Coding The Future

On Saturday I was privileged to attend #AtWorkLive - an inspiring, careers focussed event hosted by Marie Claire magazine. Positioned as an empowering day for ambitious women of all backgrounds, it comprised of talks from female leaders in tech, business and media: discussion panels; one-to-one workshops and the valuable opportunity to simply talk to people who are all actively doing inventive, entrepreneurial ‘things'.

Every speaker was devoted to their specialism in a way that resonates with the attitude Dad and I have referenced in this blog, covering fields from fashion to politics. However one theme in particular stuck with me - partially because I was already attuned to it - but also because it came up in virtually every session: digital technology. And later more specifically, the ability to code. ​

The first time it came up was in the opening session - defiantly titled ‘How to direct your professional destiny’. Among others, the panel included Nishma Robb, Chair of Women@Google and Laura Bates, founder of the everyday sexism project. The first question from the floor was asked by a woman who found herself judged in her digital marketing job. Speaking to her later on, I actually found out that Lucy Newman is an impressive, entrepreneurial marketeer in the process of setting up her own make-up business. She described facing incredulity from men because she coded, and asked how she should respond.

Nishma passionately explained her view on the importance of gaining digital knowledge, and how she believes in the need to inspire women to learn about it. Not the ability but the desire. The context of the day meant her response was rightly fuelled by female empowerment, strengthened by inspiring support from Laura. However the need for ‘diverse talent’ goes beyond gender equality - working with people from different backgrounds, with different perspectives and subsequently different ideas is the only way to ensure “the things we produce and create, whatever the medium, are the best they can be”. In short - innovation comes from combining different ideas to create better ones - uniting both creativity with tech, and women with men.

The theme of tech reared it’s head again in a talk given by Amali de Alwis, CEO of Code First: Girls, a ‘social enterprise’ that exists to help entrepreneurial women achieve careers in technology. The session covered some basic coding principles - but the most interesting part of her slot came with the subsequent discussion.

I asked what would be the next thing after coding - obviously it’s a ​​crucial tool in understanding how to apply technology to ‘make ideas happen’, but as with everything digital - things move pretty quickly. She instantly referenced the rise of Virtual Reality (VR) - now being applied to all kinds of existing tech. You only need to Google ‘VR tech’ to consistently find articles days old. It’s only a matter of (probably not very much) time until it filters down to our day to day lives. In fact even less if Facebook has anything to do with it - with a belief at the heart of the company that “it makes sense that computers get closer to the way we experience the real world”.

This fusion between code and everyday interaction was crystallised by Amali when she went on to explain that “the magic of tech is that it can circumnavigate social structures”. Digital is sometimes perceived as a mechanism that reduces ideas - there is an underlying stigma of maths, numbers, computers. In reality it is a facilitator that enables ideas to blossom.

Source: Made With Code, an initiative launched by Google in June 2014 in a drive to address the gender gap in tech jobs.

Another door coding opens is the ability to harness the power of data. Having brushed the surface of ‘Big Data’ in my previous post - (namely that we have lots of data and we need to work out how to use it) - it’s clear a knowledge of code is the difference between having an idea that could work, to creating an app or product that definitely will work. This kind of thinking is exactly what drives Unruly - a tech platform specialising in video advertising. They use tech to capture and distil consumer data to drive ad effectiveness. And guess what - one of their project managers, Claire Roberts has been identified by Code First: Girls as ‘one to watch’ in the future of female entrepreneurs in tech. One of the projects that has especially peaked my interest was the development of a dashboard that tracks emotional responses of consumers to video content. The role of human emotion in tech, and in advertising is definitely one I will revisit in future posts.

One final note I'd like to make is about a single application of code that was present throughout the entirety of #AtWorkLive - Twitter.

Live interactions throughout the day were made possible 10 years ago when, as put by Made With Code: “Twitter used code to make 140 characters mean something more”.

We certainly made use of it on Saturday.

So, my conclusion? #AtWorkLive was fantastically inspiring - coloured vibrantly with female empowerment it allowed every attendee to take away exactly what was important to them. For me, that was further insight into the opportunities presented by tech, supported of course by a fiery, ambitious attitude driving every woman present that day. And yes - I will most certainly be learning to code.

A snap of my colleague Steph and I - she is a very talented lady - check out her website here.