LWT NYC Summit
Due to stress, the talk I am about to give usually overshadows the talks before mine. Fortunately, LWT was such a jam-packed speaker event that I was able to tune into the talks and not get eaten by nerves. There were a neat mix of 5 minute ignite talks about things like tackling systemic oppression, government tech work, and imposter syndrome. Some of these talks were similar to others I’ve heard, and the audience was so different than what I usually experience at a conference that I was a little sad we didn’t get past some of the 101 talks.
It’s certainly possible that many of the women and other folks there were hearing about imposter syndrome or trans-inclusiveness for the first time, but I’d love to have more talks that dig into the meat of intersectional feminism in tech.
A few talks
In the morning of Friday, there was a neat presentation by Diane Feinberg of Pixar on how they handle lighting and building a scene into something more than just 3D renderings.
The interview right before I spoke was with a senior Amazon employee concerning the NYTimes story, and she was able to add color and detail to both how the story turned out against the actual quotes and information given to the reporter, as well as what she’s changed since then.
After my talk, Edith Windsor was a particular delight, and had more than a few of us tearing up at her description of being a closeted gay woman at IBM in the 60s.
Generally
I generally enjoyed the conference, but wish the compressed Friday schedule spread more evenly over Saturday and Sunday, instead of making them largely social/hackathon. I was also a little saddened to see banks so heavily represented in the recruiting area, but this is also my first NYC conference, so perhaps that is typical.
TL;DR
Overall, I think this is a worthwhile conference, and I am going to try to attend the SF summit as well in February.
Feel free to hit me up with any particular questions you have. They recorded the talks during a live-stream, and you can watch any them at this link