Let’s make a difference, together! – Women in tech @I T.A.K.E Unconference

Mar 08, 2017 by Madalina Botez in Women In Tech

Less than 1 in 4 leadership roles in the tech industry are held by women. This situation can be improved, for sure!

At I T.A.K.E Unconference, we aim to move the needle by offering to women in tech access to a fast-learning, practical & inspirational community for their growth.

Each year, remarkable women crafters join #itakeunconf. At this edition, you can meet:

Felienne Hermans | Keynote | University Assistant & Founder | Research in the programming field
Karina Popova, Head of Development | Artificial Intelligence & IoT
Alexandra Marin, Software developer | Mobile Development

Let’s not stop here! Help us meet other remarkable women, from your teams and communities!

For you to easier join us, we are offering a free ticket and a special discount to tech ladies who will share with us one lesson learned from the IT trenches.
Let us know in a comment your story / experience / lesson learned while working in IT. The most inspirational story will win a free ticket. Everyone sharing their experience & lessons learned will receive 40% discount from the Standard ticket price (in the limit of available seats). Deadline to submit your story is March 16th.

We will announce the winner on March 22nd.

I T.A.K.E Unconference, 5th edition, 11-12 Bucharest. 6 keynotes, +30 international speakers, and an intense and dynamic program with topics like DevOps, AI, IoT, Software Design, Mobile, Architecture, Open Space, Kata Lounge, Programming Contest and more is in the row. Register now!

Software craftswomen: Claudia Rosu

Mar 29, 2016

In celebration of Women’s Day, this March we salute yesterday & today women’s contribution to the development of the technology and IT fields. Follow #famousITwomen to find interesting stories. They might motivate and encourage you to do something out of the ordinary in your career.

The importance of women in Science, Technology, Engineering & Math has been gaining a momentum in the last years. At I T.A.K.E. Unconference, we value women’s contribution in IT and we believe their dedication to the software craft can be an inspiration for other practitioners.

In the latest posts we invited you to learn more about the contribution women have in IT as Fransizka Sauerwein, Alexandra Marin and Grace Hopper.

Now it’s time to introduce you Claudia Rosu, software craftswoman speaking @ I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016.

#1. What’s your professional story?

Why did you choose to develop a career in this domain?

First, I will say that I am proud to be a software developer. Since primary school I loved to solve math problems. Later, during high school, I was encouraged to follow Computer Science, as I had good logical and analytical thinking skills. Looking back, I would follow the same path, and I would change just a few things.

What I would do differently is to rely more on my skills and spend more time reading. One story that changed my professional growth for the better: early in my career, my senior developer colleague told me that it is great to have a girl in the team as we pay more attention to details and we don’t leave bugs in the code :).

On the reading side, I would include technical and non-technical books, which help us develop skills to: write quality code, communicate and collaborate better, focus on continuous improvement. With confidence in my skills and discipline in reading, I can now deliver quality software that helps the users in their activity. Extra, I am organizing and facilitating community events, speak at various gatherings to share my experience & learn others.

#2. Share with us a lesson you’ve learned since you’ve been working in IT

It is said that to be a great programmer you need strong technical skills. This is what I have learned during university. And it is true. What I didn’t know is that this is not enough. Having other skills like creativity, courage, openness and initiative is even more important. Since realizing it, it is easier for me to improve as a professional, on both soft and technical skills.

#3. Whom do you admire as a women IT practitioner? Why?

I admire most Rebecca Wirfs-Brock. I believe she can be a true inspiration for all women working or want to work in technology. I’ve met Rebecca 3 years ago at the first I.T.A.K.E. Unconference and since then I have learned a lot from her knowledge and experience. Improving the way I am doing software design is easier because of her insights on this topic.

Want to meet Claudia? Join her & other amazing speakers at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016!

The week to celebrate #famousITwomen

Mar 09, 2015

The week to celebrate women in IT kicks off. Let’s bring upfront the stories of #famousITwomen who’ve made breakthrough contributions along the history.

This week savour your coffee with 3 minutes inspirational stories that should be known by anyone in the industry. See how women paved the way to computers and software as we have them today. Here’s the first story.

Follow the upcoming stories on the I T.A.K.E. Unconference blog. They might be motivating and encouraging for you to do something out of the ordinary in your career. Stay tuned, as you may also find a win between and let yourself surprised by the contribution of #famousITwomen.

The Pioneer of OOP: Barbara Liskov

Mar 10, 2015

The week to celebrate women in IT continues with Barbara Liskov’s story. Let’s bring upfront the stories of #famousITwomen who’ve made breakthrough contributions along the history.

At the dawn of the software revolution, engineers were struggling. It wasn’t clear at that time how to organize code so that it was optimal, easy to understand and easy to change.

The solution proved to be finding the right abstractions. Barbara Liskov was an active participant in the conversation, publishing papers, implementing programming languages, database systems and operating systems. In one of these conversations, she came up with what is now known as the “Liskov Substitution Principle”, one of the 5 key principles of software design (the L from SOLID principles).

In 2004, Barbara Liskov won the highest award for computer science, the John von Neumann Medal for “fundamental contributions to programming languages, programming methodology, and distributed systems”. She also received the 2008 Turing Award for her work in the design of programming languages and software methodology that led to the development of object-oriented programming.

Watch the story of Object Oriented Programming in her keynote “The Power of Abstraction”, published by our partners from InfoQ.

Hope Barbara Liskov’s story aroused your curiosity to learn from history more about IT famous women.

This week, stay tuned for the upcoming stories and win an invitation to I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2015.

1 Comment

Catalina Butnaru

Having worked in startups for 6 years, I decided to build an ecosystem for diversity in tech to be supported, especially in two extremely disruptive areas: artificial intelligence and virtual reality. the first step was to bring together experts in AI to discuss crossovers between AI and VR, during the AI+VR Rise Conference and Hackathon. The next step is to build a community – focused class educating people from all backgrounds on what AI is, thus encouraging diversity.