude or interest so you can like help him further, her further and also like maybe get them interested or on board to you know explore sciences, maths or anything in tech further for a younger audience. Actually I can completely relate to you because I'm also from a third world country and they're very less access to women who wants to pursue even their career or studies but you're right because you know tech awareness is very important. You aware them about technology and conducting these sessions which can aware them that this is you know technology is how it's growing and then obviously they can be able to if they feel related to it or they want to do something like that. So awareness is very important because when I started my bachelor's I didn't know that this is something which is I'm really gonna pursue my life and something which is I'm passionate about it. So when I started then I realized that it is something which I wanted to do for my life. So I think awareness, creating such awareness campaigns and telling them that if they get excited about technology you can see there's some interest in them. Eventually people get to know that where they kind of feel more interested. Thank you for that. Sorry you okay. I think one thing that I've noticed that really helps and like I was just last weekend I was in an event called She Hacks where we had like 9 to 12 year olds girls who were trying to you know build something. It was a two day hackathon and I think one thing I realized is that the community helps a lot. So for young girls and even for us right like if we feel that we find people around us who want to do the same thing or who are in it like okay so let's build something together that really helps versus just one or two people doing it. So I think if you ever find someone who has the aptitude or at least even just wants to know like getting them in a community really helps. Like getting like at least like 9 to 10 of them together and giving them some problem to solve and then you know when they achieve it together I think that's when they feel okay yes this is not hard and not just that they feel like a sense of accomplishment. So I think that needs to happen early on believe that yes you can do it and at the same time have the interest in it because I think the reason people leave it is because either they find it okay either it's too difficult to understand or it's like okay you know sometimes you're like okay it's too much science like I can't really relate it to anything around me so I think for especially for little girls I think it's very important and boys like it's really important that you get them in a community where those people also want to you know hack out stuff try out stuff and it could be very simple things right but I think getting people around you who are similar minded would really help you push that through. So I feel like just getting a few of them together is the right way to go about it in my opinion. Thank you. I really want to thank everybody okay one last question. Go for it. As you were asking for the event so we used to organize an event for small girls in India so you don't focus on the learning just you know help them to be excited about the subject so we used to invite them to our college university and we used to ask from every department like chemistry physics to show some interesting experiments just to make them feel and then we will tell our stories that even we never did it before we never touched chemicals before when we came here we did it so it also really helped a lot them to be excited about the subjects and be confident that in the future they can also take these subjects as a career. So you can organize these one or two events and can ask them to come regularly or monthly to see some experiments those are doing. Great stuff. Thank you for sharing and thank the panel for sharing. Thank you very much. And feel free to approach the speakers and there are other speakers with the blue bags they have spoken before feel free to ask any of them about their experiences and just even if you want to ask more personal questions that's the time. And there's still food outside so feel free mingle around this is a time that we actually celebrate. It's International Women's Day everybody have fun. And last and not least after this session I expect every single one to submit a proposal. Don't just submit one submit as many as possible whatever project you have submit five proposals on all five projects. It will be great stuff. Great. Thank you.