Square WomEng Hear + Now Tech Talks: July 2017

Lightning talks on the theme “Nerd Out Loud.”

We just wrapped up another edition of Hear + Now, Square’s quarterly series of lightning tech talks that we offer to marginalized groups as a non-intimidating space to present.

After one of our WomEng members attended AlterConf, we decided to open up the speakers to anyone who identifies as belonging to a marginalized group (and wrote a blog post explaining these changes).

Our latest event featured six speakers: three technical, two on engineering practices, and one diversity talk.

Sarah Harvey, who works on Square’s security team, started the event off with her talk, “Making Use of Visualization to Understand Traffic/Data Flow.”

Sukhada Gholba, from keereo, spoke about what she learned from starting her own company.

Natalie Judd joined us from Oregon-based Connective DX to discuss hosting productive post mortems.

In “All the Things I Didn’t Know About Big Data,” Alivia Blount, who’s currently studying computer science at UC Davis, talked about solving a big data problem at her previous internship.

To close out the night, Matthew Jacobs from Square shared his experiences transitioning while working in the tech industry.

It was a successful and educational night for all in attendance — one of our speakers even brought her daughter, who we were told had a blast attending. It was great showcasing smart and accomplished voices in tech to all ages.

To speak at, or attend, our next Hear + Now event, be sure to follow SquareEng on Twitter.