CONFERENCE ON WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY

Anita Borg Institute organised a very charismatic conference on the theme “Women in Technology”, sponsored by American Express on 2nd September 2016 at Taj Palace Hotel, New Delhi. Ms Sarita, Assistant Professor (CSE) along with 81 girls’ student from CSE and IT Department of Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon attended the event.

The objective of the event was to motivate and encourage women for getting into the technology and showing their skills.

The welcome note was given by Mrs. Rekha Menon, Managing Director of Accenture India, where she talked about Digital Revolution and how this digital revolution can be useful to women.

Then there was a panel discussion on Digital Revolution and how end consumers are embracing the technology by Deep Kalra - Founder and Group CEO, Makemytrip, Harmeen Mehta - Global CIO and Director Engineering, Bharti Airtel Limited, Sanjay Rishi - Regional President, American Express, Shikha Rai - Vice President,Cannon India. They talked about brand loyalty, project strategy and many more.

Next, there was a technical talk on “Big Data and the rise of Fintech” by Amit Soni - Vice President, Global Credit Risk Decision Sciences, American Express and Tarun Bhushan - VP and Chief Risk Officer India, American Express. They talked about Machine learning and the use of Machine generated Algorithm. After lunch there was another technical session on “Text Analysis” by Lipika Dey - Principal Scientist, TCS Innovation Lab.

Followed by technical session there was discussion on event detection and assessment, future prospect of money and social media. Another keynote speaker Meetul Patel, General Manager, Marketing and Operations of Microsoft delivered on the theme of Innovations. His words focused on women entrepreneurs and he also discussed new idea of online taxi booking ’Uber’. E-Commerce companies like Amazon, Flipkart etc. with their innovative ideas started something new in the market which facilitated the consumers at a large scale.

Then there was a panel discussion on “women entrepreneurship - role of innovation in entrepreneurship which was very knowledgeable. Ms. Sairee Chahal - Founder of Sheroes in the panel supports women who want to start their own business. Ms. Anusheela Saha - Founder of Light Bag, who said that the bag is designed for slum and village children who dropped out of there schools because of shortage of light at night and they cannot complete their study due to it. In the event, one eminent speaker named Dr. Vibha Tripathi - Managing Director,Swajal Waters whose company deals with the water impurity and water scarcity in villages shared her views on women entrepreneurship.

In the end, there was a workshop on “Art of cooperate story telling” by Ameen Haque, founder of Storywallahs. He said,” I believe stories are wisdom disguised as entertainment”. He explained that stories have an innate power to innovate, transform and change. He told things learnt by role reside in the short term memory while stories reside in the long term memory.

All the participants were motivated and were asked not to settle for what you have in life, always try to go for the more and new to get success in life. Overall it was a very good learning experience for the students..

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