Women in Tech Revolution Conference
Stella Egeolu, SETL QA Tester
1/14/2020
I have always admired people who come together to create and build something beneficial to society. Great thinkers and innovative beings of the world are constantly making great impacts in technology. I was only happy to be amongst some of them for a technology conference, which took place in the beautiful city of London: Women In Tech Revolution.
Though it was a female oriented ‘Women in Tech’ Conference, I was nevertheless amazed to witness a great number of men turn up to this event to give their input on their own technology experiences. But as much as I want to go on about some of the fantastic technology projects these men have tackled, I would prefer instead to talk about progress and how far women have come in the technology world, which is certainly something to be proud of. During the conference, these prestigious women delved into their inspiring technology experiences. They are passionate about technology and fintech altogether, but who isn’t? Fintech has taken over the business world, impacting financial market infrastructures on a global scale.
Introductions
The conference commenced with an introduction from the Co-founders of Women in Tech Revolution, Susan Madison and Nathalie Furness, who warmly welcomed everyone with pizza and drinks. Right after, there was the networking section, which I always find exciting and useful. I get to discover interesting things about the other attendees I meet and vice versa; it was a particularly crucial part of the event, before and especially after.
Elena Sinel
The first speaker, Elena Sinel, is the founder of Teens in AI, as well as a human/women’s rights activist. Elena is from Uzbekistan and growing up, Elena’s mother would always say to her “If you learn how to speak English, the world will be your oyster,” so she did just that and went on to create a project aided many women in getting jobs and earning a living. Elena, who is a philanthropist, started an Artificial Intelligence Institute in the United Kingdom, where she empowers young people aged 12-18 to solve real problems through technologies like AI, VR, and blockchain. The idea of starting her own technology institute for young people surfaced after she noticed an ‘Education deficiency’ in the UK Education Curriculum. She wasn’t impressed by this and thus sent her daughter to attend hackathons to gain first hand experience from others in the field. In her own opinion, Elene felt that secondary school was a ‘Exam Factory’ and that her daughter wasn’t getting much out of it. So far, her ideas have worked for her and many young people in the UK who have become successful at their respective Universities.
Maria Woncisz
The next speaker was Maria Woncisz, a cryptocurrency manager at Luno. Maria explained that Luno specialises in cryptocurrency, using wallets to enable their customers safely buy, sell, and store cryptocurrencies. Maria revealed that Luno will be expanding in Africa and will help to shape the way banking is done for safety purposes using cryptocurrency. After all, Luno’s vision is “to upgrade the world to a better financial system” by using decentralised cryptocurrencies to help their consumers make faster and safer transactions. She spoke about more amazing Luno visions which were quite intriguing.
Closing
own at them. I indulged in the ending networking portion of the conference, where I met a lady who showed me her impressive mobile fashion application which, she built and designed herself. She seemed very passionate and excited about her application and mentioned it was going live soon. Not only was I impressed by her mobile application, I also admired the zeal and effort she put into solely building her own app. After talking with her, it got me thinking ‘’I can do this”.
Overall, it was a memorable and fun experience. I met some talented people with working applications and websites. These are passionate people, dedicated to the technology projects they are developing, or businesses they are developing in cryptocurrency and blockchain. It was truly a remarkable eve