Our Events

Event: Pride in DevOps - Your Authentic Self

Event: Berlin Summer Party

Event: Self-advocacy in Tech

Event: Manchester: The New Tech Hub

Manchester has a thriving tech scene and according to Evolution (2022), the city has 6 of the 14 UK's leading digital unicorns. In addition to this, it is home to a uniquely creative and social community, with endless opportunities, networking and a culture that enables innovation and a sense of unity. Last week, we held our first Manchester-based networking event and uncovered 'Manchester: The New Tech Hub' with a panel of market-leading experts, in collaboration with our friends from Coding Black Females.

One key takeaway was that ‘Mancunians’ have a noticeably hard work ethic, with the worker bee mentality reflecting the city’s industrial history. Our audience agreed that community was a contributing factor as to why they preferred Manchester as a city to call home. Affordability, accessibility, and innovation were equally important to the attendees on what differentiated Manchester. Will Manchester be the new Silicon Valley? Let us know in the comments below.

With special thanks to our community partners Coding Black Females and our fabulous panel for the thought-provoking discussion:
- Flore Onasanya - Host @ Women in DevOps
- Rachael Nakaye - Chair @ Coding Black Females
- Suzie Kim Jihyon - Senior Creative Digital Designer @ AO
- Toye Akinoso - Fullstack developer @ Tracsis plc
- Mabel Ochebiri - Customer Experience Analyst @ Sage
- Hera Saqib - CEO & Co-Founder @ Classimize

To find out more about our upcoming events, join our community group on meetup here: https://lnkd.in/eCZwV7Qq

#womenindevops

Event: Taking over tech - Women being badass in BigData & DevOps

Event: Empowering Women: Tackling Toxic Productivity & Hustle Culture

Webinar #20 - Security Trends 2022

Webinar #20 - Black History Month: Proud to be in Technology

Webinar #19 - Inclusion and Impact in Fintech

Webinar #18 - Unlocking Operational Efficiency - The transition to SRE

We brought our Women in DevOps community together for our ‘Unlocking operational efficiency - The transition to SRE’ webinar. The conversation explored our panellists’ various journeys into technology, the overlapping differences, and common misconceptions of SRE.
 
The worlds of DevOps and SRE are often interchanged, and there's significant debate around the differences and overlaps of these two phenomena, Andreia stated that ‘DevOps is enabling teams to own processes entirely. DevOps is the realm and terrain where SRE can operate.’
 
We touched on the challenges our speakers had experienced when adopting SRE, such as implementing the SRE mindset, changing the culture, training/coaching and lack of support and availability of skillset. Our panel conversed their innovative technical approaches and tips to effectively implementing SRE.
 
We explored career pathways and how there is no specific pathway, or degree to SRE. Júlia mentioned that nowadays individuals are not required to have a degree, which is ‘a sign of change in how we are learning’. Bootcamps, online training, support groups, GitHub communities, mentorship and networking are some of the new pathways that have formed in recent years.
 
A fundamental take away that our panel agreed was that if you have the drive, passion, and dedication to succeed in SRE you will get to where you want to be. Did you miss this webinar? Not to worry, you can watch on our YouTube channel here:
https://lnkd.in/dHRDhcu6

#WomenInDevOps

Webinar #17 - The DevOps-ing Journey

We hosted another successful webinar with our Founder Lauren Langdell. The webinar showcased two talks led by our sponsors from JFrog and CircleCI. The first talk of the session was led by Jeremy Meiss, whilst it seems that every week new terms appear to describe DevOps tools, segments, ideas, practices, etc., are they really new? CI/CD, Progressive Delivery, AIOps, GitOps, TreeOps (not real, but who knows, maybe it will be next week?) - are they all the same, or are they just reimagining last week’s buzz words? Jeremy broke down a few of these terms, what they mean, how they’re used, and why they may matter for you and your teams in an engaging talk.
 
Following Jeremy, Anastasia and Batel from JFrog co-hosted an insightful talk on how they are using K8’s at Jfrog while combining automation relying on DevOps tools and securing the process. Touching on the importance of knowing that humans can make mistakes and that automation can help to overcome this by:

-      Enhance app protection layers
-      Adopt different resources
-      Improve security program
-      Configure services/customer needs
-      Support adding new apps and services
 
We asked the audience, ‘Do you feel there has been a cultural shift in the last year when addressing diversity in DevOps?’ The majority of respondents (44%) declared that they felt there had been no cultural shift when addressing diversity, with 25% stating maybe and 31% agreeing that there had been a cultural shift when addressing diversity. Showcasing the importance of our community, to break down the barriers and drive positive change in addressing diversity and inclusion issues in DevOps.

 

Webinar #16 - How to Transition From Being an Engineer to an Engineering Manager

Webinar #15 - Pride in DevOps: The Power of Allyship

Webinar #14 - Building purpose-driven technology

‘Purpose over profit’, ‘Mission driven’, ‘Purpose Led’ are all common phrases used by these great businesses, who aim to build an organisation that genuinely improves the lives of their customers and end-users.

We will be looking closely into these businesses and discussing how diversity of people affects their purpose and mission. Additionally, we will look externally around how purpose-led businesses use their external voice and shop window to achieve and champion true diversity.

Discussion points include:
• How the diversity of people in the business affects their purpose and their mission
• What are the benefits of having diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) high on your agenda as a business that wants to make a difference?
• Purpose is people, not a product
• Should diversity enhances a company’s flow state and compliments the purpose?
• How to build in diversity from day 1
• Build a purposeful environment, regardless of the purpose of the business

Our panel will include:
- Oliver Perry - Host & Chair @ Women in DevOps
- Ann Roberts - Chief People Officer @ Flo
- Jeffrey Perlman - Chief Strategy Officer @ Mindvalley

Ann Roberts
Ann is building rocketship companies in the high-growth tech space. She is the Chief People Officer of Flo, the #1 most downloaded Health app on a mission to improve the health and wellbeing of every girl and woman worldwide. Before Flo Ann was the Group HR Director at Bumble, with previous gigs in Goldman Sachs, Rolls-Royce, Connected Places Catapult and Lebara Mobile. She is interested in all things at the intersection of modern human capital practices, emerging tech, brands that are dripping with purpose, and business results. She is born and raised in the Nordics, educated in Bangkok and calling London home since 2008. Ann was the Stonex Scholar at London School of Economics, has an MBA from Imperial College, is a judge at the UK Employee Experience Awards and was the HR Professional of the Year Gold Award Winner in HR Brilliance Awards 2019. When she's not working Ann likes running (away from her twin babies).

Jeffrey Perlman
As former CMO at Zumba Fitness, Jeffrey Perlman was instrumental in growing Zumba from a small direct response company in 2006, to the largest branded fitness program in the world in 2014 - serving 15 million weekly class participants in 186 countries.

Widely credited with transforming Zumba into an iconic lifestyle brand, Perlman oversaw Zumba's global marketing initiatives and creative direction, as well as strategy, licensing, product innovation and business development in the entertainment space.

Under his watch, the company grew to become Inc. Magazine's Company of the Year in 2012 with a valuation of $550 million.

Perlman left his active role at Zumba in 2014 to find new ways to create impact. He joined Mindvalley as a strategic advisor in 2017. Since then it has doubled in sales every year and is the fastest-growing personal development brand in the world and is poised to redefine the education system at large.

In 2019, he founded a boutique brand strategy firm with the mission of creating megabrands that move humanity forward.

Save your spot to gain an insight into working for purpose-led businesses, and get ready to feel inspired by our fabulous panel.

Webinar #13 - Workshop: DevOps 101

Webinar #12 - International Women's Day 2021: Choose to Challenge

This month we amplified the voices of women from our tech community for our ‘International Women’s Day 2021: Choose to Challenge’ webinar in collaboration with Coding Black Females. We raised an amazing £440 via ticket sales for our charitable partner Smart Works Charity.

The forward-thinking and uplifting discussion led by leaders from around the globe touched on gender-specific challenges, stereotypes and barriers they have faced throughout their careers. Our panel also spoke about how the pandemic impacted their work-life balance and childcare, and experiences of gaslighting and how to distinguish the signs.

Our experts then discussed progress on gender equality, critical changes that have shaped technology and empowering moments that have inspired them in their career. At Women in DevOps, we understand that even though the tech world is progressive, there is still work to be done to improve gender equality as we continue to choose to challenge and close the DevOps gender gap.

We would like to thank our fabulous panel for their insights and inspiring conversation. Thank you, also, to our audience who joined us and continued the conversation via the networking session.

Webinar #11 - 'Black History Month: inspirational Black voices in tech'

Webinar #10 - Women in DevOps meets SOD.AI: Exploring the World of DataOps

Webinar #9 - 'Women in DevOps: 2020 – A year in review with JFrog'

Webinar #8 - 'Shifting Mindsets, Attracting Talent and a Culture of Integrity'

Webinar #7 - 'Black History Month: Diversity in DevOps'

Webinar #6 - 'Gaming Industry: Gender Balance, Challenges and Trends Loading'

Webinar #5 - 'How Software Engineers can utilise DevOps best practices'

Webinar #4 - A Security Driven Mindset in DevOps - Global Addition

Webinar #3 - Pride in DevOps: LGBTQ+ Inclusive Workplaces

Webinar #2 - Global Edition: How to stay well educated remotely

Webinar #1 - How to Maintain DevOps Best Practices Remotely

Webinar collaboration - 'DevOps & Hops - BYOB'

DevOps: The Key Behind Thriving FinTech

After a last-minute logistical dilemma and a quick venue change, we held our first Women in DevOps of the decade in collaboration with Monzo. We would just like to say a huge thank you to our community, speakers, and team for bearing with us and enabling the evening to happen. Ironically, we had no technology at one of our biggest technology events, but the spirit and support of our community enabled us to pull through and have a successful evening.

Women in DevOps Meets Los Angeles - Let's Talk Tech and Diversity

New Age of DevOps

You can expect an engaging panel discussion and lightning talk, so get your questions at the ready! We will provide complimentary food, drinks and the opportunity to network with other ambitious DevOps leaders.

This is an event open to ALL to attend so tell your friends, colleagues and fellow DevOps lovers.

Autumn Edition: Leading DevOps to Achieve Success

Therese Stowell from Pivotal Software, Inc. answered questions specifically on transforming from software engineering to product management, and how Pivotal is transforming the way the world builds software. Ola Berjak and Gulfem Demir offered discussions regarding backups and restoring data crashes (and how DevOps isn’t rocket science!) Finally, Elina Lobanova gave insightful, empowering ideas on how we should work towards equality in technology.

Women In DevOps Meets Dublin

This is an event open to ALL to attend.

We will be providing complimentary food, drinks and the opportunity to network with market leading experts. Come and join our open and inclusive community and feel inspired to become the DevOps leaders of the future.

Women In DevOps: Keep your head in the clouds in collaboration with FT

The talks will be touching on DevOps, Cloud, Migration and Kubernetes from various different perspectives. We will be announcing the speakers shortly. We will be providing complimentary food and drinks.

Trials, tribulations and triumphs of Women In DevOps

There will be a series of discussions on the trials, tribulations and triumphs of women in DevOps. Discussing technical experiences that others had witnessed during their careers with a panel Q&A after the talks.

A balanced workforce drives innovation and we believe that businesses need to do more than attract and retain women into their communities, we exist to bridge that gap. 

We will be providing complimentary food and drinks. So join us to be inspired, engaged and empowered. This is a free event for all to attend.

Balance for Better

The world has made progress on the problem of gender inequality, however, inequality is still a global issue. A balanced workforce drives innovation and we believe that businesses need to do more than attract and retain women into their communities, we exist to bridge that gap.

This week we teamed up with Cloudreach for a special 'Balance for Better' International Women's Day 2019 collaboration. The event showcased three diverse technical talks from Leigh Dixon, Tania Ash, Idelkys Quintana Ramirez and Ariane G. We'd like to say a special thank you to our speakers, attendees, co-hosts and community for enabling us to have another inspiring and empowering evening. Cloudreach and KPMG are great examples of tech organizations that are empowering women.

Feeling passionate about diversity in tech? By conducting research we hope to address the issues facing the technology space with a specific interest in equality, diversity and inclusion. Take our survey.

#BalanceForBetter #EmpowerWomen #internationalwomensday2019

Women in DevOps - Let's get Technical in collaboration with Facebook

Nestled behind the hustle and bustle of Oxford Street, you'll find Facebook's HQ and our most recent Women in DevOps meetup collaboration. Facebook's mission is: give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. A mission we’re keen to collaborate on by bringing the DevOps community together. 

The evening was another successful evening, with speakers including:

- Charlie de Courcy and Mariano Vecchioli - Cloud Consultant Lead, at Google

- Amy Phillips - Engineering Manager, at Moo

- Maria Koukou - Head of Analytics - Maersk

Our speakers all brought completely different elements within DevOps to the table. Discussing leanings, tools and technologies and allowing for a truly insightful evening, celebrating and empowering women in technology.

Join our Facebook group to keep up to date on future events

#WomenInDevOps #EmpowerWomen

Women in DevOps - Mind the (Gender) Gap

After an incredible summer which kicked off our biggest event yet, we took Women in DevOps to the astounding PhotoBox HQ in Farringdon for our first ever panel discussion with Refinery29, Inc. In this very busy and hectic world, we appreciate all attendees for taking the time to join us in Central London last night. We also thank you for your engaging, inspirational conversation, and the sharing of your ideas and expertise. Your energy and enthusiasm was catching and we were thrilled with our speakers Emily McDonald from Refinery29, Inc., Amanda Colpoys from Moonpig, Simon Martin from Facebook, Laura Herrera from CBRE and Annelies Valk from Vodafone. With special thanks to our hosts PhotoBox for providing us with a night to remember!

#WomeninDevOps #EmpowerInspireDiversify

Women in DevOps - Summer Edition - Part One

The sun was out, with picturesque cityscape views of London from Expedia Group’s vibrant rooftop offices, which created the perfect Women in DevOps setup for our Summer Edition - Part One event. This was our second Women in DevOps event, and what a great turnout we had! Thank you to all who attended with guest speakers including Jessica Falks from Improbable, Stefania Chaplin from Sonatype and Dimple Dalby from comparethemarket.com.

Jessica Falks talked about what it’s like to work with Improbable and DevOps internships opportunities, Stefania Chaplin spoke about a solution project she has implemented with Sonatype and Dimple Dalby gave her insight on different secret management tools she uses as a Senior DevOps Engineer at ComparetheMarket.com.

The evening allowed for engaging, informative and empowering discussion on all things related to DevOps. The energy and enthusiasm of the audience was catching, and we believe our second Women in DevOps event to be an absolute success. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors and hosts Expedia Group for providing us with a night to remember!

Women in DevOps - Spring Meetup

This was our first Women in DevOps guest speaker event, hosted and sponsored by Improbable. Our speakers for the evening were Software Engineer, Keeley Erhards from Improbable, Software Engineer, Dimple Dalby from Deliveroo and Engineering Leader, Jessica Leigh Jones from Sony.

The event is open to ALL to attend and was a great event. Keeley explored Improbable's experience bringing OpenTracing to all services that run in our infrastructure—tracing everything from gRPC & HTTP requests to backend DB calls. Dimple's talk covered amusing parallels between her dev and dance lives, and aims to share a few of these in her talk "A Great Performance; what dancers can teach us about developing for scale." Jessica gave an inspirational talk on her road to success and what she had to overcome as a woman in a male-dominant industry.