I’ve been producing events on occasion and it was my great pleasure to produce the Mozilla Festival for the second year in a row. The event was very well reviewed but the most pleasurable part of it is being able to plan an event in a very small team of 5 women, Michelle Thorne the Festival Lead, Diana Proca who leads the army of volunteers who make this a really unique event and Ravensbourne College’s leading ladies of events Claire Selby and Laura Lillepruun. Directly after the Festival I flew over to Barcelona to talk about smart cities and the Good Night Lamp on a panel at the Smart City Expo World Congress.
There’s something important in being able to exist on both sides of the equation as a woman in technology. Producing an event of around 1K attendees in a small team, it’s like running a small company for a short period of time. Speaking at events on the other hand is an opportunity to distill professional experiences and share it with others. I would hope that projects like Lady Ada Day and Articulate are the starting point of a generation of women who are certain that what they make is also worth sharing with others in a public context. It takes confidence, but there is no other way.