 Everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of WIDS 2023. This is the eighth annual Women in Data Science Conference. As you know, WIDS is not just a conference or an event, it's a movement. This is going to include over 100,000 people in the next year with 2023 in 200 plus countries. It is such a powerful movement. If you've had a chance to be part of the live stream or even be here in person with us at Stanford University, you know what I'm talking about. This is Lisa Martin. I have had the pleasure all day of working with two fantastic graduate students in Stanford's Data Journalism Master's program. Hannah Freitag has been here, Tracy Zhang. Ladies, it's been such a pleasure working with you today. I want to ask you both what are, as we wrap the day, I'm so inspired. I feel like I could go build an airplane. Exactly. We can't, but WIDS is just the inspiration that comes from this event. When you walk in the front door, you can feel it. Tracy, talk a little bit about what some of the things are that you heard today that really inspired you. I think one of the key words that's in my mind right now is finding the mentor. And I think if I leave this conference, if I leave the talks, the conversations with one thing is that I'm very positive that if I want to switch, say someday from journalism to being a data analyst, to being in data science, I'm sure that there are great role models for me to look up to and I'm sure there are mentors who can guide me through the way. So, like that, I feel reassured for some reason. It's a good feeling, isn't it? What do you, Hannah, what about you? What's your takeaway so far of the day? Yeah, one of my key takeaways is that anything's possible. So if you have your vision, you have the role model, someone you look up to, and even if you have a different background, not in data science, data engineering, or computer science, but you're like, wow, this is really inspiring. I would love to do that. As long as you love it, you're passionate about it, and you're willing to take this path, even though it won't be easy, then you can achieve it. And as you said, Tracy, it's important to have mentors on the way there, but as long as you speak up, you raise your voice, you ask questions, and you're curious, you can make it. And I think that's one of my key takeaways, and it was just so inspiring to hear all these women speaking on stage and also here in our conversations learning about their career path and what they learned on their way. Yeah, you bring up curiosity, and I think that is such an important skill. You could think of data science and think about all the hard skills that you need. The coding. But as some of our guests said today, you don't have to be a statistician or an engineer or a developer to get into this. Data science applies to every facet of every part of the world. Finances, marketing, retail, manufacturing, healthcare, you name it, data science has the power and the potential to unlock massive achievements. It's like we're scratching the surface. But that curiosity, I think, is a great skill to bring to anything that you do. And I think for the female leaders that were on stage and that we had a chance to talk to you on theCUBE today, I think they all probably had that, I think as a common denominator. That curious mindset. And also, something that I think is hard is the courage to raise your hand. I like this. I'm interested in this. I don't see anybody that looks like me, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't do it. Exactly, in addition to the curiosity that all the women bring to the table is that, in addition to that, being optimistic. And even though we don't see gender equality or like general equality in companies yet, we make progress and we're optimistic about it and we're not negative and complaining the whole time. But this positive attitude towards a trend that is going in the right direction and even though there's still a lot to be done, we're moving it that way and being optimistic about this. Yeah, exactly. Even if it means that it's hard, even if it means you need to be your own role model, it's still worth a try. And I think all of the great women speakers, all of the female leaders, they all have that in them. They have the courage to raise their hand and be like, I want to do this and I'm going to make it. And they're role models right now, so. Absolutely, they have drive. They do, definitely. They have that ambition to take something that's challenging and complicated and help abstract end users from that. Like we were talking into it. I use into it in my small business for financial management. And she was talking about how they can, from machine learning standpoint, pull all this data off of documents that you upload and make that, abstract that, all that complexity from the end user, make something that's painful, taxes, maybe slightly less painful. It's still painful when you have to go, I have to write you a check again. Okay, but talking about just all of the different applications of data science in the world, I found that to be very inspiring and really eye-opening. I hadn't thought about, we talk about climate change all the time, especially here in California. But I never thought about data science as a facilitator of the experts being able to make sense of what's going on historically and in real time, or the application of data science and police violence. We see far too many cases of police violence on the news. It's an epidemic that's a horrible problem. Data science can be applied to that to help us learn from that and hopefully start moving the needle in the right direction. Absolutely. And especially like one sentence from Gayatri from the very beginnings I still have in my mind is that when she said that arguments, no, that data beats arguments in a conversation that if you be like, okay, I have this data set and it can actually show you this or that. It's much more powerful than just like being, okay, this is my position or opinion on this. And I think in a world where we're increasing like misinformation and sometimes censorship as we heard in one of the talks, it's so important to have like data and reliable data but also acknowledge and we talked about it with one of our interviewees that there's biases in data and we also need to be aware of this and how to move this forward and use data science for social good. Yeah, for social good. Yeah, definitely. I think data and the question about or like the problem solving part about like the social issues or like some just questions they definitely go hand in hand. Like either of them standing alone won't be anything that's going to be having an impact but combining them together, you have a data set that illustrates a point or like solves a problem. I think yeah, that's definitely like where data set science is headed to. And I'm glad to see all these great women like making their impact and combining those two aspects together. It was interesting in the keynote this morning we were all there when Margo Garrison who's one of the founders of WIDS and Margo's been on the program before and she's a huge supporter of what we do in vice versa. She asked the non-women in the room those who identify as women stand up and there was a handful of men and she said that's what it's like to be a female in technology. Oh my God. And I thought that vision, give me goosebumps. That's so powerful. Very powerful, but she's right. And one of the things I think that thematically another common denominator that I think we heard I want to get your opinions as well from our conversations today is the importance of community. You know, I was mentioning this stuff from AnitaB.org that showed that in 2022 the percentage of females in technical roles was 27.6%. It's a little bit of an increase it's been hovering around 25% for a while but one of the things that's still a problem is attrition it doubled last year. And I was asking some of the guests and we've all done that today how would you advise companies to start moving the needle down on attrition? And I think the common theme was network community. It takes a village like this so you can see what you can be to help start moving that needle. And that's I think what underscores the value of what WIDS delivers and what we're able to showcase on theCUBE. Yeah, I think it's just very important to like if you're like a woman in tech to be able to know that there's someone for you that there's a whole community you can rely on and that like you are, you have the same mindset you're working towards the same goal and it's just reassuring and it feels very nice and warm to have all these women for you. It's definitely a warm fuzzy, isn't it? Yeah, and both the community within the workplace but also outside, like a network of family and friends who support you to pursue your career goals. I think that was also a common theme we heard that it's necessary to both have your community within your company or organization you're working but also outside. I think that's also like how the reason why we feel like this at WIDS, like I think we all very feel very positive right now. So yeah, I think that's the power of the connection and the community. Yeah. And the nice thing is this is like I said, WIDS is a movement. This is global. We've had some WIDS ambassadors on the program who started WIDS and Tel Aviv for example and they're small communities or in Singapore and Mumbai that are bringing it here and becoming more of a visible part of the community. I loved seeing all the young faces when we walked in the keynote this morning. We come here from a journalistic perspective. You guys are journalism students but seeing all the potential in the faces in that room just seeing and hearing stories and starting to make tangible connections between Facebook and data and the end user and the perspectives and the privacy and the responsibility of AI is all, they're all positive messages that need to be reinforced and we need to have more platforms like this to be able to not just raise awareness but sustain it. Exactly. Right? It's about the long term. It's about how do we dial down that attrition? What can we do? What can we do? How can we help? Yeah, both awareness but also giving women like a place where they can connect, you know, outside of conferences. Okay, how do we make this like a long term thing? I think WIDS is a great way to, you know, encourage this connectivity and these women teaming up. Girls help girls. It's true. There's a lot of organizations out there, Girls Who Code, Girls Inc, et cetera, that are all aimed at helping women kind of find their, I think, kind of find their voice and find that curiosity. Unlock that somewhere back there. Get some courage to raise your hand and say, I think I want to do this. Or I have a question. You explained something and I didn't understand it. That's the advice I would always give to my younger self is never be afraid to raise your hand in a meeting. I guarantee you, half the people weren't listening and the other half may not have understood what was being talked about. So raise your hand. There goes Margot Garrison, the founder of WIDS. Hi Margot. Keep alumni as you know. Raise your hand, ask the question. There's no question that's stupid. And I promise you, if you just take that chance once, it will open up so many doors you won't even, you won't even know which door to go in because there's so many that are opening. And if you have the question, there's at least one more person in the room. Totally, same question. We'll definitely keep that in mind as students. Well, I'm curious how data journalism, what you heard today, Tracy, we'll start with you and then Hannah, to you. How has it influenced how you approach data driven and storytelling? Has it inspired you? I imagine it has or has it given you any new ideas for as you round out your master's program in the next few months? I think one keyword that I found really helpful from all the conversation today was problem solving. Because I think we talked a lot about in our program about how to put a face on data sets. How to put a face, put a name on a story that's coming from big data, a lot of numbers, but you need to narrow it down to one person or one anecdote that represents a bigger problem. And I think essentially that's problem solving. That's like there is a community, there is like say maybe even just one person who has some problem about something and then we're using data, we're by giving them a voice, by portraying them in news and representing them in the media, we're solving this problem somehow. We're at least trying to solve this problem, trying to make some impact. And I think that's what data science is about is problem solving. And yeah, I think I heard a lot from today's conversation, also today's speakers. So yeah, I think that's like something we should also think about as journalists when we do pitches or what kind of problem are we solving? We're like kind of what community are we trying to make an impact in? Yes. Absolutely. Yeah, I think one of the main learnings for me that I want to apply to my career in data journalism is that I don't shadowware from complexity. Because data science is often times very complex topic. And also data you're using for your stories is complex. So how can we on the one hand reduce complexity in a way that we make it accessible for a broader audience? Because we don't want to be this like tech bubble talking in data jargon. We want to make it accessible for a broader audience. I think that's like my purpose as a data journalist. But at the same time, don't reduce complexity when it's needed, you know? And be open to dive into new topics and data sets and circling back to this of like raising your hand and asking questions if you don't understanding like a certain part. So that's definitely a main learning from this conference that people are willing to talk to you and explain complex topics. And this will definitely facilitate your work as a data journalist. So that inspired me. Well, I can't wait to see where you guys go from here. I've loved co-hosting with you today. Thank you for joining me at the helm. Thank you. It's a great event. I think we've all been very inspired. And I'm going to leave here probably floating above the ground a few inches high on the inspiration of why this community can deliver. Isn't that great? It feels great. I don't know. I just feel great. Me too. So much good energy, positive energy. We love it. Yeah. So we want to thank all the organizers of WIDS, Judy Logan, Margo Garrett, sit in particular. We also want to thank John Furrier, who is here. And if you know Johnny, you know he gets FOMA when he's not hosting. But John and Dave Vellante are such great supporters of women in technology, women in technical roles. We wouldn't be here without them. So shout out to my bosses. Thank you for giving me the keys to the queue at this event. I know it's painful sometimes, but we hope that we brought you great stories all day. We hope we inspired you with the females and the one male that we had on the program today in terms of raise your hand, ask a question. Be curious. Don't be afraid to pursue what you're interested in. That's my soapbox moment for now. So for my co-host, I'm Lisa Martin. We want to thank you so much for watching our program today. You can watch all of this on demand on theCUBE.net. You'll find right up on siliconangle.com and of course YouTube. Thanks everyone. Stay safe and we'll see you next time.