Gender Equality Over Coffee

Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmMGEQbdUbI

Susanne Leeb is an expert in HR Management and career coaching. At her current position at the Career Center of the Technical University in Vienna she holds a two-sided responsibility: As coach she provides professional job & career planning services to students and as HR consultant she offers her expertise in employer branding and talent management to employers.

Connect to here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanneleeb/

The Career Center´s mission is enabling students, graduates etc. to enter the job market well orientated and professionally prepared. In cooperation with employers it offers a variety of career orientation formats. An additional emphasis is on putting topics on display that are important for society in a working context, such as diversity.

For more information about our services and events: tucareer.com

Our latest event recommendations:

• Voice of Diversity May 4th
• Jobfair TUday @home May 19th
• Workshops @ Karrierezeit June 16th – 17thRecommended book:
• Working identity, Hermina Ibarra

Recommended podcasts:

• There are many interesting Career Podcasts such as Female Leadership,
• Die Boss

TIMEA:Hey Ramón!

RAMÓN:Hey Timea!

TIMEA:Let’s talk gender equality.

RAMÓN:I love the idea. Gimme a second. I just got to grab my coffee. I hope you’ve got yours too.

TIMEA:Yeah, right here.

RAMÓN: Welcome everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of gender equality over coffee. I’m joined by Timea as always, and our special guest today is the very Susanne Leeb. Did I get that right?Yeah, I got it right on the first time. Correct.

SUSANNE: Thank you for having me.

RAMÓN: We are so excited to have you on, sorry, Timea I cut you off. I’m very excited.

TIMEA: No worries. As we just talked before, we’re still learning how to. Yeah, make space here. So so is that, then I’ve invited you over today. We’ve been actually working together for quite some time now.I mean, mostly between our entities, women Techmakers Vienna and TU career center, but today I want to. Give the opportunity to our community, to get to know the people that drives the partnership and creates the great events on the TU career center side. So I invite you to tell us a little bit about yourself.If you have pronouns preferred name what are your pronouns? A bit of, you know, three things, random things about you.

SUSANNE: Okay. Well, you know, first of all, Thank you for having me. I think that’s great. I think you, I think you’re doing really great. I just mentioned that already. Yeah, I’ve been joining ever since the call for right.With new Timea and with the women. Techmakers my name is Susanne and yeah, there have been different nicknames floating around, but actually I prefer Susanne, to be honest. I mean, yeah, let’s say within our family naming is very popular, so. One popular nickname I have at the moment is “Sai Seni”. Because when my daughter started to learn English, she just took the German birds and tried to pronounce them in an English way.So now it’s Sai Seni but yeah, I actually.

TIMEA: Okay. I promise I will not write emails to you with your nickname from now and it’s okay.

SUSANNE: You can use that for example, like Susie, the very common thing I used to have, like in my early. It is. I don’t like that. I guess about all I do request twice later on, so three random things about me.Well, yeah, one thing I am thinking of is like speaking, I think what a lot about sharing these days, like car sharing for sustainability reasons and stuff like that. So we do have a dog that we share with our neighbors.

TIMEA: Oh, Yeah, that’s more tell us more.

SUSANNE: So yeah, like I think almost every child, our daughter, as well as started the conversation like two years ago, like I wanted to have a pet.I have a dog that wants to have a pet. And we always tried to cut up the discussion by saying, well, you know, that we both work. We cannot take care of a dog that would not be fair. And then just by coincidence, we started the conversation with our neighbors and she was like, well, I always wanted to have a dog.And I’m always at home during the day because I’m a musician. And we were like, okay, well then let’s think about the idea. I started going to animal shelters, speaking with the experts there. And yeah. I mean, why not? If it’s the right dog, that might be a good idea. So yeah, like two years ago we started to have a dog.Did we, I think equally share like 50, 50% and it works out perfect. Well, I can only recommend this concept to everybody.

RAMÓN: I have so many questions. If I may ask first I’d love to know the dog’s name. If I may. Oh,

SUSANNE: yeah, you can. It’s Livi and the longer version is Liviza because she’s Croatian.Yeah. So, oh no, maybe. Yeah.

RAMÓN: Well, thank you. How, how does it work that the dog does that, that Livi doesn’t somehow like trick you into a trick, you or your neighbors into feeding them multiple times?

SUSANNE: Oh, she would, if she can. Yeah. Whenever she could, she will do it at, but I mean, we have the advantage that we can communicate very well.So yeah, knowing her we have a very good distribution of all our Judas and I think, I mean, it will depend on the doc I guess, but she was the dog picked up on the streets, so she’s pretty flexible and just very happy having people taken care of for us though. Yeah. It’s really worked out perfectly well from the very first moment

RAMÓN: we say that,

TIMEA: well, this is really nice.And I think that I’m on and I have a personal reason why we ask you more about it because we are both dog lovers. I also recently got. Well a year ago, I got my first dog. So

SUSANNE: would make sense. Yeah, no, I mean, and we never regret it, especially for our daughter as well. And especially with, during the pandemic situation.Yes. It gives her so much stability, so much support. Yeah, for us it was just a great idea doing it. I’m not thinking too much about it. I’m just trying.

TIMEA: I’m super excited. That it work. Maybe you can inspire other people to take in dogs, especially in this pandemic time.

SUSANNE: Yeah, I think so. I mean, of course the things to take into account and it will not work with every dog, but the way it works for us, it just has advantages.Like for example, our dog is almost never alone and she’s almost all the time with someone. So. So there’s several advantages to it. I mean, you will see when we continue speaking that I’m a great fan of sharing because especially for additionally, I’m a fan of job sharing as well as well idea, especially for part-time solutions, but yeah, let’s,

TIMEA: let’s jump into it. Go ahead.

SUSANNE: Okay. Speaking about sharing. Yeah. So when I did last year, a couple of years ago in a different one, I was thinking about. So what’s, it’s specifically the topic that I’m interested, right? Because I wanted to take a topic that affects me personally. So I’m a woman, I’m a woman and part-time I really chose, or I took this decision consciously.I wanted to work in part-time, but of course, anyhow, I want to have a career or a job with responsibility and what’s happens with part-time. We all know that. Part-time positions often don’t offer the responsibility or the same career opportunities like the doing full time, because of course full-time of hours.We all know that. So the idea was born that I wanted to have a closer look at this concept, job sharing. And I did my thesis about job sharing and management positions. So, what I think was I was doing interviews with two crews. The first group were H R trust that didn’t have the concept within their company, asking them for the reasons they don’t have it what their ideas or prejudices might be about it.And then interviewing persons that were in, or our management decisions, living the job sharing model.

TIMEA: May I interrupt the interview partners. Were they in Austria

SUSANNE: Okay. Yep. And it was not too easy to find three job sharing packages in the beginning because it’s not that promoted that much immediate, but then yeah, I was lucky to find some really interesting Women this case, it was only women doing the job sharing model.And I was pretty excited by the results. And by what they told me, it seems to be a very, very successful model if, if it fits within the corporate culture. And if it is wanted by the management board, but a decision making decision, that’s like one decisive successful factor. One could say that. You need to have the management board on board that really wants to live different models to really make that possible or accessible within your company.

RAMÓN: Sorry. Just, just just so we can get do you have, do you have maybe a, like a definition of, of job sharing that we could share with our listeners so that they could catch up?

SUSANNE: I mean, there were different definitions, but let’s say it’s a concept where you as let’s say, for example, two persons hold the responsibility for one department, but then the most common model is to divide the different parts of the department.And into the two persons, for example, mostly it’s two persons and mostly time-wise they divide themselves for example to a Monday to Wednesday model and a Wednesday to Friday model where they have one common day one day together in the office and the other days are separately. There’s other models that are possible, but that’s like the most common one that is.Being lived out there. Yeah,

RAMÓN: it is. We’re talking about this because I actually, I actually, myself since January started my first ever job share or yeah, for, for CodeSee an American startup where myself and my colleague, Jessica, we share the role. We job share the role of developer relations.

SUSANNE: So how does it work?

RAMÓN: Well we’ve been, we’ve been moving it around here and there. Trying out different things, seeing what works, what you mentioned about having you know, Monday, Wednesday, and, and Wednesday, Friday with the shared Wednesday has been working is what we did at first having two and a half days, two and a half workdays per week for each of us.And once we realized that we needed more, more time on end, we switched to have four days a week. So Monday, Monday to Thursday, five hours a day. Adding up to two, a half work week and it’s been working really well. I have to say I’m really enjoying it. It’s kind of, it’s really interesting because we, what we can do is sort of share not only shared tasks, but also learn from each other.Jessica has a lot of strategy and, and outreach experience that she shares with me. And I have more technical experience that I share with her. And, and, and of course, Vice versa. I can share parts of my knowledge and outreach and I can share, she shares parts of her knowledge in tech and we sort of compliment each other in that sense.And it it’s extraordinary. I have to say having worked freelance my entire life, having this option has been really liberating. Yeah.

SUSANNE: Yeah. Great to hear. No, no, no, no. I’m so excited to hear that there is other constellations out there. That’s really great to hear that work. I mean, it shouldn’t be like. I think the concept for everyone to do that, but it’s one possibility to deal with the nowadays working situation.And it just, if you want to do it, and if you’re flexible enough, and if you have the management board in the background, I think it’s a wonderful model. As you just said, you have this coaching constellation, right. That you can coach each other constantly. You have the situation that actually one plus one is not two it’s more than two, because like, I remember I spoke with the managing directors of Ikea in Linz .So they said, like, for example, the one of the two, she was more into the restaurant management stuff and the other one was more into the whatever interior design or human resources stuff. And they said, see, and with having two persons taking care of the whole management, you have to grip every. Topic within our position, not only a couple of topics, because usually you’re not interested or specialists in everything, like you just said, you were more the technical guy and she’s more to strategy partner.Right. As I, I understood that. So I think it’s it’s a great great possibility to deal with yeah. Some job situation. So I would say,

RAMÓN: yeah, I agree.

TIMEA: I think this is a very good hint, maybe the words of your profession actually, what you ended up doing after the thesis, right?

SUSANNE: Yeah. Right. I mean, I’ve had no more than, I think 15 years of experience in HR, like.I’ve always been in HR settings where I was able to develop and set up HR processes and manage them, but then doing this master’s I did this professional training and coaching and that’s what led me to coming to the career center, right. To work, to be a coach. Yeah. So true. Cause now

TIMEA: first and foremost, you’re a career coach for the people that come to the center.But you also work with companies basically, probably I understood correctly kind of complimenting their HR processes and helping them develop them.

SUSANNE: Yeah, right. Yeah. One could say it like that. Like the career center is like the connecting part between the students and the job market. So having or facing the students side, we’re like coaching them, offering trainings, offering shop prayers, offering different kinds of events.And then when it comes to speaking to the companies, we are asking them. So you were interested in credit rates from stem. Fields of studies. What’s your employer branding strategy. What’s your talent management strategy and how can we come together? We have all these kinds of possibilities which one works best your internal strategy.And then we have those sports, some of the classic job fair, where we have companies taking part and inviting students to meet with competence with or at the child care that’s like describes it. Very briefly what we saw. Right.

TIMEA: I would like to go into I think the project that you got started last year voice of diversity I think this is maybe also very interesting to our listeners.So how come it came to the topic of diversity? And what are the projects that you offer?

SUSANNE: See, I mean, we have like our basic events, like the job fair, because we know that’s what companies want to do. And we know that’s a good opera for students to orientate themselves for future employers. But then additionally, we always see ourselves being responsible to put topics on display that are relevant for like, So society in a working context.And when speaking about diversity, I mean, look at all the webpages out there. Every single company will somehow has adversity implement, implemented within the strategy, right? So they all say it’s very important for them to encourage women, people from different nationalities and whatsoever And his relative within diversity, but then speaking to the students we very often heard, like, you know, I’m a woman and I just applied for this civil engineering job and I knew constant or immediately within the interview that they were reject me just because I’m a woman.Of course they didn’t say that, but I felt it, or someone else said, like, I knew that, or for example, me and my colleagues spent with the job fair, we approach company X Y Z and they constantly spoke to my colleague who was obviously European to me, obviously by being, I don’t know, from some Arabic countries, they didn’t really talk to me.So there’s a gap between what companies would like to represent and offer and what student experience. So we thought it would be a really great idea to take these very often unconscious bias. That’s a topic and put them in this event format. And I think I really love that idea because I mean, speaking about biases, there’s like conscious prejudices.Okay. We can work on them because of course companies notice prejudices. They can have trainings to raise awareness and everything, but then there’s unconscious bias and that happens to all of us. And of course that happens in recruiting as well. Perceive these different kinds of information, like gender name, nationality, religion.He, she looks like me or is similar to me or is the opposite. There’s this halo effect. There’s so many biases out there and they mostly run unconsciously. So recruiting decisions are very often made upon these unconscious biases. What we now did is we Develop this project where we have a recruiting event and we have it supported with together with Institute of technology and science at the TU.So they do really do the research and the scientific work. And what came out is a recruiting. When we’re in the first step you only speak with the companies without giving your name without. The company, knowing your gender, your nationality. So nothing just perfect. Right? You’ll feel the study, your experience.That’s it. That’s what companies know from you by now. It’s like some kind of chat. So company representatives and students get to know each other through a chat function.

TIMEA: And this you moved into chat because of the COVID situation and moving online.

SUSANNE: No. I think that was because that was the most objective way of doing it because we were thinking of having like some curtain between us having the voice made not recognizable anymore.But then we ended up in working together with just research support to end up doing the chat as being the most or the best solution for us. Yeah. It’s a very interesting, yeah, very, yeah. I mean, what’s happened through the first event post, for example, that one recruited and said, well, through the first phase of the church recruiting he was very sure that this for example, would be a man.And then when getting to know each other, it was like really surprised seeing a woman. And that was a big aha effect for him. Of course. And that does something with us. Yeah. And I think that’s important, important work that we have to do like to put these things on display because very often we don’t want to be discriminating, but teachers are unconsciously.So that’s an important thing to do. And we’re actually repeating this event very soon. So if there’s any students out there being interested I think this time it’s, especially for computer science students, I’m not quite sure, but I think it is. So if there’s any students out there being interested in doing this experiment I think the easiest way would be to go on our webpage to career.com for the further details.There’s a deadline for registration, I think next week. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll have a look. And if you’re interested to go for the experiment, I think it’s a good experiment and experience.

TIMEA: We’re going to make sure to put all the links in the show notes. I think that’s what one wants to say. And also this, well a week when we, we we’ll air this podcast in a few days but by then we will already have promoted the event on our channels.And I think indeed what I understood the audience is mostly for tech the tech industry. So if there are any people actually tell us, is it only for students or is it a, also other young professionals or, I mean, yeah.

SUSANNE: Why not? I’m not quite sure I’m not in the lead of this project, but thinking of it.Yeah. Why not? Yeah, it might. I’m saying I’m not quite sure because I didn’t have the conversation or the briefings with the companies. So I don’t know what their expectations are, but I’d say they should go for it.

TIMEA: Yeah. In the target message. It says students but if there is somebody looking for an it job and really, really need some help, I think they can contact you anyway.

SUSANNE: They can contact us anyway. Yeah, that’s what our mission is right to a company or to support young people entering the top market. To get orientation for that career planning. That’s what we do and that’s what we really like to do. And that’s what we can do.

RAMÓN: Amazing. Thank you so much for her promoting this.One question that I have on behalf of our listeners is as a, do I need to, is this a German only speaking event or is it also an English?

SUSANNE: This event is in English as well. Yeah. Cool. But that’s a good question because I know that for example, organizing other events like workshops we are very often facing.This kind of problem there. So diversity sometimes ends here. Yeah. But having companies taking part in some, he wins, when the representatives come to these events, they are like being surprised. Also we briefed them that they have to, maybe I switched to English from plan to plan. Yeah. So. That’s the first obstacle when speaking about diversity very well.

RAMÓN: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I think, you know, this is, this is something that we’re seeing a lot in, in in, in areas that are trying to increase inclusivity by doing things like, like you said, this double-blind approach of like having just a chat box. I think that’s fantastic. One thing that this reminds me of things of steps that other.Institutions are trying to enact, for example, conferences like software conferences. What they’ll do is, and we, we, I think we’ve done this a few times at women tech makers as well is to remove all identifiable data from, from a speaker. So all we get is the title of the talk, the description of the talk, and then we.Vote on which ones we like according to that. And I think this, this, this helps, like you say, not completely removed because it’s impossible to remove these unconscious biases, but to mitigate them.

SUSANNE: Yeah. And to make them conscious and to be able to reflect upon them. Because if you don’t know that you’re having them and then you can make decisions upon them you cannot change anything.But if you realize that you just had some kind of unconscious bias, you can adapt. Reflect upon it. I think that’s really, really important. Absolutely. I mean, that happens to me as well. Like, I don’t know. I didn’t use to be like the, because all gendering language, like having All the differentiations between female and male pronunciation.But then when I realized, when speaking of, I dunno, some certain professions, like I was speaking about whatever and in my mind I realized I was only thinking about male politics. And that’s the point when I started to really use a differentiated language, because it does something to you. And for example, here comes the thing with my daughter.I realized at a very, very early age that she always, when we were having a conversation, for example, under speaking about, let’s say (fireman in German), and she was like automatically saying and (firewoman)I was like, yeah, that’s good. She, I mean, I don’t know. It will be interesting to see if this changes during time or if that’s something that is already.Coming natural in this new generation. I don’t know. It will be interesting to see and to follow this development.

RAMÓN: Absolutely. Just to, just to make sure that I got this in English as well, German is not my first language. I’ll admit. So what you were saying was talking about a fire man, and you were saying, and, and your daughter was following up with you and fire or fire woman, is that correct?No, no, no, no problem. Just making sure. I just making sure I capture that. And that’s, that’s something we’re seeing a lot of recently. And in fact, the mayor and I have a bit of a book club going on with this with this podcast. We’re reading the book, invisible women by Carolyn Craido Perez. And there are a lot of these, a lot of these data points are being brought up about how much better, for example, on job ads.If you put a stock photo say for assigned, like, look for, say, you’re still looking for a scientist and you put up a a picture of a man on the job, on the job ad. Then you’re a number of of, of, of people who identify as women applying comes way down. Well, and conversely, if you put, if you put a picture of a woman, then it goes, it almost 10 times is itself.And, and these are these, like you said, are these unconscious biases that I think by having these conversations by, by exposing our children, to, for example, having your, your, your, your daughter already be questioning these things and being as supposed to us also reflects backs back on us, even though we try to be as inclusive as possible, all these things that we learned as children.And, and, you know, reflected in our language, like you said, the fact that the fact that, you know, when you, when you, when, when you think of like the subtle changes, like police officer from policemen, they make a difference.

SUSANNE: Of course. Yeah. But yeah, as you just said, it depends on your own socialization as well, because that’s the moments when you realize, oh, also I really try to be Really reflective about upon it very well.I’m not. Yeah. So it’s a really long process coming along with this. Yeah. And

RAMÓN: I think I, yeah, I agree. 100%. I think the best thing we can do as people is when confronted by our own Follies, in our thinking, do we double down and say, no, I’m just, this is the way I learned it. I’m going to keep it this way.Or do we reflect and say, huh? I’ve been wrong. I’m going to what word from this line of thinking and try to be more inclusive. And this is why, for example, doing this podcast has been so, so, so enlightening for Timea and myself, because we’ve been confronted with concepts that we’re not familiar with. That as we’ve mentioned in past episodes, make us uncomfortable and we just acknowledge it.That discomfort fighting. It is not something we can do, but by acknowledging it and reflecting on it, that’s how we learn. And we grow as human beings.

SUSANNE: Yeah, I think that’s such a much, excuse me. That’s such a much better concept than always being into fighting moments, right? Like that’s my position and I’m against I’m in favor, but acknowledging that there’s differences, acknowledging that we might have made mistakes in the past and then to reflect upon it, that’s the way to go or change it.Yeah. Sorry. Yes.

TIMEA: No, no problem. I was recalling that yesterday evening. I was in a meetup, the monthly meetup from fem chat, and this is a group of engaged great people over available that also invite to different conversations from a research perspective on different topics. And it just happened that last night.The conversation about was about inclusive language. And there were two different point of views presented and. Yeah. I had to realize that there are still people that out there Don’t really well, I don’t, they don’t agree basically with being an E with star, with DAPL Puente writing to try to, to add somehow gender discussions, to the words we use in, in German, because.Well, that’s the German language or people. This was a quote from the presentation that was like, is this even still German as a language is still, is it still correct? You know? So people that really have really down to earth. Concerns also when it comes to this point. And then also there was a point about the fact that some for example, women don’t want to be highlighted actually that I’m a female CEO.No, I’m a CEO. Please don’t make me fem preneur. And I don’t know what it, or femme, whatever kind of words in France. So there’s in the society is sort of like a movement up and down. That goes with this fight against it, somehow at fun, very interesting to put a bigger perspective on what’s going on. So every individual basically can have the, has their own opinion.And I think I’m going to throw mine in the pot. And, and I think it has to do for me a lot with the unconscious bias because. If we don’t use the star or the doppelpunkt, the semi-colon to, in our writing, or we don’t stop to say police woman because of our unconscious bias, it can be that in a few days, weeks, a year month we discriminate automatically.And we don’t even realize, right. This is actually why, what it is about. Okay. So

SUSANNE: we are a decent page with that. I mean I can understand both parties. Yeah. I see that this advantages with being that sends a PIP about language and the lay out obstacles, it brings along for example But yeah, I think it’s about the discussion.You can have the current opinions, but having a discussion, you put topics on this, they want to do, and then you can push things forward with you. And as long as you know, the stand up female CEO, that doesn’t want to be promoted as female CEO, I fully understand that she’s a CEO because she’s got all the experience and competence.I completely understand, but I think we’re in the process. And as long as we are not as many women in decision-making positions, having the power as much as men do, this is just the vehicle or means of pointing out to the problem, to this situation. Having like an equal 50 50 situation, I think there shouldn’t be any.Female or male C O pointing out any more yeah, because it’s about being authentic and individual person and having the individual competencies for this position that you’re having. Yeah.

RAMÓN: I am reminded in our conversation of this line of t-shirts that I, that was really, that was really trendy in the, in the conference scene.It’s all pre conference seen before before we had to stay home for a little while. And that is before time. I’m reminded of a t-shirt line that I really liked, which was sh fitted and cut line of t-shirts right? That say the, the fitted one said programmer and the w what was the other one called the fitted and straight cut of t-shirts.Right. And the, and the straight one said male programmer. And, and just, just, just to sort of like challenge this, this internal bias we have of when we think of software engineers and female software engineers, as you said. And I think, I think having this pushback is going to, I think, I think having this as Timea called it an up and down and ebb and flow of how language evolves.And I think, I think the thing that people don’t realize is that language does evolve 20 years ago. The concept of Googling something didn’t exist. Right. I forget how old I am, but yeah,further back in my head, 10 years, it’s still 1990. You know, and, and, and language does evolve and, and like this, this ebb and flow, this pushback, like I think it was two, one or two years ago that the, that the academy of French language was considering eliminating gender less gendered language from, from, from, from the language itself. And that didn’t pan out.But I think the fact that this conversation was had does have to say something for where things could head. And I think being receptive, being open, like, like we’re having here an open discussion about what we think is, is works for us. Doesn’t work for us is the only way to make it work. And the solution we come up with today, it’s probably not going to be the best solution in five or seven or 10 years.Absolutely. Yeah.

SUSANNE: Yeah. And I think it’s not about finding this solution. It’s about having. Accessibility for everyone. And that’s the point, right? I’m so not in favor of women being like Lola and then being like Bella it’s like everyone should be able or allowed to be authentic and be him or herself, but we were always tend to speak about Women should be like this.How can we offer women more? I believe he used to not work as much part then as they do now, how can we know a woman should be able to decide whether she wants to work? Part-time whether she doesn’t want to work at all, because now she’s having children and wants to be with them, or if she wants to return to full-time position up the one week of the giving birth, but she should have all the possibilities to decide.We don’t have these possibilities and that’s, that’s a problem. There’s so many possibilities out. There are so many, like my food truck sharing might be something else. I think that’s the main challenges that we are facing now. And.

TIMEA: I completely agree. It’s about having the option now. It needs to happen.And then we see the, you know, how does the result look like being any dump it, boom, whatever

SUSANNE: you find yourself. That’s up to you, but as long as we don’t have this equivalent, Situation. I think we will always need to discuss, need to fight me to position ourselves, need to be in conversation like this.If we had like a 50, 50 at least situation, I think all his problems would be solved by them. That’s my ideal idea. Or thinking of it like this. Yeah.

RAMÓN: Yeah, one, one thing I see a lot going around is, is this concept of, of not so much having a high priority on equality, but rather on equity while equality is still on, on, on the horizon.And I think that’s something to bear in mind that giving folks the opportunity to be authentic, have an authentic life that works for them is going to be the challenge moving forward that we need to address.

SUSANNE: Yeah. Absolutely.

RAMÓN: I realized that I could, I could talk about this stuff all day, but I also want to give you an opportunity to also platform your, your other projects. You’re working on Susanne at the two career center. What, what other what other projects and events are you working on?

SUSANNE: Yeah, I’d love to share that. I mean Being a skewed and graduate, or just coming from like the stem field.If you think of your career or retired patient, or you’re planning your entering the job market or changing a job all these topics around career and child planning services, think of us We’re offering all kinds of counseling and coaching training settings that you can think of. And we’re all coming as all that we are working in counseling.They’re all coming from HR background. So we know what you’re talking about. Maybe that’s important to know as well. Besides those counseling and training possibilities, we do offer a lot of events throughout the year. So, I mean, follow us on Facebook or wherever Instagram, I don’t know where we are online, which channel, but, or just go to, tucareer.com and see which events are coming up.Just don’t hesitate to contact us because if we can help, we can help. But usually if you have some questions regarding shopping career planning, we can help very well. And we like to assist or support. Young people finding their way into their ideal career.

TIMEA: I’ll ask you one point about maybe relate to not related to project events.Since you finished your master’s thesis on job sharing. Do you see a change in the industry on picking this up more? Is there any change towards it or away from it?

SUSANNE: No. I partially see a change and I think. That has very much to do with the so-called war of tell it’s out there. Right? I mean, companies, if they don’t have to, if they always have enough applications coming in, they choose the easiest way because that’s how a system works.It always chooses the easiest way to structure and organize itself. But seeing that there’s not enough applications coming in, that there is. Especially in stem, right? People are so much wanted from that field. So PE companies really need to adapt. And of course, I mean, recruiters are people in the HR or a single persons within the companies always wanted with the FMO to offer different working models.Because of course they knew that women that then were in for maternity leave and wanted to come back and. Couldn’t into her former position because then would have asked for full time plus extra hours. So they’re single persons that always wanted to support and encourage these kinds of models. But now the company itself is really forced to adapt because if they don’t do so, they won’t find the applicants they need.So I think they will be changed and there is change. But, yeah, it’s still challenging. Even if a company has a real right. Diversity strategy implemented when you speak to the recruiter, then, then he, or she says like, well, you know, yeah, that all sounds very good with diversity, but I know that I cannot place a team member within this team that only speaks English.It will not work. Or I know that placing a woman within this team, it will not work. It’s still a lot of challenges, but there’s things changing as well. I think so. Yeah, quite a lot. Especially with all the young people entering the job market that are, I think more, self-confident knowing much better what they want them, but they don’t want that try things as well.So better I’ll

TIMEA: Wow. Thank you for the analysis on that aspect. I’m I’m. Looking ahead to see what happen once further. I know there’s a company in Germany that focuses on trying to place the shared job job kind of people that was exciting to see happening now, if there is a market for it, I just don’t know, especially in Austria, if it’s open yet to this or not.Yeah, I mean, some of

SUSANNE: them are. Conservative companies that were having installed or had that they installed this model. And like the, the common bottom line was like, if there was one decision making person in the background that really wanted it, that really wanted to enable that model it was introduced and it works.You could don’t have the management in the background supporting. A certain strategy or model or whatever, it will never work out. I think

TIMEA: this is in general with most of often, especially in diversity and inclusion.

SUSANNE: Wow.

TIMEA: Thank you for your thoughts on the topics. I’m I have a personal interest on this matters also because of what I’m doing in the startup, but let’s get back to our podcast, I suppose which we’ve been at it for a while now.So. We always like, like to ask towards the end of the recording, if you have any favorite I don’t know, resources in some way, book, person that you follow events, podcasts, anything, if you would like to give a shout out to anything that anyone who inspires you on your path,

SUSANNE: I’ve been thinking about it.I mean, I think there is. Many out there, but I think it always depends in which kind of niche you are at the moment. I mean, there’s like networks or women generally, but then of course, there’s networks for women, young women, for example, and bring the top market. Like for us, we are in a lot of HR communities.Yeah. Or me personally, I’m listening to a lot of coaching podcast just because I like to, so I don’t know if there’s one specific One, I mean like podcasts, like you do are really great. I would say then what I realized for the last year, there’s a lot of coaching offers online at the moment that are for free.So there’s so many interesting trainings and workshops for women. Doing the career planning for people wanting to start their own business. There’s so many possibilities out there. That’s something that I really enjoy and that I would really recommend to do some research. And then, yeah, just being the network that’s used to best for your life phase.And that might change the time. I would say.

RAMÓN: That’s wonderful. Do you have any names of of, of. Podcasts or, or communities that, that you’d like to name drop here. And we can share with our guests with our listeners or maybe share them later. We can put them in the show notes.

SUSANNE: Yeah. Let me have a look at my Spotify podcast list and I’ll share with you later on, because I don’t like switching type between all coaching podcasts that I’m listening to them.Make sure that I’d get some that I would really recommend. I know it’s

RAMÓN: fascinating with notes. Thank you,

SUSANNE: buddy. Yeah, maybe wait. I got. Yeah, that’s here. That’s something. If you ever plan to maybe thinking of a new career because I think having a wonderful or good career is more than knowing what your technical interest in.That’s a book that I can really recommend. That’s it’s working identity. I’ll send you the link in your email. That’s a really nice book because it describes very well. The process of how you can reinvent your career or you can self-reflect on your interests. What motivates you and how you can get going?That’s something that I really enjoyed reading, for example,

RAMÓN: that is excellent. Thank you so much. Well, Susanna, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on. How if I, if I, if I wanted to get in touch with you or get in touch with the to career center, what’s the best place for for me to go.

SUSANNE: Mm. If you want to get in touch with me regarding counseling or coaching, it would be best to write to at [email protected]. If you want to just get in touch with me, you can contact me for example, by email or by my LinkedIn profile. But you will find very easy.

RAMÓN: Excellent. Well, again, it’s been wonderful.Thank you so much. And

SUSANNE: thank you. That’s really nice. With this new stuff with

RAMÓN: figuring it out as we go

TIMEA: yes. Learning while doing jumping in the cold water. Yes. Have a wonderful rest of the day and

SUSANNE: keep in touch. Yeah, we’ll certainly be in touch. Bye. Bye bye.

TIMEA:Are you on the forefront of gender equality? You are invited on our podcast.

RAMÓN:That’s right. Or maybe you know somebody that we could have a chat with on gender quality. You should totally get in touch with us. We’re on Twitter @GenderCoffee. Or any of the other contact methods on our show notes, we would love you to get in touch and for us to have a chat.

Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTqIicjZjgM

Tina has been working in recruiting for more than 14 years, filling various expert and management roles throughout EMEA in technical industries. Making a difference in people’s lives is what drives her every day in finding the right talents for her clients.

Being a mother of two girls, female empowerment is very important to her, Tina is a mentor with the female factor and she recently started an initiative to make women more visible in the IT industry. Interviews with role models will inspire other women and girls on their way to a career in IT. A contribution to raise gender equality and finding out what women need in order to be satisfied and successful in their professional environment.

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tina-landreau-91b5333/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tinalandreau_/
• Women in tech initiative / #hr4wit (Tina’s podcast and blog):
• https://www.apsa.at/hr-for-women-in-tech-hr4wit/
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqA3dkNO064N7CJoACLwqVA

Shoutouts:

• Invisible women book by caroline Criado Perez: https://carolinecriadoperez.com/book/invisible-women/
• Good night stories for rebel girls: https://www.rebelgirls.com/products/good-night-stories-for-rebel-girls
• Brené Brown: The Call to Courage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr-WvA7uFDQ
• Female Factor community where Tina mentors: https://www.femalefactor.global/
• Another great initiative where to get a mentor: https://www.womentor.at/
• Community for women in IT in Vienna: https://thenewitgirls.com/

TIMEA:Hey Ramón!

RAMÓN:Hey Timea!

TIMEA:Let’s talk gender equality.

RAMÓN:I love the idea. Gimme a second. I just got to grab my coffee. I hope you’ve got yours too.

TIMEA:Yeah, right here.

RAMÓN: Hello, and welcome to another episode of gender equality over coffee. I’m so excited to have you all here today. Thank you for tuning in. My name is Ramon , she’s Timea, and today we’ve got the pleasure of having on Tina.

TINA: Hi Ramón. Hi Timea. Yeah, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for your invitation.

RAMÓN: Let’s let’s introduce you, Tina. We, we were so excited to have so many wonderful guests and you’re just another wonderful one. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe pronouns what your background is and three fun facts about yourself.

TINA: Yeah. My name is Tina I grew up in Austria, in Southern Burgenland in a very, very small village. And I I now live in the suburbs of Vienna together with my husband and my two girls, which are also big in my motivation for me to reach gender equality and yeah, three facts about me. One is that I met my husband and my best friends abroad all of them.So, or in a language course I was like I said, I grew up in the countryside in a very, very small, village. I was the first one to go to university from my family and growing up in the village, I was. Always looking for something more, you know, I loved to have people around me that were different, that came from another country or who had like yeah, different views.And then I studied at the Vienna university of economics and business administration, and I loved to learn languages. So I learned. Of course English, French and Russian, and my exchange semester was in Russia. And that’s where I met my husband. He’s French, by the way, as well. And and I met my best friend who is yeah, on my side since then as well.She’s Austrian. And as I grew up very close to the Austrian border now to the Hungarian border, I also decided to learn Hungarian at university. So I went to summer college in Hungary in summer, and that’s where I met my another best friend and another one as well. So yeah, there, I’d say two facts.That what I met my, my, my closest friends abroad, and I also learned seven languages. I was always I wanted to learn as soon as I went somewhere. I just found it. Respectful to know how to, you know, how to buy something in a supermarket or to ask for for something in a shop, in a restaurant in the, in the country’s language.So that was my motivation to, to learn languages. Yeah, so I learn seven languages and I’m not able to speak them anymore because, you know, if you don’t use it. You just forget it. So now it’s just English, French, and German. Yeah, then another fact I think that not so many people know about me is when I got pregnant, pregnant with my first child, there were a lot of things going on.In my head, you know, asking myself, am I on the right way, being in recruiting for eight years already. And I’ve been traveling a lot. I at very stressful, interesting, but very stressful job back then. So. I decided to do a training, to become a shiatsu practitioner, you know, this shiatsu massage, it’s the bodywork therapy.And that really helped me to come closer to myself in you and to, to learn more about my body. And yeah, that was really important part of my life because I grew a lot. During this time, but the recruiting part never left me. So I had to go back to recruiting after my maternity leave. And and also of the second after the second maternity leave.And yeah, this is what I’m doing for 14 years now.

RAMÓN: That is remarkable. Thank you. I have so many follow-up questions. If I, if you don’t mind indulging me first off. So it’s counting right? English, German, French Hungarian, Russian. What were the other two? Cause you said seven. Sorry.

TINA: Ukranian, because I went to recruit Ukraine for twice in the summer college.And the first time I, I went there, it wasn’t the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine and the Eastern part. And the second time it was in, in the Western part of Ukraine, you speak Ukrainian. And that’s also where I learned Ukranian and and then I learned Spanish because I just love Spain.And you know, if you know French, and if you knew Spanish, it’s very easy to, to speak Italian well, to understand Italian as well. So yeah.

RAMÓN: Absolutely. I’m originally from Chile, so I know exactly what you mean. Like learning French from Spanish was I felt like I had an advantage over my classmates back in high school.Definitely. That’s awesome. I’m also curious. What , what made you land on, on shiatsu massage as, as a potential new direction?

TINA: I think it was just A very spontaneous decision. I always thought that I can only work with my brain and that’s what my peop my parents told me. They said, you know, you’re so clever.You have to go to U of a university. You have to do something with with your brain. So I really felt that I’m too much. Thinking, you know, and I’m coming to something that brings you back to your body. I’m an, I always loved to have massages. I went to see she answered before or any kind of buddy work and just loved it.And I always thought I can, I can not do it. It’s just not my my thing to do that. And then when I got pregnant, I just decided to go on a “Schnupperabend” the way you can just go and see. And the the head of this Institute, he said well, he described the course and then he said, well, and then I sit down together with another partner and then we just try some things.And then we tried some shiatsu techniques, you know, you work with pressure and you work on on the clothes. And. And I just, you know, I was flashed after this experience because I thought it was so calming for yourself, for me, you know, in, in practicing it, not only in receiving it, but also in giving it.So that was a really nice experience. And I also got to know people from so many different domains and, and backgrounds and that was a very Very nice environment also too, to have that, besides the one that I knew before, you know,

RAMÓN: that’s, that’s really interesting. Thank you. And I think, I think this, this, if I may use this as a, as a segue, I think, I think that I get the feeling that you have a, a bit of a passion for trying things out and, and getting out there, which.Probably ties into your drive behind volunteering and especially because especially your interest in mentorship. And I, and I’m curious, what’s, I’m curious. What’s, what’s your, what’s your driver there? What, what how’d you get into it into this, into, into mentorship?

TINA: I think I have to go back a little bit Well, my mom just recently told me that she she told me when I was 15, that I was a feminist because she asked me to, to help her in the kitchen.And I said, I won’t do anything until my dad doesn’t do anything. Because my dad never helped in the household, you know, and I forgot that. I forgot about that, but you know, my mom said you were always a feminist, you know, it’s not just now that she’s doing that. So I kind of had. Well already back then, I had the feeling that there is some inequality that we live and and working in recruiting and always been working in male domains in the first years I’ve been working in the construction industry a lot.Well, industrial companies, automotive as well. And I’ve been hiring a lot of management positions throughout Europe, also the middle East South America and Africa. And that’s rarely seen women in those positions. And I also experienced unfortunately yeah, clients telling me that they would prefer a man and back then, I didn’t dare to, to raise my voice and to say that this is not possible, what I did instead.I still placed women and showed them that they were the best ones for this job, because this is what I’m doing. I find the best people. And I will not exclude anyone because of gender age or yeah. Where, where the people come from. And so it, it was all always there, there was always this wish to, to empower others no matter who they are, what they are, what they do.And, you know, I have two girls they’re three and six years old and they inspire me in so many ways. And yeah, just last year. I had the feeling that I’m I have to do more. So it’s just everything I did. It was okay. But there was this big wish to do more. And it was, again, a very spontaneous decision.I saw the female factor on LinkedIn and I saw that they were looking for mentors. And I went on their website and I applied without thinking further. And when I did it, I was really excited. And then I got into the process and they told me that I was approved as a mentor. So since October and I’m in the mentoring program, I have a mentee that yeah, helping in her journey since then.And when it started that I was really on fire. You know, that is one of my, if I’m really passionate, I’m I’m, I feel like I’m almost exploding because there is so many ideas coming up and Yeah. And then I started going to network events that are online now. Thanks to Covid. And as a mom, I can be able to, to to be on more events now.And and then I, yeah, I just was more and more inspired. And so all those women And I felt like what could be my contribution to do more and to to also well, to reach gender equality and to create more visibility for women. Because also I read invisible women back then and that also triggered a lot.And and then I decided I could as I’m working in it, yes, really great book. I work in it recruiting. Now you should read it. Yeah, in it recruiting, we do see women and we do place around 20% women, but Yeah, that’s not enough. And I thought this is my domain now. So this is where I can have the biggest impact.And I decided to find women in tech who are willing to tell their story to inspire others. And and then I told ‘em. My colleagues and my managers about it. And they were just open for it and said, go for it. So our in organizational environment is also. Very open-minded and we’re very dedicated to the new way of work.And well, what, what I hear a lot in our feedback meetings is what would you do? What would like to do, you know, is there anything that, that you still need to be happy in your job? Yeah. To, to do really find happiness and yeah, so there was never a question of how do we do that? Do we have the resources?It was just afraid and, and yeah, that’s what I did. And I was, again my daughter and in the moment where I was about to post on LinkedIn, that I will do it that I will interview women. That was back in January. My daughter woke up at five 30 in the morning and her first question was she’s a six year old, two years old and she said, how.Did humans well develop on this, on this planet. How did that go? And I thought, Oh my God, five 30. You’re talking about evolution and not an easy thing, you know, describing it to six year old and then thought I just use Google to show her the The evolution picture, you know, that we all know and that we never questioned.And she looked at it and she said, you know, you see the the homosapiens becoming, well, the person that we had, the man that we are now dies. And she said, where there are no women before on earth. And that really hit me. It was, it was through the whole day. I was just like. You know, it’s again, a very easy symbol of invisible women.And I Googled it. I tried to Google evolution of women and show again, show me pictures when there is none. There is no picture about that. So. Yeah, that was a confirmation for me that is really important to show, not only adults, but to show the next generation of the girls that there are so many possibilities for you as a girl as well.Because it just shows that if you’re a child, you believe in what you see and Yeah. And then after this happening with the evolution, I I went out there and LinkedIn too. I reached out to, to all the women who are willing to, to share their stories and Timea is one of them as well. And yeah, I really see.A big impact. So many women coming back to me and saying, this is such a great thing. And we need more role models or telling me I didn’t have a role model. It wouldn’t have helped me so much. So now I’m in, I’m in that term in journey and I’m really, I’m so happy to talk to all these women and hearing their story, hearing what worked for them, hearing what they missed and hearing what is still an obstacle for, for women in the industry.Yeah, I just love, I just love doing that and, and seeing that it, that it creates something. Yeah, it’s fine. Yeah.

TIMEA: Thank you very much for inviting me to be a guest on your podcast. Because that’s what, it’s this whole motivation and passion converges into at work for you.

RAMÓN: If I may just briefly interject for our listeners, can we get can you tell us the name of the podcast again?

TINA: Well we, we use the #hr4wit, and you can also find the, the interviews on our YouTube channel. The company is called APSA personal concepts, and abso stands for all people shall advance. Which is also an important fact and you can get in touch with me on LinkedIn. Of course.That’s where, where I spent a lot of time.

TIMEA: Yes. That’s how it all started. I saw a post of yours on LinkedIn and some friends of mine. Already commented on that beforehand. And I was also tagged in one of these comments and that’s how we finally got to engaged. And thank you for inviting me on your podcast.It was really fantastic to be a guest for a change on a podcast.

TINA: It was great having you. And,

TIMEA: My friend also talks to your podcast and I’ve seen also the previous ones and I’m like honored to be mentioned. And part of that, the group of amazing women here locally, so fantastic. What’s your passion, and I’m also happy that this was possible for you in adopts.So really amazing. Altogether an inspirational story of what passion and drive drives innovation basically can concretely mean for a company or for the community.

TINA: Yeah. And I really felt, you know, in the past weeks there were so many ideas coming up against I feel like everyone around me is like, Oh my God, slow down a bit.I have, I have a lot of people supporting me thankfully. And my husband also is he’s my sparing partner here because he’s very innovative as well. And we will we will also work on the event within the next weeks where. People can meet their role models. You will hear about that in the coming weeks, because I feel that this is also something that that would again inspire others, not only to see them in on a video or to read their blog posts but also to be able to connect with with those women and to ask questions directly.

TIMEA: That’s a very good idea. I like, and we gladly support such endeavors for our community. So we’re make sure to put all these links to the podcast also to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes for our listeners. Yeah.

TINA: Thank you

TIMEA: And I just want to underline again. I love how you told us the story about.Your girls and how that inspires you. I find that really amazing kids can be a lot of things for us. But rarely I, in my circle, at least I find this like concrete. Point of yes, we need to do more for the next generation is actually that’s what it boils down to. But you also have some amazing girls at home.challenging questions, right? Like, okay. Where’s the woman in the evolution. There’s no picture about that. Yeah.

TINA: Yeah. It’s like that also the small one starts telling me things like no, but. You know, he can’t use a boy in, in her kindergarten. Well, he can wear a pink. He’s a boy, you know, as well, he can’t wear a pink.Of course he can, but it already, sorry. It’s at a very early stage. And I mean, this is the stereotypes. It’s really not easy because. My two girls, they just love princesses and they love to, to wear pink. It’s absolutely. Okay. As long as they feel that they can still become like a police woman or I don’t know any other child that is rather male than than, than female.Goodnight stories for rebel girls to them. I don’t know if you need, if you know that book, it’s brilliant. I mean they’re a bit too small to really understand a word by word. Because the Lang, well, I think it’s from the age of nine, 10 years, it will be understandable, but it’s, it shows 100 women and their stories in one page and it’s written for children.And you, you see women like that we know now today is or it’s Michelle Obama or it’s Ruth Bader Ginsberg 100 women. We already, I think we already read like 80 of them and many of those are. Scientists. That’s what I like about the book as well, because you, they chose a lot of a lot of women who studied maths or informatics as well.And and yeah, it, it, it raises awareness about the things that. Women experienced like 100 years ago or 50 years ago. And yeah, I find it really important to, to show my girls that they have all the possibilities.

TIMEA: Exactly. And I think you’re doing that amazingly well and not just for your girls, for the whole community, with HR, for wheat podcasts, and hopefully then event that you’re looking to create in the community.So kudos. Keep it going. Amazing.

RAMÓN: yeah, all of this is going right into the show notes. I’m, I’m incredibly excited to share this with the, with our listeners.

TIMEA: Indeed by the way. Do you have any, any other advice for our listeners in any way books for parents, for kids or events or women or,

TINA: One.Book or one woman that inspired me a lot is Brenae Brown.

TIMEA: Fantastic.

TINA: I saw her you can also watch our Netflix actually see, she has a one Netflix show. She does Ted talks. That’s how she got well, that’s how she became famous and she’s studying shame and vulnerability and in her Netflix show, she said one sentence that hit me as well.She said, what if you at the end of your life you asked yourself what if I would have shown up, you know because many of us are hiding are not being authentic because of the expectations of others or any other reason, the way we are educated and so on. And vulnerability is is something that is.Or showing vulnerability is not easy. It was not easy for me to, to go out there and LinkedIn and say, this is what I’m going to do. I didn’t sleep for nights because this is an act of vulnerability. You show part of yourself, you know, of, of your inner self. And also what I’m doing here today is also another step forward for me.And, but I, I really see that first of all, if you, so if you be, if you are vulnerable yourself, you can inspire others to yeah. To, to reach what they would like to, to achieve and not being yeah, not, not being small because we can all be big, you know we can all live our dreams. And and for me that was one of the inspirations to, to go forward and to really do the things that I’m dreaming about and not holding myself back because of anything out there, because, you know, there were so many limitations that we give ourselves or that come from the outside.So I think that what I would hand on is always be yourself, believe in yourself and just do your thing and also talk to people about your fears because everyone has them. Everyone is afraid of something. Everyone has experienced bad things. So if you have a mentor or a friend, a sparing partner, a colleague it was just, would just be helpful to share the experience and to know from the other one that.It’s okay. And or I’ve been there too, you know, you don’t feel alone. If you hear the other stories and that is also another motivation for me to to share stories to, to make women visible with all the, everything they experienced, you know, Yeah. And also like what I do now more than that before, because it’s all online and it’s easier for me as a mom.Right. Do a lot of networking and online events. And yeah, that helped me also to, to do what I’m doing nowadays, because I have more visibility thanks to that. And I connected to men and women who have the same same motivation, the same aim. Yeah. So that would be another, another tip from myself.

RAMÓN: Thank you. You know, I, I, it’s really refreshing to hear from somebody who is who. Something I’ve noticed is that a lot of people have been, I have been kind of let down by the moral new presence by the bigger and the presence of, of, of online events. I mean, taking into account everything that’s going on, but, but it’s really refreshing to hear that there are, that there are positive aspects to it too, that it, that it enables people, for example, who might not have as much time because their parents to be able to come on to these events and have their presence out there as well.So, yeah. I think, I think that’s, I think for example, that’s that giant lesson in empathy, to be able to, to be able to maybe moving forward, be able to offer both types of events in-person and online and give folks the opportunity to get out there.

TINA: And I think that it’s, especially for introvert people, it’s easier to network online.Because if you’re not that. The extrovert outgoing going person. And you, you, you get into a conference room. Would you just go to someone and say, hi, this is who I am. I, I don’t think so. And and I experienced that as well. Like 10 years ago, I would have just stayed with my colleagues on an event and the check with them and feel like I’ve been on an event, but I never met worked with anyone because I was too afraid to to just talk to a stranger, you know, and being online and well also the possibility to write and not to talk.I think that’s also something that makes it easier to, to connect. And then you have very often you have breakout rooms where you only meet two people on the video. And and it’s a very intimate, cozy situation. And I think that this is really helpful or Yeah, men and women who don’t have the time to, to go on events they often, or who wouldn’t there.Just talking to strangers.

TIMEA: Hmm. I’m definitely curious to see how this will move ahead in the community. What will happen or will there really be hybrid conference since from now on? Let’s see,

TINA: we will see I’m curious.

TIMEA: The goal is to be inclusive. Yeah, I think that should be for all conferences.

TINA: Absolutely.

TIMEA: For I suppose for the end of the podcast, I just like to know looking back now everything. That happened in your life and everything the pandemic, everything, you know, our lives. Is there anything you would have done different or a different time in your life?

TINA: You know I told you, I studied at the WU I studied international business administration, which was not a passionate myself.I did it because my parents expected me to, to, to do. So I very often I thought I should have studied something else. I was interested in psychology. I was a lot interested in languages, obviously. Or in medicine as well. But I decided not to think that this was the wrong way because it left me where I am now.You know, I wouldn’t have gone to Russia in this moment and I wouldn’t have met my husband and so many friends. And and that also yeah, everything I learned, I mean, I can use it now. So Yeah, I will not say I wouldn’t. I would do it differently nowadays. I for many years I said, I should have done something else, but now I’m happy.I’m happy about the way that I that I’ve chosen. And another thing that I’m regretting a bit is, like I said before, like 10 years ago there were still many companies who told us we were prefer men. And I, you know, I stayed silent because a client is King and you don’t say anything. And, but I, you know, back that I was like in my late twenties it was just the first well years of work experience.So I didn’t dare saying anything now. I would say something, I would say, I tell my kind that it’s not possible to work like that. And I will, yeah, just move on. So this is something that I regret a bit, but also you know I felt like I wasn’t ready to raise my voice back then. I wasn’t ready to be vocal about about the things I believe in.So also be nice to yourself. Tell yourself that it was okay. Yeah. To, to the way you wrecked it back then. So yeah, all in all I would say I learned from every mistake and And I wouldn’t be the person that I’m now. If, if I hadn’t done the things I did in my life,

RAMÓN: if I may say by coming on, coming on to.By putting, but by putting yourself on these platforms and saying these kinds of things, what you’re kind of doing is enabling folks to who are in the position that you were 10 years ago, to be able to speak up and say, Hey, not cool. Like, you know, so, and I, and I think that carries a lot of, a lot of weight.

TINA: Yeah,

TIMEA: absolutely. Thanks for being our mentor.

TINA: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

RAMÓN: As we wrap up before we let you go, Tina, one thing I love to do is to ask you, is there, are there any resources that you’re really into lately that you’d love to share with our audience or maybe an organization that you like to give a shout out to.

TINA: I mean, obviously this podcast, everyone should listen to it. And yeah, I’m no I’m part of the, well, I’m a mentor with the female factor is so I see that the mentees there are really happy with the program. So if you’re looking for a mentor and a program Connected to that. The female factor is definitely a very interesting platform or also womentor and yeah, if you’re.

TIMEA: So exactly and your podcast

TINA: as well as well. And I’m also attending a lot of events with the new IT girls. My, so this is also a very nice platform to, to network and to meet other women in it.

TIMEA: And can I ask you for your podcast? You’re looking for women in the, in tech or not just

TINA: it’s women for now we didn’t know were released, but I mean, I also interviewed Tina Ernst who is coaching women regarding salary negotiations, because I felt that this is an important Thing as well to empower women to earn their worth.Yeah, because I see that well, on the average women ask for 10 to 20% less for the same position. So I can coach them. But if they, if they go for a job on their own and they will maybe not get the money that they Yeah, that they’re worth as a, this was important for me to, to, to show women that also empower other women.But concerning women in tech also, I I want to show the variety that you can find in it regarding positions. First of all. And also not only showing like the female leaders who, who, who are in the management positions, but more position, but also show yeah, every kind of level you can find in a company because not everyone is willing to become a team leader.And I think it’s important too, to show that diversity also within women in tech. Yes. Yeah.

TIMEA: So a shout-out to our listeners, especially women in tech. This is your chance to get out of the comfort zone and be a guest on the podcast. Tina is waiting. Yes, I am. Great.

RAMÓN: And in order to do that, folks, can you, you mentioned folks can get in touch with you through LinkedIn.That’s your preferred. That’s

TINA: where that’s where I spend most of my time. Yeah, LinkedIn is the best way to, to, to connect with me. Excellent.

TIMEA: We are make sure to put it in the show notes. Thank you. So thank you very much for being here, Tina with us today and I’m on for co-hosting as usual. And dear listeners yeah, see you next time or listen to us next time.Goodbye, everybody.

TINA: Bye-bye thank

RAMÓN: you. Bye-bye

TIMEA:Are you on the forefront of gender equality? You are invited on our podcast.

RAMÓN:That’s right. Or maybe you know somebody that we could have a chat with on gender quality. You should totally get in touch with us. We’re on Twitter @GenderCoffee. Or any of the other contact methods on our show notes, we would love you to get in touch and for us to have a chat.

Watch us on YouTube:https://youtu.be/xDXEynt4gCk

VIMÖ (Verein Intergeschlechtlicher Menschen Österreich) is the only intersex led human rights based intersex organisation in Austria. VIMÖ was founded by Alex Jürgen and Tobias Humer in 2014. VIMÖ work’s for political and social change to improve the situation of intersex people in Austria. For that reason VIMÖ is part of the Plattform Intersex Österreich, a networking platform consisting of paedagogic, therapeutic, journalistic and legal experts.With the help and information center VARGES they offer peer support for intersex people and their families as well as educational trainings for professionals and organisations.

Links:

• ViMÖ nGO website: https://vimoe.at/spenden/
• Allies: https://www.varges.at/
• Allies: https://oiieurope.org/
• Allies: https://www.okto.tv/de/tv/
• Intersex conference: https://intersex-conference.at/
• Movie recommendation: No box for me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ0mW1OQaK4
• Short film recommendation: Ponyboi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcqqaI-GJ1c

TIMEA:Hey Ramón!

RAMÓN:Hey Timea!

TIMEA:Let’s talk gender equality.

RAMÓN:I love the idea. Gimme a second. I just got to grab my coffee. I hope you’ve got yours too.

TIMEA:Yeah, right here.

RAMÓN: Welcome back everybody to another episode of gender equality over coffee. If you missed the last episode, we were joined by Luan who is here once again today, for which we are so grateful. And today we’re going to go into more detail on the organization that helps organize, which is VIMÖ. The, and I want to try to get this right. So please allow me Verein Intergeschlechtlicher Menschen Österreich . How would I do.

LUAN: Perfect.

RAMÓN: Wow. First try to I’m very happy. Thank you. Yes, Luan, please. Could you yeah, give us, give us the history of, of VIMÖ. Did you, did you found it? Stuff like this? I’d love to hear all about it.

LUAN: Yeah, so VIMÖ is the only intersex led organization in Austria. And it’s based in Linz. It always does. And in Vienna VIMÖ was founded in 2014 by Tobias Humer and Alex Jürgen. They were the first intersex, publicly open intersex people in Austria. And they founded this organization and the vision is to stop nonconsensual, intersex, surgeries, and treatments, and to give intersex people Like a discrimination free life and in, in Austria. Yeah. What we are doing. So we do many different kinds of work. So basically from community work, We we make events. We also had already, I think three intersex conference is the first one was in Salzburg and the second and the third one was in Vienna in, in, in Rathaus.To get with the must anti-discrimination office of the city of Vienna. We also have, of course just intersex only events. Where we meet where we can talk right now, of course, every single online, but it’s very important also to go further the step in the time of the pandemic, because intersex people are most of intersex people. They’ve very isolated. So it’s really important to meet with them, even though it’s online. Of course, we also do a lot of peer counseling. So we have a group we like have peer counselors where people can come and just talk with us and to find ways for them, how to cope with the situation with the history. with, The part of they found out they are intersex and they found out what happened to them when they were a child, but also of course topics of how can I change my gender marker and things like we do a lot of education. We were in schools in universities. We also work To get of his companies, how they can be more open like also on the part of language what is important, how they should speak and you know, Or like, you know, names of chosen names or that like everybody should put their pronouns and a signature of email address or things like that.Of course we are doing a lot of political work. We. We try to work together with with the green party, with the social Democrats with Neos to change. Change the life of intersex people in Austria. It’s not always easy. As I said in the last episode that the gender marker was just possible because I’ve actually been to court, so had three years of court process and it was just. Then possible. So we hope we do not need that for the stop for intersex, nonconsensual, intersex, surgeries, and treatments. Yeah. What else did we do so much?

TIMEA: I just want to say, wow. First of all, because you were founded a year, basically after we were, as with women Techmakers Vienna, but you did, you have a lot more impact and reach than we ever wanted or dreamed of having how many people are involved in the organization in order to have such a reach. And is everybody a volunteer basis?

LUAN: How many people are we?

TIMEA: And I mean, now the people who actually do the events and yeah,

LUAN: yeah. Like public out people, we are six. Right now we are six. Two are. Going in the part off the retiring as activists. So they say they have done, they have done enough. And the, they did a little break or

TIMEA: we also have our alumni’s.

LUAN: Absolutely. So we are six. Huh. People, they are actually do all the organizing stuff and the education and peer counseling and everything for VIMÖ in the peer counseling. We also have two parents, they do peer counseling for parents, for intersex people. And as I also said last time and and When I was in your show we also have like the platform, intersex, crystallize, where we have volunteers, they help us. And I think they are, we are also right now, like six, like plus the six from VIMÖ. So altogether we are 12. I think if I did not count right now,

TIMEA: definitely not 60 people or a hundred people that drive this super motivated impact. So that’s actually really impressive.

LUAN: Yeah. Yes. And until 2019, it was everything on volunteer basis. And now we have now we have a part-time position and getting geringfügigestelle I’m sorry. I don’t know the English word. Tax-free 450 Euro per month. Right.

TIMEA: Oh, this is this limit that it’s from. Yeah.

RAMÓN: According to the dictionary. This is marginal employment.

LUAN: Yeah. Right.

RAMÓN: Okay.

LUAN: Yeah. Thank you. So we, we have that

TIMEA: well, congratulations. That means there’s more traction from outside, so you’re starting to see the impact.

LUAN: Yeah. Absolutely. We, we, we get we get funding. So it is, you know, it’s, it’s not.

TIMEA: Unknown anymore,

LUAN: but but we are able to have now a part-time position and this other position. And that is, that is for us, it is really amazing. And the others are working still as volunteers. But we do get money for workshops. We do.

TIMEA: Yeah, shout out to organizations and I mean here also companies that want to be sensibilize to this kind of topics. This is the right place to spend some money on.

LUAN: Absolutely. Yeah.

TIMEA: May I ask you, because you mentioned Maybe a small crash course to us and to our followers about the pronouns, the whole situations of pronouns, like I identify with she, her, but I’m already mentioned in the introduction of the podcast that he is he he’s.So why is this important one? And what are your pronouns?

LUAN: So I don’t use the pronouns. I’m Luan and yeah, that’s my name. And for me it is also, yeah, for me, it is very important that people just say my name. And I’m not using pronouns. I think it’s. You know, I like what I also said the last time, it is important to feel comfortable, comfortable in, in how you are and what you are. And and. And there is no pronoun for intersex. So yeah, no, neither the English or the German or whatever language has, a pronoun for intersex people, of course, because you know it it took many years that it has . People are recognized again, and that people intersex people got their now legal gender marker. So of course there is no language. And like, I don’t want to use a pronoun, what doesn’t fit myself and there is no pronoun, so that’s why I don’t use any proof, but of course there are also intersex people. They do identify as Female or as male. So of course they are then using pronouns. Like she, her and he, him that are also intersex people, they use the English pronoun they/them. And, and I think that’s the most important part that people can use the pronouns they identify

TIMEA: to have with the choice. Yeah. In first place. And why is it for example, important that I showcase this, for example, in my LinkedIn profile, for example,

LUAN: again? Sorry.

TIMEA: Why is it important that I, or Ramón to show our personal pronouns in the public on LinkedIn, for example?

LUAN: First of all, because I don’t know when I see you and when I see your Pronoun profile.I will not say because of your look, you must be female and your pronouns. Are she her? Because I don’t know. And I would never, I would never do that. So I, for me, it’s very important to ask people. And that’s why it is important that you show it in your profile. But also it is very important to show the society. We all can do that, so that not only intersex people or transgender people have to do it, it has something to do with solidarity. If we all do it, then there is not only this. Already very weird ooh. And now they also need that pronouns. No, it’s a solitary decision, you know, like it is important to, so we are, we are all together here on this earth and we should work together. And I don’t know, you know, you could also say you identify us as me and if you want to have a pronoun, like he, him, I would say that too, you know,

TIMEA: Yes, you would recognize it by using it and respecting me the same time with that. I see. Thank you very much for the crash course.

RAMÓN: I think there’s also something to be said for the fact that it is as, for example, for me, as I said, very easy to put my pronouns publicly at, at no at no cost to my own.It’s something that we can all do without, without much, you know, so many of these social profiles have bios where you can put your pronouns in without any yeah, without much difficulty. So I it’s something that I’ve been trying to do as well. I most recently put it in the signature of my email realizing I, you know, I, I, that’s a place where I hadn’t thought to put it.And it’s. You know, super easy. You just go into whatever client you prefer, just pick and you’re done. But I have found if I may touch upon this topic, please feel free to turn me down. I have found a lot of time that putting my pronouns in places comes, is confronted with derision from perhaps people around me. How w either derision or confusion and. I sometimes I, I sometimes feel, I mean, it’s, it’s a position for me in a very privileged place where I can just say, you know, all I have to do is explain why I’m doing it, but how would you recommend that? To be able to say, this is why I do it, and this is why you should too.

LUAN: Yeah, I think I already said it before. It’s a part of first of all of solidarity, You know, and and yeah, I think everybody should do it. And of course it’s also a part of you know, I don’t know, like, I don’t know, just from your name. If you are male or female or trans or inter or whatever, I don’t know it. So when I will answer, then I will just write you know, like in English it’s quite easier, but if I would write in German, then I would just write hello or Guten Tag, and then your full name because. I don’t know what what, what do you want to be or who you are, or, you know, I have no idea. And yeah, so that’s I don’t know. The English

TIMEA: in German is also fine.

LUAN: Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so I think it is very important to show the people. In that way on one side, respect on the other side solidarity, and it’s also part of that a society needs to get used to it. So

TIMEA: raising awareness.

LUAN: Yeah, absolutely. I have like people I had had workshops with they now have a very great post under the signature. What says so how, what are their pronouns? And that they are very happy if You, you answer off this email when you also give your pronoun so that they can pronounce you correctly. It it’s really great. I love it. You know, it’s just, I had a virtual visit them two days and now they have they have on the signature then, you know, it’s amazing. I really like, yeah, that’s a

TIMEA: really hands-on.

LUAN: Yeah, absolutely.

RAMÓN: I am definitely going to iterate on that. Thank you.

TIMEA: I have to say that I started using my pronouns on social media. For example, after I first heard the one talking the fem.initiative at the Vienna university of economics and business to be honest, I was a bit shying away of doing that before, without really understanding why. Right. So I needed this. Context before doing something wrong. But I think at the end of the day, even if you don’t fully understand why you’re doing it, it’s still good to, to start this practice and then figuring it out or learn it later. So shout out to our followers now, you know? Yeah. And if I may, you mentioned the co-founder of the VIMÖ was the one that had this three year trial which ended or concluded with the fact that now I intersex is a gender marker. I didn’t recognize gender marker. Can I ask what does that now really mean in your day to day life? Is it related to having a checkbox on papers? Is it about job descriptions that get this X or D w tell me a little bit concretely, what does that mean for you? And

LUAN: So first, first of all, it’s it’s on the presses and on all documents. So then it is, that is very important. Of course, in the passport there you have the international sign, that’s the X and that’s every, like you have in, in the passport.But like, In Austria, you now have on your birth certificate and all documents inter it’s that’s sadly for the moment, it. You know, because the company is the banks. Even though the social insurance, you know, they are just working on that and they now need to figure out how they can put more. options in their IT system and all of them just talking all the time about it and that it’s so difficult and I just really don’t believe them because I’m yeah. So I, I do have a little bit of insight in that IT stuff and yeah, it’s not so easy. It’s it’s it’s not so difficult to customize something. I’m sorry to say that, you know, they just, I don’t know, maybe they don’t want, or it costs too much money. I have no, but they have to, so it’s step by step. They have to change it and yeah. So then it will be, you know, like everywhere it’s on my bank account and yeah, when I have to go into hospital or when I. I think

TIMEA: describe to university, which is what I heard that the other talk.

LUAN: Yeah. When you’re this yeah, this is the university everywhere, you know, and it’s important so that they will change now. Step-by-step their systems and, and make this options possible.

TIMEA: Thank you very much. But that’s, I think a very good start in the direction, in the right direction, as you were saying, it starts with the birth certificate which potentially gives now the opportunity to families and the doctors and everybody involved to have an option that is not necessarily binary black and white. That’s the first step, I suppose.

LUAN: Yeah, it is very important. And it’s also important that that there are different options, you know, so that parents you know, it’s, it’s not easy because they cannot choose. So the doctor has to. Have, have, have to put it in, but we do hope that we can get the check the possibility that there will be also the change that the parents can, can choose which gender marker they want to have without any surgeries. That’s the important thing. Yeah.

RAMÓN: This, this list of successes you’ve had. I mean, of course there are, there are some that I, as I understand, are still in progress. These, these surgeries now, Austria, you mentioned in the, in the previous episode, Austria was, was advised and let’s say very harshly advised harshly. I mean, strongly advised by other organizations to put a stop to these surgeries. It might understand correctly that these are now illegal.

LUAN: No, they are not, they are still not illegal. They are. Yeah, that’s the problem. They are still not deleted even though Austria got from the United nations. The

TIMEA: notice probably,

LUAN: or no, it was, I don’t know the English for the whole get.

TIMEA: Bashing that’s okay.

LUAN: Yes. From the committee of torture and in 2019 from the committee from the child rights committee that they have to stop these surgeries. And also now in 2021, there was a big review on the Austrian situation by the, like the UPR and They also said again, that Austria has to stop these surgeries, but for now they are still happening. And and also like the treatments, you know, it’s also, it’s, it’s a surgery, but it also treatments. They also just give hormones and things like that without fully informed consent and things like that. So it’s very important that they have to stop it. And that they have to give the full, like really the full information, what it means, like to take these hormones, to not take these hormones, whatever, to the intersex person and not just to the parents, you know? And. Like, you know, like 95% of the surgeries, they are still happening, they are not necessary. They are not medically necessary. They are there is, there are just one or two surgeries. They are really necessary. And there is one treatment what is necessary, but it’s not hormones. So it’s another kind of, of pills.And and this is the problem. And, you know, we are just, we are not talking about like, you know, five or six or seven people. We talk about 1.7% of the population, you know, 1.7%. And if you, like I said, last time, I’m a numbers person. And if you count, you know, how, how big is the population? 1.7%. It’s every 60 person is an intersex person.

RAMÓN: Wow.

LUAN: You know, not every 60 person has to go through surgeries. Thank God. Yes. Thank God. Yeah, absolutely. But a lot of times, So like every 60 person, I don’t know how many people you reach with your podcast, but yeah, you never know how many intersex people are listening.

TIMEA: I’m pretty sure. But university, I had colleagues that were intersex and had their own struggles. Pretty sure our events. There could have been somebody who participated and was intersex. It could have been, there are people who don’t even know what’s going on with them and they need to find you VIMÖ to get informed because it’s all about having the choice and having the information and the access to it. I think first and foremost, and. Once you have the choice. Yes. You can still debate about it and make a, maybe a family decision. I don’t know, but have the choice, have the conversations. Right.

LUAN: That’s very important.

RAMÓN: So on that note, how, how do people usually find out about about VIMÖ? You mentioned in a previous episode you had a website, what kind of what, what kind of other other outreach does, does VIMÖ do.

LUAN: Yeah, writing a lot of articles like we do. Yeah, we really, yeah. We are in a lot in, in the media as well. Like in the Austrian media, but we. Yeah, like we are also a lot in Germany. Yeah. Do aradio show or podcasts. On the television in, we are in newspapers, you know, we, we just really try to do everything.And yeah, as I said, of course, when you, you know, when you go into schools, when you go into the university and you’re doing your workshops, you know, people of course Sometimes then realize, you know, like, Oh, that’s very interesting. Okay. I had, you know I had also had things like that and you know, in, in, in my, in my history, of course, we are also sending our flyers to. You know, to therapists also in hospitals, we don’t know if they are still there, but we do send them with hospitals. We sent them to other counseling organizations to other NGOs. Yeah. Well, we try everything to reach out and the community is getting bigger and bigger. So more and more people are joining our group, but not publicly official. That that’s very important.

RAMÓN: I agree. That is wonderful to hear. I think I would, I would love to know a little bit more since. You know, the we’re recording this in March, 2021. We’ve had the, we’ve been inside for just under a year. Now. I’m curious how, how has, right. Cause you mentioned earlier, you did some events online. I’m curious. How, how has that, how has that been different for, for VIMÖ and perhaps the, the, the attendance, have you seen a change in, in attendance? Over the last year.

LUAN: Yeah, of course we haven’t seen that because like we, we were like Austria quite you know, and we try to do our community events.Like we try to do, to manage, to get minimums rule for a Bundesländer. I do.

RAMÓN: I think, sorry, carry on like

LUAN: that. So we tried to do that, but of course we are not as most of us working as volunteers, we are not able to go like, you know, to have in every part of Austria and community event and now working online, you know, Like all members are coming, you know? So now also the people from Vorarlberg, you see the people from Burgenland and, you know, things like that, because if you do a community and event important Burgenland the people from Vorarlberg not coming, you know, it’s like six hours, seven hours, eight hours, you know, it’s, it’s too much for. For an evening or something like that or for a date.So yeah, it, it changed. And so now like all of them can meet, but of course we also see that it is important to meet in person again. So I, and I think it’s not only our community. I think everybody, after this year now really needs physical contact and people and to chat and to hang out and to cuddle. And I don’t know. Yeah. So I really that’s. I think that’s really important now. And yeah. Hopefully it will be possible. It will be possible in 2021.

TIMEA: Let’s hope. So we also miss our conference face to face conferences and I have to admit I’m missing hugging my friends.

LUAN: Yeah, absolutely. I miss that too. I haven’t done that since a year, you know? Yes. You’re not doing it anymore. You know, everybody’s just like

TIMEA: maybe most an elbow touch.

RAMÓN: It’s not the same.

LUAN: I’m not doing that anymore because Boris Johnson is doing it.

TIMEA: Okay, good

LUAN: doing that anymore.

RAMÓN: It’s a good reason not to do it.

LUAN: Yeah.

RAMÓN: This, this, this I think, I think these, these, these two episodes have been extremely eyeopening and, and enlightening for us. And I think, I think having, as I said, last time, having these conversations is so important and I’m really grateful. I have to admit when, when

TIMEA introduced me to you as a, as a, as a guest, as a potential guest, I hadn’t heard about VIMÖ and, and it made me realize. This is sharing from my personal experience. I hope that’s okay. That I, that I should try and focus my, my, my vision more locally. I think there’s a lot to be said for that because international organizations are very important, but local ones, especially coming out of a pandemic situation probably will carry even more weights in the future. Yeah. And, and, you know, the, the successes that you’ve had. Already with, with VIMÖ have been so significant for, for, for intersex people. I’m I I’d love to hear if I may ask how, how does the roadmap look for, for, for the future, but what events do you have coming up that you would love to share with our listeners today?

LUAN: So we, we have to vision of having a fourth.Intersex conference in Vienna. Yeah, wonderful. 2022, maybe now 2023. We don’t know right now, but we definitely want to have another conference we of course want to have, or we will have intersex, only meetings.

TIMEA: Sorry to interrupt. So the conference everybody’s welcome.

LUAN: Yeah.

TIMEA: Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.

LUAN: The conferences are always public conferences and we always have great and amazing guests international guests. But also like the last conference we had the FRA. So people from the fundamental rights agency there. We had great intersex activists from Germany, from the United States, from Bulgaria, from like, yeah, really from everywhere.

TIMEA: Ramón. Are we going?

RAMÓN: I would like to, yes.

LUAN: And we also, like we had we had the light screening with Okto TV. Okay.

RAMÓN: With what? Sorry.

LUAN: Okto TV. I think it’s it’s a TV channel in Austria. It’s like a small TV channel in Austria, but they, they do really great and amazing work and they are great supporters of us and they they streamed our conference live.

RAMÓN: Wow. So, so you could see the whole conference and that was amazing. Wow. On there. On on their general Yeah. And of course we also had people from the city of Vienna and of course the vast speakers and yeah. It’s great. And we want to have that again. We want to have intersex only Events and meetups.There’s so many great movies out right now. We want to have movies streaming again. And of course also being at the pride, what is also very important for us and we didn’t have last. Year’s always

TIMEA: because I’m a big fan of watching movies. Can you maybe tell us one that you. Prefer that I don’t know. You watching your community doesn’t have anything to do with gender equality topics. No. Others just random general blockbusters,

LUAN: the movies. We don’t know what they are. Of course intersex.

TIMEA: Okay. Do you know of any great one that you want to share?

LUAN: Does definitely no box for me. It’s a French and a French movie, but you can not watch it. So buy it. And we have to, we for two years, so we can also stream it or show it. It’s also on 26, it’s a French German. A movie about two intersex people

TIMEA: and this sort of a movie watching is also open to everybody, or it’s just something you do for your community. Okay. There’s so many cool events to get information on this.

LUAN: No box for me me, we did an online streaming in 2020, like I think three, three times. Okay. Yeah, you can always check that out on our website when we do an online streaming. And yeah, there are a lot of other movies that now it’s like, you can also have like little, like short ones on YouTube, like pony boy. It’s also really great. It’s from the United States. Okay. Yeah. So that’s so many,

TIMEA: three reference are already amazing. We’re gonna try to put them in the show notes.

RAMÓN: I am, I am vigorously taking notes on these. I, I, I am so happy to see that there’s also such a vibrancy for art and culture and communication in that direction as well. And that, and that you as a community, celebrate that too. That’s it’s something that, doesn’t it. I think it’s. Sorry. I think I’m I think, I think what I’m trying to say is that it’s, it’s really good to see that, that, that there’s that as a community, you also celebrate each other and pull each other upwards. I think it’s something that’s perhaps easy to forget in, in a, in a, in a social justice, cause that there’s also cause for celebration and, and. Yeah, so

LUAN: absolutely. And that is, that is very, very important. And that’s also a very important part on our community events. That is we do celebrate us a lot.

RAMÓN: Amazing. Thank you. One thing that, that, that I. I kept telling myself I got to ask this and then I kept forgetting because I was so interested by this conversation. Is it, is it fair to assume that these events are mostly held in German?

LUAN: Like from VIMÖ? Yes. From VIMÖ? Yes. The, yeah. So they went from VIMÖ Mostly in German. Of course, at the conference, we do have a translator. We, we always have translate English, German and we also always have sign language, like chairman sign language .

RAMÓN: Wow.

LUAN: So that’s very important for us. And we were able to do that the last years from the organization, intersex international Europe, I’m working in Berlin of course it’s everything English. Yeah. So, yeah. And Yeah, the events here are in English. We, we also have translators, you know, in like Russian or English and things like that.But they are held in English.

RAMÓN: That is, that is incredible. You know, it, inclusivity is, is such a key factor to this. And it’s wonderful to see that, that, that, you know, that even for, for people who are, for example, hard of hearing that you, as an organization, think of them, that’s, that’s remarkable and very inspiring, inspiring. So thank you. One thing that I was missing was the name of the conference. Is it always the same? When you hold it.

LUAN: It’s a good question. In the last years it was always like intersex conference. I think it wasn’t different. So, yeah. And the other site called community event and the big community the big community from Ori Europe is called Ori Europe community event. So yeah.

TIMEA: Okay. That’s easy to find. Perfect. I think we’ve kept you long enough today. We are recording in the evening. We are very, very thankful for your time that you spend with us and your patience with us and we podcasts get well, we were just at the beginning with our podcasts. I have to admit. Feel free to, to see us in the future as your partners, we would like to promote your events spread the word out there.I think only together we can reach a bigger impact. I mean, you already do amazing things and you have a very good reach. Still. There can be more. And we would like to to show up, but your confidence Ramón we’re going, and we can learn something from you from just about if it comes to the point of how an inclusive conference or community event should be created and done. So just on that aspect, I want to see even more inclusive conference for a change to learn from. So, thank you very much from

LUAN: welcome every time. You’re very welcome. Thank you very much for the invitation. Yeah. Good luck. Hopefully see you soon again.

RAMÓN: I would like that very much. Thank you everybody for listening and all the best. See you soon.

ALL: Bye!

TIMEA:Are you on the forefront of gender equality? You are invited on our podcast.

RAMÓN:That’s right. Or maybe you know somebody that we could have a chat with on gender quality. You should totally get in touch with us. We’re on Twitter @GenderCoffee. Or any of the other contact methods on our show notes, we would love you to get in touch and for us to have a chat.

Watch us on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi04OVLTCD0

Luan Pertl worked many years in the private sector as a finance manager. After 20 years Luan quit this job and after a break Luan started to work in the NGO sector, especially for intersex NGOs with a human rights based approach. Luan focuses on education work and peer counseling as it is very important to educate the society on intersex issues to stop the violation that intersex people still experience.Links:

• The NGO where Luan is working for: https://vimoe.at/
• fem.initiative@WU: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fem-initiative-wu/
• Allies: http://www.plattform-intersex.at/
• Allies: https://varges.at/

TIMEA:Hey Ramón!

RAMÓN:Hey Timea!

TIMEA:Let’s talk gender equality.

RAMÓN:I love the idea. Gimme a second. I just got to grab my coffee. I hope you’ve got yours too.

TIMEA:Yeah, right here.TIMEA: Hello to everybody listening in. Here’s Timea and Ramon with another episode. And today we have a special guest invited to our podcast. Luan from the VIMÖ? NGO. Welcome.

LUAN: Hello, welcome. Thank you very much for inviting me. Yeah, I’m Luan from VIMÖ, it’s the only intersex led organization in Austria and we are based in Linz in Oberösterreich and also in Vienna,

RAMÓN: it is an absolute pleasure to have you on Luan. We are very excited. I will admit I was at a disadvantage when I learned about VIMÖ and your work, but I was very excited to hear that this work exists in, in Austria. And I’ve been following it now with some very intense happiness and yeah, before we go into VIMÖ and everything, we’d love to hear.More about you Luan. A quick note for our listeners. We might switch between an in-between English and German terms. I will do my best to keep things let’s say consistent. So if there’s a, if there’s a term Luan please, you are at home on the web. If you need to switch at any time, please let us know and yeah, we’ll do our best.So Luan Please introduce yourself to our listeners a little bit about your background, your pronouns as well as three, maybe three fun facts about yourself that you can share with the audience.

LUAN: Okay. Three, fun facts. Okay. I was thinking about that. Yeah, as I already said, I’m Luan. I’m from Austria, but now living in Berlin.So if there is not a COVID-19, then I’m actually switching between Vienna and Berlin drive now. And since then last month in Berlin In Austria. I’m working on a volunteer basis for VIMÖ, the intersex led organization in Austria. And I also work in here in Berlin for I Europe. That’s the head organization for many intersex led organizations in Europe and there I work as On that part-time employment.Yes.Yeah. So I don’t use pronouns, so I’m Luan and I don’t use pronouns. My background, yeah. I worked many years in on the finance side and coming from the finance side, I am a finance nerd and numbers nerd. And I don’t know, like now nearly six years ago I quit my job and had a, yeah. I had a break just took time off and then I started just to work anymore for NGOs and fun facts.

TIMEA: Yeah. Or three random things about you.

LUAN: Yeah, what I already said, I’m a terrible numbers nerd. So I count everything. Like I count the stairs and I count the steps and I count the cars and I count everything. So, and it’s not that I want to do it. It’s just like, It happens when I walk around.So that’s part one. I totally love Opera. And I think I started when I was 16 and it’s yeah, it’s. It’s incredible music and atmosphere for me. I did, when I was young, I was very long, a very, very long time in a choir and I sang many many years. I also performed in schools and things like that. But like after my voice broke a few years ago I stopped and I didn’t try anymore since then.

TIMEA: Yeah. So tell us a bit about, okay. Finance numbers nerd.But volunteering is totally different or not. What brought you basically in the communities you are part of now?

LUAN: Yeah, I’m an intersex person. And so I was born with a variation of sex characteristics. And after my birth, like directly after I had a nonconsensual surgery in the hospital where I was born.And even like, my mother did not really get them the full information. So. It took me many years to realize. And in between I worked a very long time, like in the LGBTI communities or I’ve worked many, many years for, or also I w on a volunteer basis in the Rosa Lilla Villa in Vienna. So it’s the first gay and lesbian house and counseling in Vienna.Yes. And then in 2015 I found out the truth about me. That’s when I started to put my energy for activism in intersex activism.

TIMEA: Wow. You have a very personal gain and drive in here in that direction. I’m just curious that you already were attracted to such causes with the LBGTQ community already before you knew what drove you to that involvement?

That I always ask our guests there’s there’s a big, Hmm. How should I say there’s not a big reason necessarily, but there is a different motivation of why a person does community work. Right. And maybe it starts with friends. Maybe it starts in the university. That’s I mean, that’s how it started for me.But then there’s a conscious decision when you go into professional life to continue it or not. Right. Cause it’s, it’s taking a lot of your time and I’m interested in curious to know what keeps you going, right? Like, why are you still involved? And then you decided to move from the corporate environment to really, NGO part-time.Now I’d like to recall on that with you.

LUAN: I’m a very political person. And at, since I’m very, very young and that was also always something, even though I worked at a big company or things like that that was always very important for me. So even though when I was very young, I, I went to demos and everything.So it, it, it was, it is a big part from and and I don’t like discrimination in any matter it’s to me, it’s like, it’s you don’t do that. You know, it’s not, it’s not how we, people should work together or should be. To get the no go for me. And like finding a place in the LGBTI community or in Austria of course, was something because like I had a surgery when I was a child, but that already said, and they assigned me as female.So they assigned me as female. I had many years of female hormones, what I had to take to so they tried with that, that I looked that way. They did the surgery andAnd it never felt right for me. So even though I just found it out in 2015, it never felt right for me. And I did identify as a lesbian. So, and it was very important for me because it was a place there. Like the lesbian community was a place for me. Where I could be the person without this female, whatever they put on me and all this

RAMÓN: you can say it in German, if you like, and we can try and,

LUAN: Like the normvorstellung, I don’t know.Like people have had social norm yeah. People have of a social norm or especial point of view on social norm, how a woman a woman should look like, you know, society has a special norm and, and I never. I, I never looked like that either though. I took female hormones. I tried, but it never worked out. And and the lesbian community was for me a place where I could be the person I wanted to be.And and being female there at that point, thought I’m female. Being female you’re very accepted. Like, yeah, like you are, and it didn’t matter how you look, you know?

TIMEA: Right. This is how community feels like.

LUAN: Yeah. And was very important for me, how everything happened. And I say if.Yeah, I think it was also very important for me that I could then take the next steps.

TIMEA: Thank you very much for your honesty. It really, it makes me realize from what a position of privilege I come from sometimes. And definitely pushes on my unconscious biases. And I’m so happy that I met you at the fem.initiative at the WU and we’re giving a talk there exactly representing the community and it just felt the atmosphere.First of all, felt welcoming. For this communication that I think, and the dialogue that needs to exist, right. To try to grow as a society together in not being in any way, discriminating of any aspect in diversity,

RAMÓN: Sorry. Just to, just to quickly jump in for our listeners. Could you tell us what the fem.initiative event was, please?

TIMEA: I’m rather new to it, to be honest. I know that it happens that they will every so often we actually started to promote them as well. And Yeah, sorry. Of course being from Vienna, we always like unconscious bias. We know that WU = Vienna university of economics and business, of course. And it’s a freshly started initiative as far as I noticed.So let’s try to shout out and have them as guests

RAMÓN: sounds great. I think. I think this is, this is for us, very, very humbling in terms of what we stand to learn. I think going, going into that for, for people wishing to, to, to learn more and to be able to listen more. If would you say for, for our listeners, I mean you told us a little bit about what being what, what it means, what it means to be inter intersex.Could you also tell us what it is like. Of course, if you would like, if that’s fine with you, what it is like to be a person an intersex person in, in Austria at the moment. What, what, what what the rights situation is? What, what it looks, what things look like at the moment.

LUAN: So we do have since September, 2020.And you edict on the legal gender recognition. So we now have six gender marker. What includes also intersex? It includes diverse. It includes no. Gender marker at all. And you also can delete your own gender marker. This is just possible because an intersex person went to court and fight it for three years in court for that.So. You can see here. Not the politicians are just doing that because they realize intersex people get discriminated. No, intersex people have to fight for the ride and actually have to go to court. And it is just with the highest court in Austria, they said then, okay. It is discrimination.So intersex people also need to have their own gender marker. And then. They worked on it. So just, you know, we had the, we had to go through or all steps and yeah, that’s the gender market situation. The situation on

TIMEA: sorry to interrupt, and this is only since 2020 September,

LUAN: The, the court decision was in. 2018. Yeah, the court decision was in 2018, then it took off quite bit. I, it took a few months and then we got the first edict, but the first edict was only with diverse. Okay. And, and you had to go to a medical board and this medical board had to approve that you’re intersex with working together with the party.And also SPOE and NEOS we managed to get the new edict. You still need a medical stapled, but not anymore from the board. So you can go to your doctor of trust. What is very important for people, you know if doctors like the thing doctors did to us, You know, when we ran a child, teenagers, things like that, it’s, it’s not easy that you then have a doctor of trust.So, and of course you are definitely not to the medical board approved that you are intersex, you know, it’s like before they cut off. You know, things or cutouts things of your body. And then you have to go there and say, Oh, now I need the, I need the statement that I get my gender marker. You know, you’re not doing that as an intersex person, but now it’s better.And yeah, so, but it’s still, still our fight. We’ll get further because we want to self determination, maybe.

TIMEA: I just wanted to underline how current the situation and how current it is at the moment. And that is just, you know, in 2020, somehow it sounds so ridiculous. It hasn’t been there before in a way.

RAMÓN: Something that I am very guilty of myself is falling into complacency. When I see issues. Being won and moved forward and not realizing how we still have as a society as people, a very long way to go. I’m just to, just to clarify you, were, you had just mentioned self-determination, could you elaborate on that?What, what does that mean? For, for our listeners, what does self determination mean?

LUAN: You know, when I. When, when I will go and say, okay, I want to I want to change my gender marker because I’m intersex, then, you know, it’s, it’s a process. And I think this process needs to be accepted so that the standesamt, I don’t know what that is in English, so that the authority that the authority is accepting that, and I don’t need a statement.To get my legal gender marker, you know, and that is important, but of course it is also very important of the part and more important on the part of medical issues, because like surgeries, non-consensual surgeries and non-consensual treatments are still happening in Austria. And not only in Austria, most of the countries in Europe, they are still happening.There is just one country in Europe and this country is Malta very this forbidden by law to do a non, to do nonconsensual intersex, surgeries, and treatment. And, and that’s of course the most important part that the surgery needs to stop. And that’s right now and Austria has already to got already to let us from the convention like from the committee of child rights.But also from the committee of torture. That and now with in January, they got new recommendations from other countries and the, and the United Nations about also more involved where they say, you have to stop this. Yeah, that’s very good. We hope it will happen. But of course, when this, in this part is self-determination very important, you know, it’s my body that has no one.So Just give me treatments or a surgery because I am having a variation of sex characteristics, you know, who believes really that every person is the same. You know, it’s not, you know, there is, there is like, female and male, but do you really think that all people are female and male have the same, like hormones or the same, whatever you do?We are all variations and maybe my variation is a little bit more. And so nobody needs to cut anything from my body.

TIMEA: So I think it’s right now, the moment to define intersex. Sorry to say, if I’m pretty sure that our community’s overwhelmed at the moment as well. If they are like me in the sense that we don’t get to talk about this enough and especially read what intersex is.So could you tell us clearly what it actually is once and for all

LUAN: Intersex people are people. They are born with a variation of sex characteristics.

LUAN: It’s it’s the chromosomes, the hormones the

TIMEA: the body parts. That make us male and female, right?

LUAN: Yeah. Also was a body parts.

TIMEA: Yeah.

LUAN: Chromosomes, hormones, and autonomy. Anatomy. I’m not to me not to meet to now. Yeah, so these are the,

TIMEA: so basically. I as a woman, again, I have the opportunity to say, I identify as she, her basically I have X, X chromosomes, right.I have female genital parts and I have female hormones which are there’s testosterone men. And. Estrogen for women. Right. But if any of this is somehow different, like you have an X, Y chromosome, female genitals, body parts, and a female hormones. That’s basically an intersex person because one dimension is reversed.Yeah. Correct. Okay. I totally understand it. And I’m like, You did not choose that you were born like that. And then other people make this choice for you. I find it even invasive for you to have to go to a medical board. Okay. Now it’s a bit better going to a doctor overall and they allowing you to.Physically be what you were born to be. I find that. Ooh. Okay. But I got it. Thank you.

RAMÓN: One thing that I’m that I’ve been hearing a lot over the last few years and I find myself agreeing with, is that a lot of these things like gender are social constructs And, and given that these, these definitions, these impositions are all, you know, I’m failing to find the correct word, but fabricated, and don’t actually make our lives a lot, all that easier.And in several cases like those those who don’t fit to those norms make their life a lot more difficult. And that’s where that discrimination comes from. One thing that I, as, as a person would like to do better is remove some of those unconscious biases and, and do my best to be as nondiscriminatory as possible.Now, Luan, of course, you’re not in any way obligated to do this, but I would love if you could maybe share with us, do you have any advice for how I, as a regular person can do my best to be as nondiscriminatory as possible? When it comes, say to people who are intersex,

LUAN: I think the most important thing is you know, speak about it, speak about what happened in speak about the intersex people exist and, and that yeah, and that gender is social construct because that.Yeah, that’s it. You’re right. So that’s how it is. And I think that is very important. And I think you know, if you, yeah, if you, if you know, you have a podcast, you do so now with me and that’s important. So we do, we make, we may get education and people will listening and people will hear about it. And you know, like the next time when they hear something or some, what is it.Talking about that. Oh yeah. I heard that already. And I think that is very important because it’s, it’s yeah, like the things are still happening and, and, and, and sometimes I have the feeling that people, you know, people are so afraid of losing their binary system and are being more happy that children getting non-consensual surgeries, then.Losing the binary system and I just don’t get it. You know, I want to take, I don’t want to take away that you are identifying as female. It’s perfect. It’s happy. And if you are happy, then I’m happy, you know, but I am intersex and I want to be happy too. And I wanted, everybody’s happy that I’m intersex and that I can be what I want to be.

RAMÓN: Yeah, sorry. I cut you off.

LUAN: All good. Thank you.

RAMÓN: That’s that’s really, that’s that’s really meaningful advice. I think you know, letting. It’s it’s the allowance to exist. Isn’t it? That to just exist as the way you are. You know, Timea and I touched upon this with another guest, a few episodes ago, it this, this topic of discomfort comes, comes to mind when people who are not.What’s the word. I don’t want to say who, who have, who are probably not been exposed to the topic of say people who are intersex before they get discomfort, they get uncomfortable and they push against this in order to preserve and to protect themselves from that discomfort. And I think this is an opportunity to say, it’s okay to be uncomfortable.This, this discomfort comes from us learning to be better to learning, to listen. And it’s going to be uncomfortable. And several times in my, I don’t want to say I don’t in my in my exposure. In my years of talking to people, I felt uncomfortable many times when confronted with things that are unfamiliar to me.And I think it’s that discomfort is good. It means you’re learning. It means you’re you’re growing as a person. Yeah.

TIMEA: May I just say I was uncomfortable in this podcast, but I feel I’m growing.

LUAN: That’s good. That’s very good.

RAMÓN: Well you know, we’ve been talking for a little bit, I would love say if I were interested in, in, in starting volunteering and, and topics related to the ones that you, for example volunteer with with, with gender identity and LGBT issues what would you recommend if you could go back and as a starting point, as a way to.Some, some advice you could give to someone who’s getting started in volunteering in these topics

LUAN: as an, as an intersex person, or,

RAMÓN: I was going to say as, as anybody volunteering, but of course, with relation to the topics that, that you volunteer and for example, with intersex

LUAN: so I think if you’re an ally, I think the most important thing is If you really want to get deeper into this topic and you want to, to do activism, then just go to has come to VIMÖ, you know, like, or, or we, we, we have we have a group where allies are working with us.It’s called peer it’s platform. Intersex. And you know, we, we have different topics. We have top breaks on we have Negro topics. We have education, we have the peer counseling. We have also medicine as a topic you know, and, and a lot of things. And yeah, we. You know, or help us to organize like an event, a conference, if it is possible at one point again.But that’s another thing, of course. And yeah. And you know, like many years, like VIMÖ just was able to do stuff because we got donations and now we are getting like a little bit of funding. But yeah, I’m just honest. Donations are always very welcome. So because, you know, we need to do, we, we did to print our stuff and we have to pay for our internet and, you know, like,

TIMEA: Absolutely.And I want to give here a shout out to everybody who wants to cross the line from being a standby a zuschauer to doing something in this direction right now you have now the means

RAMÓN: wonderful.

TIMEA: I think at this point, We can slowly say our goodbyes as well. It was a tremendous pleasure for me personally.

RAMÓN: Absolutely. Before we go. Luan, I would love to end off by asking you is there any recommended resources or an organization that you would like to give a shout out to where folks can reach you?If they would like to doso.

LUAN: Yeah, you, you can reach me at over VIMÖ. We have, we have a website or you can also reach me over. It’s also, it’s also written with V

TIMEA: we’re going to put the link in the show notes.

LUAN: Yeah. Yeah, you can reach me there and yeah. Just check out our websites. There are a lot of informations on it and yeah.

TIMEA: Great. That’s a good start.

RAMÓN: Wonderful. Well, this has been an absolute pleasure. Luan. You have taught us so much and you’ve taken your time out for us and we are so grateful. We have so much to learn. I’m going to stop ranting. Thank you. This has been great. I wish you the wonderful, the most wonderful day to our listeners.Thank you for listening and stay tuned. We’re going to be talking to Luan a little bit more in a future episode. Take care everyone. Byebye.

TIMEA:Are you on the forefront of gender equality? You are invited on our podcast.

RAMÓN:That’s right. Or maybe you know somebody that we could have a chat with on gender quality. You should totally get in touch with us. We’re on Twitter @GenderCoffee. Or any of the other contact methods on our show notes, we would love you to get in touch and for us to have a chat.

Watch us on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IXDOW9gxA8

We have been hearing a lot about this book from our guests. The book of Caroline Criado Perez with the title Invisible Women. So we decided to start a book club and record some episodes about it. Everyone is invited!

https://www.amazon.de/Invisible-Women-Exposing-World-Designed/dp/1784741728

TIMEA:Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Gender Equality over Coffee. And this time we’re going to be gender equality over an espresso.

RAMÓN:Smaller cups. Hi there. Yeah. Thank you, Timea. What we’ve got for you today is a very special, shorter episode, hence espresso, where we’re going to be starting our book club. And you might have guessed already based on what our previous episodes were talking about, a number of guests have mentioned a book, and this is a book I have not read myself time. You’ve read it, right?

TIMEA:Yes, I’m already through it. And I have to say I promoted it in our podcast already heavily. Yeah.

RAMÓN:Why don’t you show the title of the book.

TIMEA:The book is flying in the podcast and surprise surprise, its Invisible Women by Carolina Criado Perez.

RAMÓN:I am extremely excited to announce this. So Here’s how it’s going to work, folks. We’re going to be reading this book, the one that is floating by the camera, now. We’re going to be reading this book together, and in a month from now we’ll be recording either, depending on how the reading of the book goes and what the content gives us. In terms of content, we’re either going to be recording one larger episode where we discuss the book as a whole or if particular topics come out of it that way. We’ll either have a series of discussions or bring on a series of guests. So this is where you come in. Listener, please join us in reading this book. We’ll be starting it as of the day that we publish this, which is a little bit of the future from our time of recording, probably a week from today, today being the 23rd of March. So anticipate the 30th of March for the announcement and you can get it either on your favorite publishers website or I’ll be listening to it through audio book and taking copious notes as I go. So there are options. I’ll be listening to it through Audible. Yeah. And if you’re interested in coming on and talking about this book, please get in touch. Come on the show. We’re on Twitter @GenderCoffee, you’ll see in our outro and Yeah, reach out to us. So I think that’s all the announcements we have it. Did I miss something, Timea?

TIMEA:I don’t know. I didn’t listen at all because I was too busy floating the book through the podcast screen. Yeah, I’m too excited.

RAMÓN:Excellent. Yeah. So get the book read along with us. And we’ll meet in a month from now in between our regularly scheduled programming to discuss this book.

TIMEA:And wait. Thanks, Ramón.

RAMÓN:Thank you, Timea, and happy reading, everybody.

Watch us on YouTube:https://youtu.be/Yv85qru7pFI

Franziska Hauck is a coach, consultant and mediator. With her experience as a people lead, she coaches engineering managers, developers and primarily those working in tech. She has consulted startups, content hubs and bootcamp providers. Previously regional lead for the developer relations community programs at Google, she has also worked as a project manager and community manager.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franziskahauck/
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• Franziska’s favorite micro-animal - tardigrades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade
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• Check her Youtube talk on the topic of developer insights in Germany 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyVgj5sSsG8
• Franziska’s Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6UcpoAaXlHYjQh_ugXGbww/featured
• Shout out to: https://accessibility-club.org/

TIMEA:Hey Ramón!

RAMÓN:Hey Timea!

TIMEA:Let’s talk, gender equality.

RAMÓN:I love the idea. Gimme a second. I just got to grab my coffee. I hope you’ve got yours too.

TIMEA:Yeah, right here.

TIMEA:Welcome to another podcast on gender equality over coffee. And Ramon And meare delighted to have today. Franziska, on our show. Hi, Franziska.

FRANZISKA:Hello.

RAMÓN:Hey there. I’m so excited to have you here, Franziska. And if I may share through the world, we are recording today on your birthday. So let me on behalf of our listeners, wish you a very happy birthday.

TIMEA:Happy birthday.

RAMÓN:Yeah. I can’t believe that you took the time to record with us. This is suchan honor. And you know, we want to make this as fun for you as possible. Sofor our listeners, Franziska, why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?Maybe fun nickname. And do. Please follow it up with three random things aboutyourself.

FRANZISKA:It’s actually intriguing to note that I am not a big fan of nicknames.So IDo get called Fran a lot of the times of Franzi theGerman sort of nickname. But I do go by Franziska, only.So usually that’my as you would call it, nickname. My full name basicallyAnd for three things that I would sayDefine me or that peopleMight not know about me I’m a huge fan of tardigrades I’m not sure if you know whattardigrades are.

TIMEA:Me not.

RAMÓN:They are… no I’m gonna make a Fool of myself. Please tell us.

FRANZISKA:You are on the right track. They are these little tiny, microscopic beingsthat you can find everywhere on this planet. And they’re actually superheroes. So youcan freeze them, you can cook them, you can put them in space.They will survive. They will just come back to lifem And they have seemingly eternal life And they’re just amazing. And.They also look, really really cute.And that combination I find is also kind of a macro for diversity, right? Things that might seemingly look cute, actually have.Great strength in them. So a huge set of tardigrades.And two other facts about me, I once stood on a stage with the rapper Tiger. If that tells you something,

RAMÓN:I’m afraid I’m terrible at musicians!

TIMEA:He’s in Germany?

FRANZISKA:No, no.He’s a US rapperonce was linked with one of the Kardashian, Jenners and I wasat his concert in Munich, and I was dancing and I’m doing my thing. And thenthey were like, Franziska come up on stage. And there were a couple of people.

TIMEA:That’s the next level public speaking fear for me in front of a huge stagewith a wellknown rapper. That’s something.

FRANZISKA:Yeah, but the fun fact was that all of the other people went towards him. And I was like, Yeah, I’m on stage.And I just enjoyed that kind of a little bit more than.No proximity. There are no videos as far as I know.But I’m a big big. Afrobeats and dance all and hip hop in and so forth. So itwas an honor to be called up them and to be able to do my thing. And the third fact that again not a lot Of people know about me.My grandparents had a sort of part time Farm and I grew Up there A lot of thetime and my time childhood spent a lot of time there. And I Actually harvestedpotatoes, helped with slaughtering animals Like all of those things. So I knowwhat it’s like countryside and Harvest All kinds Of things, also, Hey wasalways a big thing. And now that I live in the big city and work in Tech, it’slike two different forms Of life, I would say, but I still grounded Through this because I know where food Is coming From and what needs to be invested to have that. And Yeah, it was a nice childhood from that angle and I Don’T ever Want to harvest potatoes again. It’s very hard.

RAMÓN:I already have a bad time peeling potatoes. I can’t imagine harvesting them.

TIMEA:Actually, I liked actually that part of harvesting. I found it because I alsohave. I had the opportunity to be on the farm with my grandparents and allthat. And I found it already amazing because potato was my favorite vegetable.Now it’s avocado, but how they were growing there and their like undergroundcaves and the fact that you pull it out and it comes and then, I don’t know, Istill feel very happy that I experienced that part and I want harvestpotatoes. I still like to a better than the part with the animals. That part.I. I leave it for the speak farmers, I suppose.

RAMÓN:I love what yousaid, Franziska, about having these different perspectives from childhood because I think you would perhaps agree with me that having these having these different experiences and backgrounds is what makes really good tech industries in diversity as well. This is a big topic of your work, isn’t it? Diversity and in different industries, particularly tech. I would love to hear what what’s your background there? How did you get started in promoting diversity in tech?

FRANZISKA:I think for me, a large part is just frustration.BecauseI feel like I cross a lot of the boxes is sort of when we look towardsdiversity. I’m a woman For one thing, I identify a woman and the other is thatI live with chronic illnesses and that makes me have a couple of mannerisms,That are different. That say from the typical or standard that you wouldexpect. So I always kind of stood out with it and I was also vocal at the same time.It and always making sure that people understood me and knew where I was coming fromBut still it’s a lot of emotional Work at the same time. Then the other partis basically My mom And her discovering feminism In the 90s, which was a big,big Motor for me. Still to this Day is a big, big motor. And then again,growing up in a very sort of patriarchal family and structures and then justrealizing that there are As you said, Ramón There are So many different Thingsout there and it’s Great that we Are diverse. It’s great that we have theopportunity to have seen different things in life, which essentially all ofthe studies point wards makes better products make better services if youincorporate that But just generally sort of to have that diversity representedand Around you and enjoy that as well and to have that opportunity. So I feellike it’s this mixture of frustration, but also sort of liking to breakpatterns and challenging the status Quo. And At least in my case, not beingafraid Of being different. Embracing That in a way. And With that, making sure that I can Pave the Way for people that come After me be that because they’re women all be that because they live with chronic illnesses as well. So every Time I would Feel that I Have the opportunity To speak up and out, I would do so. And I continue to do so because I Have been in situations Where people have done that for me before. And I appreciate that because that gives me opportunities at the end of the day, there Are still a lot of things that go wrong.As you both well know, things where we have sort of very large percentages of people of one particular sort of what we perceive them to be And that makes Monolithic environments and to Break that up and To make sure that we have more diverse environments, you need to take those steps. So I think again, for me, it’s a mixture. But first of all, frustration is a very, very good motor to have because You only Basically tackle things that You care about That kind of make you frustrated. In a way, if you didn’t care, you wouldn’t Do anything. So Sometimes it can be good to use That frustration as a positive motor to tackle things.

TIMEA:Then it would make perfect sense why you were drawn to job descriptions that have to do with program management. Because that’s how we both met you. Basically, you were a product manager at that time.

FRANZISKA:I kind of transitioned into this because I was largely in community work. But in essence, in community work, you Have a lot of topics of diversity as well and Working at Google, it was sort of this transition From being in community management, going over to program management in the realm of community. So there Were a lot of Similarities and I had done a lot of project management beforehand as well. So It kind of seemed like this Natural pathway for me to have sort Of an Even More organizational Focus or more project management focus, I should say, but still Have That big label of community within that role and

TIMEA:Just a quick point. So we both met Franziska while she was the program managerat Women Techmakers for Google’s side. For dACH, I believe it was for the whole region that was about two years ago about that about that time. And so what role are you now? Because you said it was a natural flow from maybe project management to program what now.

FRANZISKA:Actually, I feel like I am in many ways of a career changer, but also a careeradapter in a way because there has always been this natural. Flow from A to Band there was always this link At this point I still do a lot of projectmanagement work because I’m Involved in a lot of change management initiativesBut What I do as a people lead, what I’m currently working a lead is basicallyI have my focus On people. So people leads are in Essence Disciplinarymanagers of technical teams. I have two Delivery teams that I take care Of andJust like an engineering Manager, they Are not coding on A day to day basis. Idon’t Do that as well, but I have an Even stronger focus on people. So inessence I’m The hiring Manager for the teams. I take care of the teams with astrong focus on coaching. So I have individual coaching but also teamcoachings. I make sure that people can thrive In the environment That they arein. I empower them. I teach to a certain degree about communication Methods.And I recently did a workshop on Positive communication, but I also try toempower my Team members to think About Concepts of diversity. For example,because with The allyship that They provide, they can change the environmentas well, And then on top of that, I do a Lot of, as I said, change management Initiatives A lot of work that goes into sort of making sure that the transition that we have from towards An organization That have autonomous teams where you have an environment where diversities embrace and so forth So I could quote a Couple more points. But in Essence, to a company That and to make sure that we have projects that enable our team members, but To go back to that point of Empowering people At the same time. I’m also doing a coaching certification, and I recently Finished my mediation certification and seeing how I can employ these skills in the environment of tech is Really rewarding for me because I see People Thriving. In Essence, when you’re A coach, you believe that the person Brings all of the necessary.Skills and what they need to go forward with them. They have that in them inherently. But youActivate That and help them find those resources and you give them the impulse. So it’s more of being enabler. RatherThan sortOf being in the role of ITeach you how toDo things and then you need to follow upon that it’s less of a sort of directive based leadership. And that’s what I really enjoy about the role. I’m notAlone in this. I have a couple of great colleagues around me who come from all over the world and have all kindsOf different experiences. And that as a group also makes us really, really diverse and gives us the tools to provide various perspectives to our team members as well.

TIMEA:That’s so fascinating. I have already a lot of points I want to touch upon. For example, how many teams do you or can you coach consult have under your wing at the same time?

FRANZISKA:That’s a good question, because I think resource is the most Important point.We have a dual leadership system, which means that of course I don’t take careOf my team members from a functional technical point of view. So I don’t do code reviews or I don’t have programs and we have functional leads for that as well. ButAt the same time, you also need to look towardsWhat kind of resources do you have so that you can enable every single team member in a good way? And currentlyI have two teamsAround about 15 16 peopleI used to have three teamsWhere we are growing. So IPass onA team to my new colleague. So that’s great to seeFor me, it’s not necessarilyIn how oftenDo I meet with people? But what doI do with the time that I have with them? So how much of a qualitative time can I help with them? So I doHave regular 1:1’sBut I also offer the opportunity to have separate coaching sessions with me and also obviously all ofThe otherAspects. As I said, finishing a mediation certification you do tend to also think about ways means how you can enable people and sort of a level that’sMore than 1:1. SoYou have group workshops and so forth. FeedbackCulture isA big big topic. IFeel that looking aroundIn the industry, we’re not really giving feedbackInA good way and making sure that they are just breakingIt downTo basic models and people can adapt and understand that already makes the culture so much better in the long run.But it does take a lot of work, Yes, and I take a lot of input and you also shouldn’t underestimateThe emotional load that comes with it and havingA good Center yourself as aPeople. It is very, very important. Also, knowing your own emotional landscapereally well helps to make sure that you can then provide that calmness in thatCenter for your team members.

RAMÓN:I’m wondering, you’ve built up this vast experience in people coaching and1:1’s. And I’m eager to know as someone who actually just this week did theirfirst ever one on 1 tech career 1:1’s I’m trying it out for underrepresentedfolks in the Spanish speaking world. One thing I would love to know is, howlong did it take you to get to a level where you felt like this was somethingthat you could do naturally, something that was easy. Say, if I say if atheoretical me was wanting to start looking into giving better feedback andthat sort of thing.

FRANZISKA:I always have to be very cautious because I fall into my coach mode really, really quicklyAnd I wouldPut all those questions to you and try to give you those impulses. But since we are in a podcast situationI try to hold myself backWhen I look back. I do feel that I’ve always had a communicativeknack and that helped me really well in communityWorkJust being able to break that say complicated messages down to the nittygritty. ButWhat I really liked was that again, sometimes simple modelsAre the best best thingThat you can have very early on in my career. I had a colleague who explained to us what nonviolent communicationWasAnd what I wouldn’t say at that point I practiced it really well. I’m trying to practiceIt more and more. ItDid give me sort of a lifelinein howCan I phraseMessages in a good way? And how can I understand people? And how can I enable them to also then in turn, communicate with me very well? WhatI also see in my 1:1sIs thatI focus my attentionCompletely on the other personIt’s not aboutMy ego, what IHave to say and so forth that that might be interesting for a podcast situationBut not in a 1:1. It’s not about me. I sawThe abilityTo listen andTo activelyListenPositive. Paraphrasing is a goodTool for that and also making sure that you ask questions on whether you understood something correctly helps a lot as well. AndThat, in essenceCombined with big drive and big desire to enable people I thinkAre a goodMixture, but goingOut there reading, trying to findGoodModelsAnd thingsThat work well for youBecauseIt should never be a dogma. It should alwaysBe the thing that you can adapt for yourself and to your style and to your personalityI think that worksReally well and that’s what I have seen in the industry also support a lot of engineering managers out there to get into the role that they’ve sort ofConscious. They have consciously takenThat step ofI want to acquire this knowledgeIn how can I communicate better? How can I coach? How can I mentorAnd how at the end of the day, it’s alsoNecessary mediate between peopleSo that additional skill set helps aLot andWidely reading. ExchangingWith people beingCoached as well helpsA lot. ThereAre various ways and meansTo arrive at the end destination and none is the most perfectOneIs just what is the most perfect one for yourself?

RAMÓN:Thank you. That’s awesome.

TIMEA:I have to think very much now. Okay, so how about diversity? How does this fit in your job? How do you manage to sensibilize people? And I think you’re a big fan on topics on accessibility. Also, lately, I’ve seen the post tell us a bit about this aspect in the job.

FRANZISKA:That is a very good question, because in essence, what I’ve observed. And both in the community, but also in my role is that oftentimesWhat is the knowledgeThat we start off with? IFeel like after years of being active in the sea, I have myself a bubble on Twitter and I get all of the tweets and things that are happening. And that also makes me question myselfTo the point where, for example, stop saying things are weird or awkward because that is connected oftentimes to things like neurodiversity and so forth. So I doHave that informationComing towards me now with the system that I have builtA lot of people haven’t had thatAndSpecifically whenYou are in a scenario where you’re part of the majority, there’sOften the question, have you had thoseExperiencesTimea, You and I, we’ve probably both had our share ofExperiences as women in tech. And I couldProbablyWrite a book about that by this point. ButI’ve gone through itIn a way. So IHad that experience. So I in turn get that frustration. So IWant to do something about it oftenThat’S whenThere is not this level of I’ve had those experiences myselfAnd I also haven’tObserved itThen how familiar is it to me? So that’s the essence of just informingPeople about what are some of the things that are going on that they should be aware of? ButIt’S also about this level ofConsciousness in a way. OftentimesI found that talking to people, there is a lack of perceptionThat, forExample, discrimination happens toOther people and justCreating that level of empathy. That is, I feelKey in understanding how to be an ally and that’s the end goal, ultimately to be an eyeEven I as a person of a marginalizedGroup, can be an ally to other people in specific scenarios and empathyIs crucial in so manyAspects. ItDoes not only pertain to diversity. ItPertains to a lotOf other fields like good collaboration isIn essence, based on empathy, understanding where the other personIs comingFrom and that they are new to this and they are struggling and they need something to help them and to enable them. SoJust sowing the seeds I feel is very, veryImportantBut also a complete embracingOf peopleIf there is a person who comes to you and says, well, I don’t see it happening. And ICannot imagine that there is, for example, discrimination going onHow do you deal with that? You can create a line and basicallyBe strong inYour position. And then youWill argue at the end of the day. But ifYou embrace that personAnd you ask questionsAndYou get to knowThem that often creates an openingFor people to be like, Oh, okay. So thatIs your experience. It might not always click in the first conversationBut at least they get your your point of view and your perspective. And thenThey can over time empathize and same for me. I’ve had scenarios where I was confronted with something thatWas likeNot sure is that really the case. But then over time, I learnedMore about this aspect. And then I got more sensitized for it, if you willSo that is also very important. I feel like and just interest, generally. Hustling, hustling, hustling, making sure that you have the right markers forReducing biases in the pairing process. For exampleMaking sure that you do theExtra work and you go out there and you talkTo people thatYou feel like would be a great addition to your teamSpeaking, speaking up and out, I often specifically women that are younger than me often experience them toBe likeOh, I don’t want to go to theFront and talk about that. ButIn essence, you should raise your hand for up there for empowering others as well. It does take a lot of resourceAnd itLooks from at least from the outside. LikeIs itWorthwhile it’s? Worth it? It is. But it is definitely not an easy process. And you have to putIn the work. SoAgain, I feel like it’s a balance. It’s a mix of things that are, Let’s saybit more ephemeral in a way, andMaking sure that you understand people’s minds and where they are coming from. ButAlso what isThe hard work that you need to do? And that is, in essence, a lot of the things that we have seen in the literature in the debates on Twitter and so forth of what we all should do as people with a specific level of power and being those allies in these scenarios. AndAlly ship at the end of the day is if I could turn everyone into anAlly, I would. I would put out my magicwand in the it people would all be allies for each other. Can I do that? No. But I can at least tryTo spread a little bit of my magic.

TIMEA:This is such a wonderful sentence to wish everybody to be an ally. I’ve heardlately a lot more about allyship. And I think at least in Austria it’ssomething that is not talked enough about. But I want to know for yourknowledge personally, where do you go to get this kind of resources,information now being about allyship or about a particular topic on gender equality or something in diversity? Yes. You listen to people and you learn a lot. I agree, but ally ship at the end of the day, still workshop or resource.

FRANZISKA:I’ve mentioned it a couple of times. I think Twitter is a really good source. It’s just following it and then your timeline is automatically put together nicely. Same goes for LinkedIn, obviouslySoAll of theSocial platforms that you can leverage there, that’s really goodWhat I’ve also found is veryVeryUseful. False, my people eat colleaguesIn theSense that they are wide, red and theyCan recommend great books on the matterSo just asking your peer group, yourColleagues, people in your network, in your communityNetwork. In general, it does not only have toBe on social, we’reNow in a situation whereWe don’tMeet up in person and it’s we always have to do things on Zoom and we all get Zoom fatigue. But at the end of the day, networking is so crucial, not just as a toolTo get information, but toAlso buildUp those connections and to get those opportunitiesTo kind of createThose opportunities for yourselfBut Yeah, it’s listening a lot of the time it’s being open and at the end of the day, that’s what I always emphasizeIs thisSuper painful process of confrontingYour own biases. If you’reNot willing to do thatChancesAre not very high and I can personally tell I’ve had my moments where itHurt badly whereI had this realizationOfMyself. Oh, my goodness, is that what I’m actuallyThinkingBut we all have the patternsThat we were raised with. And sometimesYou need to challenge them. And that canBe a painful process. But onceYou do that and once you get outOf that process, you realize that you’ve gained so much moreAndInEssence not being afraidOf also hearing those experiences of other people and taking them on and making sure that that empathy level is there, I feel is crucial and then it’s again putting in the work and making sure that you’re up to date reading, taking the time and exchanging with people.

TIMEA:Thank you so much for the insight. Like, I’m learning a lot.

RAMÓN:I think I heard it from Kim Crayton in one of her talks. She said that she wants us to learn to embrace being uncomfortable. And that hit me like a ton of bricks because it’s just what it is. The work will make us uncomfortable, of course, relative to our level of privilege myself being a white man, I’ve got a lot more work to do and a lot more learning to do a lot more listening to do. And so this hearing this just means a lot to me. Thank you for putting it so well.

FRANZISKA:Yeah, and you mentioning something that’s really important, I think over the last week or so I said that I cannot probably not imagineHow it is, for example, to be a woman of colorSo having already my experiences as a whiteWoman and thenHaving sort ofSeeing alsoAgainOn that time my time experiences or women of colorWhat I can do is I can empathizeAnd I canTry to understandTheir perspective. What I canNever doProbably is understandCompletelyHow that experience isBut I can put inThe work and makingSure that also others are aware of intersectionalitiesFor example as well. So weDo have variousPerspectives timeYou mentioned accessibility that is also something that I only discovered becauseOf talkingAboutLiving with chronic illnessesOn a stage while I was jobHunting, by theWayAndThen sort of finding that the accessibility community which beforehand was notReally I didn’t really consciously know that there was such a community out there and that there are these resources out thereAlso in that accessibilityCommunity. I feel like we go through a lot of the processes of discovering how painful it can be when you realizeThatYou have been building products, but you haven’t really thought about that particular group and to realizing that and making sure that you thenChangeYour ways and makeSureThat accessibility is something that you look towards whether it’s website orother products because it’s not only website. It’s a very important mechanismto do.

RAMÓN:Excellent. I think as you said, always discovering new aspects of it and doing the work, it takes time too. Absolutely. I’m not sure you already mentioned could you give us a an estimate about how much time you’ve been doing this? And how much time you’ve dedicated to the work.

FRANZISKA:ThatIs an important aspect that I always underline because while I do live with chronic onesAnd they impact uponNot necessarily my time, but uponMy energyQuite a lot which then impact upon my time because I have to spend timeJust doing nothingI also say, I don’t have any kids and that’s a big bigBig factor. IfI had kids, it might be different because I would be taking care of those kids and I still have sort of that luxury ofHavingThe ability to takeTime outBut in essence, what I would say is, as I mentioned, my mom discovered feminism inThe 90sSoThat’S whereIt started for me and then just as a child and then also my teenage asReading a lot about different culturesAround the world andDiscoveringTheir historyAnd a sort of what are the characteristics?I think that was a good baseline. And then I would say over the last 3-4-5 years consciously bit by bitBuilding up my knowledge base andSince Twitter and LinkedIn are sort of now well manipulated by me I wouldn’t say that I do this very consciously during the week, so it kind of comes to me. But then when I see that there is an interesting resource or somethingThat I should familiarizeMyself with, then I followUp on it and then I wouldEstimate if I had to breakIt down probably half an hour to an hour everyWeek, plus theAspects that come up in my work as well. So it’s a combination of that.

RAMÓN:Awesome. Thank you. So a big focus of our podcast is to also get people who are perhaps interested in getting involved doing the work to get started. And I’m wondering if someone who has been at this for a while. Do you have any advice for people who are interested to get started? Besides what you’ve already touched upon.

FRANZISKA:Network, network network network.CommunitiesAsThe one that you are leading and drivingIt’S so essentialAnd I meanThis inMore than one sense becauseAlso looking at forExample, young women that are interested in going into tech or being in working in techNetwork because this is essentially the communityThat will enable you to knowAbout jobs that mightNot be on the public boards and so forthBut it also what you will have by thatYou will meetPeople of variousBackgrounds and you willExchange withThem and you will learn from them. You will meet people who are very experienced in their career and have seen a lot of things. You will meet youngFolks who are SuperMotivated and driven and come in with this curiosity and you justGenerally expand your horizon famous travelingRight going out there seeing the worldAgain, you have to be able toAfford this. We shouldn’t underestimate thisAnd also with community work and being active in communities. You also needTo be able to afford it. SoCan you takeThat time out from taking care ofYour childrenAnd so forth? SoI see this as two sides of the coin. We need to make sure that folks can have that opportunityButIt’S also good to encourage folksTo take the opportunity that’s there and to go out and venture forth and so forth. SoAs you can see, I’m always delving into the sort of subtext and making sure that we understand various situations. But Yeah, that’s what I would recommendAnd justGenerally stay curiousWantingTo learnBeing open to learn andListeningBelieving stories also and making sure that thereIs a personal understandingOf what youWant to be as an ally, how you can support. And then as I said, getting out that magic oneAnd spreading your margin.

RAMÓN:That is wonderfully put, I appreciate it so much.

TIMEA:And at the same time as a resource, I want to point to your website as well.https://fh-digital.org you write there interesting articles, blog posts and I think you’re available as a Speaker on the topics. I mean, that’s how I follow you online and you have your own content on YouTube as well. So we’re going to make sure to put this in the show notes if people want to talk to you on these topics.

FRANZISKA:Yeah, absolutely. And for me. AsA reallyGood journey to this pointWas, as I mentioned, discoveringAccessibility and alsoTalking about things that at this point I felt nobody had really talked about which was accessibility for developersSort of in the larger scheme of things. And soFar we had always seenA very strong focus on how to support developers who are blind or developer who are hard of hearing and so forth the tab. So that overall picture of also from the employer view of what you can do to ensure accessibility for your employees. So IDo think there are a couple ofTalks online of mentioning that and going into detail there and alsoObviouslyMy research on stats for tech folks in Germany and also diversity there soHappy to supportAnd to exchange on those topics any time. If somebody is interested.

RAMÓN:I saw that talk the one on the statistics that was incredible. I would love to add that to the show notes.

TIMEA:Absolutely. You talk about a good perspective on the German market on how it is with development developer numbers.

FRANZISKA:And.If my resources allow me to do so, I will do a second iteration. I’m just waiting for a couple more steps to come in, particularly the main source of information.That I used, which was.From the federal agency.Of employment in Germany about the numbers of it. Folks. They basically did this very, very indepth study and I’m.Just dying to get the new numbers so that I can do. I can see how Corona impact the industry story because the signals that does, but it somehow also doesn’t because it’s kind of resilient and so forth. So this is really sitting and what I have been doing is I have been trying together other sources in the meantime that.Can then sort of be implemented there as well. And I really.Hope that I can do.That second video soon to make sure that we have a better understanding of the Corona of how the tech industry is currently what they all currently is there.

TIMEA:I’m gonna keep an eye on that.

RAMÓN:Yeah, you know what Timea and I actually briefly touched upon doing how the pandemic has impacted employment and the gender discrimination that comes with it. So definitely something to keep an eye out

FRANZISKA:The central question that I haven’t yet been able toAnswer is weHave seen how womenLeave the workforce in droves because of Corona and how that impacted whereWe haven’t had gotten a good understandingIs, do women leave stem jobs and in particular tech jobsBecause of that as well in? Or does it not affect anythingWeDon’T have any answers onThis at this point. Right?We do know that women proportionately leave tech jobsMore than men do andQuicker. But we haven’t seen how Corona interplays with that. And for meIt’S just not on the one hand, it’s a spreading topic. But if we were to seethat itWould impact, thereWould also be a tragic topic andIt would lead me to think, what can we do to make sure that does not impact any more negatively than it already does?

TIMEA:Yes, it’s hard enough as it is. So last question. If you could go back and start over, Let’s say on your career path, would you change anything?

FRANZISKA:I have thought about this with the experiences that I had. Not just becauseyou asked. Probably not much because I’m also big and from believer in you need toMake your mistakes to learn fromThem. And again, when we look at sort of the gender disparity there, there’s often the expectationThat women need to be more perfectThan theyNeed toProve themselves more. I say no, go forth and make mistakes. It’sImportantBut againCan theyAfford making mistakes? That’s a good question. But what I would probablyChange is startingOut myCareer. ForMe. I think salary was not a bigTopicAt that point. I do come from a working class background. So it was more likeAt some pointI need to earn enough so that I can make a living. But I wasn’t very strong, very adamantAbout it at the beginning of my career. AndI think that I would changeI would beMore verbal about what kindOf salary I would wantAnd also be more conscious about the fact they are living with chronicIllnesses and me not having status in Germany, which is another thing entirely and very complicatedI need to make sure that I have a living that enables meTo live aLife. ThatWhereI can just spontaneouslyBy medication. If there was a medication for me, for example, butIt’S. It’s so imperative that just this week I saw this big study of women noso much about salary. And it’s more about the acknowledgment that they getIn the job. And I’mLike, Yeah, that’s true in a way. But why shouldn’t we lookMore toward salary, why shouldn’t we be strong or. NoI’m not goingTo get less pay than the colleague. AndOftentimes this happensSort of in a very coveredWay because peopleDon’T talk about itSo talk to your colleagues. Make sure that you are up to date with what everyone is earning a decent Germany. And thenThe laws, according to GermanyYou areAllowed to talk about your salary even though contractsSay differently. So also having that knowledge aboutWhat is what you are contractor able to do and whatnotSo having that knowledge that I have now I would go in with a completelyDifferent mindset and I would beMuch more of an advocate for myselfThenI have been inThat situation and I can give the advice to all of the young folks out there starting now. BeVeryStrong on what you can get. Try to do theResearch. But then we also very vocalAbout what you should get in that scenario from employers andGetting your fair share. That’s whatIt’S all about for the hard work that you put in.

RAMÓN:Amazing. Thank you so much. Wonderfully put. Well, I could stay in chat forever, but that we want to be respectful of your time before we wrap up. Is there any place where folks can get in touch with you that you would like to tell them about? And is there any organization or resource out there that you’d like to give a shout out to before we go?

FRANZISKA:Good question as the places currently we’re all online anyway, but I mostly tobe found at Twitter, LinkedIn, so this is where I usually regularly post and alsoExchange with folksA lotBasically sort of broadcast my wisdom to the world. But as for organizations, there are organizations, communities, there are so many. I don’t feel like I would do one Justice if I mentioned just one. But what I’m a big fan of is obviously initiativesLike the onesYou are leading. So be that women Techmakers be that women who code be that. Oh, my goodness. I’m probably forgetting all of the important ones, but also initiativesThatLike the accessibility club, for example, that I’m partOf as a co organiser in Berlin for the accessibility groupThen there are some what I haven’t yet seen is sort of a group for folks in tech who live with disabilities, chronic illnesses andNeurodiversity. ThatMight be interesting. So I do see there’sA gap whereWe could link up a little bit more, but generally anything that helpsWomen and people in marginalized groups thriveIn techI’m a big fan of that and I support that andI’ve probably spoken at aCouple of them, so alwaysA reasonTo be there.

TIMEA:Okay, then we’ll have to. We’ll have to share those to them. Or rather justtake it as an opportunity as a shout out to everybody who feels attached bythat because we want to invite you on our podcast. We have a series on genderequality role models such as Franziska today at the show. But we also showcasegender equality, organization, role models and on all aspects. Not justnecessarily gender quality could also be in other aspects of diversity. Youare more than welcome to reach out.

RAMÓN:Well, this has been an absolute delight.Franziska Timea. Thank you both so much and to our listeners. Thank you somuch for tuning in. Get in touch. Let’s chat. Take care, everybody.

TIMEA:Goodbye and thanks Franziska. Goodbye.

TIMEA:Are you on the forefront of gender equality? You are invited on our podcast.

RAMÓN:That’s right. Or maybe you know somebody that we could have a chat with on gender quality. You should totally get in touch with us. We’re on Twitter @GenderCoffee. Or any of the other contact methods on our show notes, we would love you to get in touch and for us to have a chat.

Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOFDCmXpxvw

Women && Code is one of the most successful communities started in Vienna with the purpose of bringing women* into programming in Austria. The vision of the community is to achieve 50-50 gender equality in tech in Austria.Listen to co-founder Eva Lettner, herself a former marketing expert turned tech lead, present the community: how does it work, who is it for, what to expect as a participant, how can it help you in your career, how many women they have helped, how companies can get involved. #cisco

Resources and links:Women && Code website: https://womenandcode.org/Follow Women && Code on Twitter: https://twitter.com/womenandcodeConnect with Eva on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eva_trostlosOther communities:https://thenewitgirls.com/https://www.womenwhocode.com/http://blackgirlscode.org/Connect with Eva Lettner on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eva_trostlos

DISCLAIMER from Ramón:In this episode, I bring up the Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color in Tech (BIPoCiT) Space implemented at JSConf EU in 2019 while discussing the topic of women-only spaces.I initially wanted to talk about how whiteness toxically uses reverse racism as a shield when discussing BIPoC spaces, but didn’t want to go off-topic in this episode, concluding it by saying I didn’t want to open a can of worms. I apologize for not spending more time on it, and would like to cover this topic in a future episode.Please note that this by no means diminishes the importance of the topic, as empowering those who are underrepresented and/or marginalized is our goal. In the meantime, we recommend reading JSConf EU’s page on the topic:https://2019.jsconf.eu/bipocit-space/

TIMEA:Hey Ramón!

RAMÓN:Hey Timea!

TIMEA:Let’s talk, gender equality.

RAMÓN:I love the idea. Gimme a second. I just got to grab my coffee. I hope you’ve got yours too.

TIMEA:Yeah, right here.

RAMÓN:Welcome welcome, everybody. If you were listening before we’ve got a very special guest on the show. Once again here we’ve got Eva Lettner who is amongst other things public speaker Google developer expert and coding instructor at the Women && Code organization.

TIMEA:Hi, Eva. Hi, everybody.

RAMÓN:Hey, hey, so if you’ve been listening to the show before you probably knew that we had a van to talk about her journey as a polymath and and a public speaker. And what we wanted to do today was cover a little bit about Women && Code as an organization itself. So, yes, this is Women && Code. We covered it shortly before. But could you tell us a little bit about Women && Code once again. For those just joining in.

EVA:Sure Women && Code is a nonprofit organization that I found it together with Barbara Ondrisek, I think it was 2018 but I’m not sure because time has no meaning, now. And the idea came to me on a flight where I was really bored and couldn’t sleep. And I came home and Barbara and I had coffee. I told her the idea. And she said okay we’re going to do it I was on my way home. She texted me. We have a domain. We have email addresses and we’re going to do this in two weeks. So that was basically it. How this idea started is. I was a trainer for another nonprofit organization in Vienna. That was called Girls and Code and they were teaching HTML CSS they were teaching JavaScript in WordPress and all kinds of stuff for women and people wanting or women wanting to get into the industry. That was really inspirational for me. Unfortunately, they stopped doing courses because it was just too much for them. Just didn’t have enough time anymore in the resources and so. And I was really sad, because I enjoy teaching. And so having this idea in my head team at the right moment because I had taken a break from training. And I just wanted to get into it and that was the perfect situation to start something new again. And what we wanted to do is not teach, ourselves, because teaching is exhausting, we wanted to mentor and to help people teach themselves and teach each other. And so the concept that we came up with was: everybody does the same solve the same problem, but whenever they want to, so we have a date. I think it was. I think it was Wednesday, Tuesdayor Wednesday. Something like that with HTML CSS so people would come whenever Tuesday. They have time and they would do solve one problem. They would do one exercise. And then when he came the next time they did this second exercise. Then they did the third exercise. And the idea was that if you have done exercise two you’re automatically a mentor for exercise one to all the people who are doing exercise one. You as somebody who’s already done one you are the mentor and they can ask you questions and how we facilitated that was we numbered people, which is a bit weird, but we wrote the name down as well. Everyone got to stick with the name and a number on it if they were there for the first time it said number one. If they were there for the second time in at number two, and so forth, so people would sit together with the other people with the same number and they would try and figure out the exercise together. And if they got stuck, they could just look around the room and find somebody with a number higher than their own and ask them a question because that person had already done the exercise that they were currently doing. And additionally, we had a couple of mentors there who would just go around and make sure that everyone was understanding what they were doing and if they need additional help and so basically we facilitated learning by yourself, teaching yourself, but also mentoring.

TIMEA:So I was one time I joined as a tutor, I said this in the previous podcast and I felt very safe and welcome. And I really like how people interacted with each other safe to ask questions, nothing was, you know, to easy to ask or whatever this kind of attitude. And I really like the projects they did. And I noticed you have this exercises that people could access online. Was the material something that you and Barbara worked on created on the website and everything

EVA:We did it ourselves. Okay, we did a bit of scouring the Internet for inspiration from August. You don’t reinvent the wheel. So you may get to do this. Obviously, you learn JavaScript you make it todo list at some point in your life. And so we came up with the exercises and what we did with writing out the brief for the exercise is we’re keeping it very light. Hearted we’re there with you in the text of the exercise. So it’s not a high level. And now use algorithm, blah, to achieve stuff, it’s very conversational and very cheerful. So, at every stage that you manage, yeah, congratulations! And now we go on to the next thing, and we got a lot of feedback from people saying that this is really motivating that they like to read through the exercise text because they are just fun and approachable and really understandable. So we didn’t want to bother anyone with tech speak because I didn’t study the computer sciences. I have no idea about techs speak so I didn’t want to impose that on people who are also not from the tech field and who didn’t study computer science, because it’s difficult enough to learn the concepts and the language of the programming language itself. You don’t need to learn all of the lingo that goes along with it at the same time. Because that might be a little bit over the top. It might make you back away from it because you feel like it’s not approachable for you.

TIMEA:So from what I understand it’s basically for people that are not in tech already. And you created this easy way for them to get to know some basics and decide for themselves. How far they want to go and learn by not using the slang in tech being motivational in the teaching materials. And I understand from the last podcast, this is something that comes from. Also your experience of being a “quereinsteigerin” or somebody who changed from marketing, for example, into tech, right?

EVA:Yeah, so I kind of know where people are coming from when there is this magical thing of programming. And only really intelligent people can do it. And you need to have a math brain to do it. And you need to be a certain person to be able to do take, which is obviously…

TIMEA:Bullshit.

EVA:Thank you I didn’t know if I was allowed to say bullshit. Yes it’s not true. You can be whoever you want to tech it it doesn’t matter. I don’t have a math brain I can’t do it for the life of me.

TIMEA:Tell us a bit about the kind of people that come to your workshop. What who will I meet if I go there.

EVA:Many marketing women, okay, because they work in agencies and they work with developers or they work with developers and other agencies and they want to understand what’s taking so long. Why is it so expensive? And how can I tell them exactly what you need to know?

TIMEA:Good point.

EVA:Yeah. And it really helps a lot to know what’s underneath the hood. Because if you’re just like I want to change the font on this, can you change the font on this and then the developer. They don’t know what they’re talking about I’m going to charge them that. And for the women that come into our course, helpless in that way. They want to understand what’s happening there. And if they can do it by themselves.

EVA:It’s always a thing that they want to strive for is I have this WordPress site and I just need to change a little thing. If I send it off to an agency will take five weeks. If I do it myself. Can I do this quickly? So they want to learn how to do things themselves. But also to understand what’s actually happening there. And how long it will take what amount of work goes into this so that they can be more assertive in their conversations with developers or development agencies just to have more skills and more knowledge about the topic itself.

TIMEA:What kind of what kind of topics do they have the opportunity to get knowledge at Women && Code what do you offer?

EVA:We have a class on HTML CSS we have a JavaScript we have a class on Java.

TIMEA:Oh, wow, yeah. Wait if it’s Java that means that you are also targeting people who might actually start then working in work, right?

EVA:Yeah, also spoilers. Lots of people have started working in tech through women and code.

TIMEA:Yeah, that is what I was getting at. That is so cool.

EVA:We have a couple of people who are now programmers and the nice thing about it is that we have built a relationship with the community of the women that come to our classes. So they reach out to us when they landed jobs because they want to let us know because we always tell people please tell us if you make it. And if we can help you, we also do CV checks with people try to use our networks to get people jobs.

TIMEA:Okay, so listen up. Who wants to get started in tech? Women && Code in Vienna. And in another point, your courses are they in any case, open source?

EVA:Yes. We’ve had loads of critique from men, why is it just for women and women get everything for free and it’s so unfair that’s not the reason why we put it open source because we don’t really care about that. But it is there for everybody and everyone can do this we just don’t have men in our courses. Yeah, that is also what you talked about before. We have this atmosphere of a very safe space. And we have experienced that a lot with women feeling safe with us. We’ve had trans women feeling safe with us and that is super important and we have a very strict code of conduct that we enforce we’ve had loads of women, Muslim women coming who took friends with them because they were unsure whether they would feel safe in this community and then came back by themselves and told us, yeah, we felt so safe last time. So this time I decided to come by myself and that is so nice and I’m so proud of this community because they embrace everybody and they just want to be nice to each other.

TIMEA:A few years ago. Around the time I started women time makers. I did a meet up with the back then organizers of different communities, Django girls, Ruby, Rails girls. I had very interesting people and I remember specifically there was but I don’t remember who it was. There was one woman at that meeting and she did master thesis on this topic. In Germany and he looked into the women only communities in Germany. And why do they even exist and what the benefit or what’s the downside. And I remember that she said that there is this need when you’re a young professional or someone who wants to change into tech and you’re simply as a woman, even more shy of asking what you think in your mind is a stupid question, which actually is not. And I don’t know it’s just because of this big gender bias in tech, it just created this lack of confidence of a girl of a woman to ask this, so called silly question, which actually is not it’s just basic one and she said that these women only communities were needed. Exactly for that purpose, only targeting young, professional or beginners and giving them the opportunity and the atmosphere so they are okay with asking this, because this is an important part of the learning. And I think at the same time you’re also growing their confidence and confidence is a different total topic. So for me, it always made sense that for your special target group. You need to create this atmosphere for me. For me it always made sense, however, I did one other meet up. I met somebody who happened to be a man and he was very against women only events and he was so one sided with the view. I understand his point of view as well because he was trying to learn tech, get into tech and for him he said that he only finds courses where he has to pay there’s nothing for free. And he likes to have this community learning and not learn online on his own. It made sense, but I mean, what does this mean? One, opportunity your courses are open source. Everybody can start it off. Start your own community. This is what I gave him as an advice or a learning circle too. You can use the material for any kind of a community, any gender, any age. Any whatever is so that’s a call to action here.

EVA:When Barbara and I said when we started this initiative, we said as soon as we have 50 50 gender equality intake in Austria, we will stop. We will allow that’s our definite retirement. Thing is if we reach 50 50 we’re done we’re not going to do this anymore.

TIMEA:Let’s work on it together, I love it. I also have this goal.

EVA:But at the moment we are not there.

TIMEA:As the fact I noticed, I researched this topic. And in 2018, I have the numbers there were 17% women in tech. So from the whole workforce, I don’t know 150,000, 30,000 were women only 17% I think especially in Austria we have a long way to go. And this is one of the reasons why me and Ramón started the podcast. Yeah, our little call to action.

RAMÓN:I’m trying to remember where it is that I saw. I think it was corner was PyLadies’ FAQ that had a question whose answer I always come back to, which is something like, why is this space only for women isn’t that sexist as well? And the answer is amongst other things like this is an open source piece of education. You can fork it. But the one thing they put kind of cheeky, but I kind of like it, which is, but, hey, this is our approach. If you think you can do it better, please. Yeah, go ahead.

EVA:We don’t have a monopoly in any of this.

RAMÓN:Absolutely and by making it accessible to anybody who wants to to if you have improvements that you can suggest to. For example, Women && Code it’s there it’s online, you can make those suggestions and use it in your own approach it’s all about community efforts, right? I remember, I think it was last year at the JavaScript and CSS conf on they had a I don’t know how to pronounce this I’m going to try my best BIPoCiT space, which is a space to help, invite, support and be respectful of Black Indigenous and or people of color in tech (BIPoCiT) and this created a very similar conversation to what I’m hearing now, with people saying why can’t, why aren’t we allowed in. This is reverse. Sorry I’m not going to open that kind of worms. But it’s a conversation that’s uncomfortable and needs to be had. And I find it so interesting that people are so concerned about exclusion when they themselves are doing the excluding and by trying out these by trying out these kinds of organizations. What can we do towards making this a better place? And I think, for example, by you and Barbara by providing the space where, for an approach that works for these people. And, you know doesn’t work for everybody. Some people prefer to to learn and, sorry I’m interrupting no.

EVA:Go ahead.

RAMÓN:Yeah, no, I think being able to be open and saying this works for us this is something we can iterate on. I think it’s worked remarkably well because you’ve been at this for how many years now almost 3, 4, time has no meaning.

EVA:Since We’ve taken a bit of a break I think we did it for two years in total.

TIMEA:Can you tell us a bit number of women you’ve empowered? Because I think you have some success stories there.

EVA:We have had a couple hundred women in. I think it was close to a thousand women that came to our classes. We more than one of the exercises. So that is for a small town. Vienna is… it’s amazing. Yes, I have met loads of these women over the years. Now, that that know me from Women && Code, and I have so many problems remembering because it was just so many. Yeah, and I hired three of them.

TIMEA:Wow, wow so cool, so.

EVA:Yeah it’s really cool. But to be fair, I didn’t hire them because I didn’t want anyone to think that I would. I would give somebody a leg up, just because I know them. So I have my colleagues hire than well.

TIMEA:Of course, they went to an interview and all that. Showcase the skills I’m sure of that. But.

EVA:I would like you need to make the decision because I would take. I don’t want to be the one making the decision for.

TIMEA:I remember I was so proud when you first I talked about, for example, the women hackathon where you had. It was sold out, right? It was like 70 women and even more showed up and you tried to make space for everybody. And it was women only. And I was so proud when you talked openly on Twitter and all that about it because I was like after this. And after the work that you have done is how can people say in Austria that women don’t want to code or women are not interested in IT or in programming. You can you can’t say this anymore like you’ve proven them wrong. This is what it meant for me.

EVA:Yeah we’ve put up a hackathon and we’ve done two hackathons by now and we put them up and they were sold out really quickly, the second one took a bit longer because we did it in vacation time. And still more people came and signed up and we almost ran out of space and pizza, so it’s really amazing. Women took their children with them. We had a baby there. The mom was like, yeah it’s fine she’s going to put the baby somewhere, because it’s a room full of women. Somebody was pick it up when it cries.

TIMEA:Yeah, we have this Women Techmakers too.

EVA:The only male in the room was the baby. Yeah it’s just a really cool space. And if you have 80 women in a room in a hackathon working on programming. I feel that nobody can tell me that women can’t, that’s bullshit.

TIMEA:I really want to shout it from the top of my lungs to all the companies and everybody who keeps saying that this is not for women and they are not interested. And there are no women in IT. I just want to show the numbers and always talk about your successes with the community, because for me it was a clear showcase or push back at the status quo. Yeah, this also brings me to a great topic of obviously it’s an NGO, you offer pizza. You have a space where people can come so how do you manage all these resources? Because you do have to invest some money in it.

EVA:Sponsorships.

TIMEA:Okay, with companies. I suppose.

EVA:Companies, although we have had loads of trouble, sourcing money because we were a new organization in the beginning. And also because I am not a good hustler. I think Barbara is more. So she got us all the free spaces to hold our workshops in. But it was very tedious to get money out of companies because there are so many meetups in Vienna all of them get money from the same companies. And the next meet up, wanting money they’re like, yeah. But we’re already paying for that and that. So it’s very hard to start using if you are not ingrained in this community of getting money from companies. That was really difficult. But how we also get money is it was initially my idea to just have an open thing and everyone can come and go if they want to. But that turned out to not be possible, because there were so many women that signed up each time.

TIMEA:Too many. Okay, so we need the spaces.

EVA:And we need to know how many are coming and we need space to.

TIMEA:Accommodate.

EVA:So we limited ourselves to. I think initially I was 15 and then we had to open it up to 20 and we were sold out within, like two hours or something. Most of the time.

TIMEA:Wow that’s insane again.

EVA:But we had to limit it. Just because we needed space for people. And also we needed and to so, yeah, we actually needed to take care of that. And so what we started doing was because meet ups are notorious for people signing up and then not coming. We didn’t want that to happen. So we put a paywall in front of it. So you can reserve your space for nine euros. And the nine euros don’t go to Barbara and me. They go into the community. So we pay for food. We pay for spaces we pay for the Hackathon. Use the money to fund the whole project. Also, we have a social program that if you cannot afford the nine years, then we take the money from that and pay for your spot. So we make sure that everybody can participate and it was never a problem for people to pay nine euros because nine euros are not much.

TIMEA:But it goes a long way for you for organizing it.

EVA:Yeah it’s just that helps a lot with taking the pressure off of finding sponsors.

TIMEA:Yeah, we know a little bit about finding sponsors ourselves. But I want to give her the opportunity and a shout out: companies, if you’re listening in, HR people, especially, yeah. If you’re looking to hire women in IT, that are really interested. I think Women && Code is the best place to go at in Vienna right now. If you want quereinsteigerinnen, juniors, if you can help them grow into a position that you envision for them in your company and if I saying sponsoring is always welcome. Yes. I can tell you any community that is welcome and it doesn’t have to be now. Thousands of euros, it can start really small and you can make a big impact and you help out gender equality in STEM.

RAMÓN:Absolutely. I think it’s important to remember that especially as somebody. When I say somebody else. I mean, a company trying to make themselves known trying to have a presence doing that in a gradual manner coming to these events showing up as well. By the way, showing up out helping the costs making these accessible to people it’s kind of a long game. Isn’t it people people notice people is like, yeah it’s that company who keeps the people with the funky stickers. The people with the the people who nicely show up and Super friendly and have a presence.

EVA:Yeah, and the participants were they still talk about? We were invited to Cisco in Vienna and they got us the best food.

TIMEA:Yeah.

RAMÓN:Nice.

EVA:It was such a nice space. And we actually had people asking the women from Cisco that where they are talking about the company. We actually had women going up to them talking to them about jobs because it was just such a nice atmosphere that they provide there. And so it’s really helpful if you want to get women into your company in tech positions, reach out to the organizations that actually help get these women jobs. And I can speak from experience in my company. When I started there, we had three women as developers. I think, including me. And now we are close to 50-50.

TIMEA:Insane.

EVA:Yeah, we have hired a lot of women and it’s good for the teams.

TIMEA:Can I ask you? Is part of the reason why you managed or the company managed 50 50 is it you? Did you match them? Did you inspire them? Did you help with Women && Code?

EVA:Yeah, maybe.

TIMEA:I hope so, come on!

RAMÓN:I think it’s important to take credit where credit is due right?

TIMEA:Yeah, I feel like it’s a place of taking credit.

EVA:It was a huge goal of mine as soon as I got enough influence to actually influence hiring decisions to get more women into it. And it changed the way that people talk to each other. So much it has changed the awareness. It has changed the working mode. It has changed all the communication it’s just it was so beneficial and I’m incredibly proud. That we have reached such a high number now and it’s amazing it’s also amazing to manage women it’s just really nice.

TIMEA:I feel like I have three other topics of podcast episode I want to talk to you about and let’s keep the conversation to invite you again. I hope that would be possible. Well, right now I feel empowered from our talk and I feel like, 2021 Yeah. Let’s start working again, by the way. When can we expect you coming back? Women && Code.

EVA:Post Covid.

TIMEA:Fair enough.

EVA:We want to do face to face to the event again. We always meet in person because it’s important for us to the connection to our participants and for them to build a network because it’s very difficult to build a network on his own. Call with people who you don’t know a lot easier if you’re under seen both together sitting in the same room working on the same project to. That is something that has always been. The main part of Women && Code is we want to meet the people. We want to meet the women and hang out with them and talk to them. And that is also why it has worked well. So we want to come back. But we want to come back when it’s safe. And we don’t want to endanger anyone. Especially because we’ve always had pregnant women there and we want to also give a chance to women that have pre-existing conditions that would otherwise be endangered. So we want to come back when it’s safe and it’s sensible when we can put people together on the same desk so that they can work together. Yes, we will come back in a sensible manner.

TIMEA:Let us know how we can help you with promotion. If you need help or I’m glad to recommend you to our sponsors. We don’t know if we are having a conference next year yet. We haven’t decided, yeah.

RAMÓN:Stay tuned. On that note Eva, taking timing into consideration. If I were if I a woman in tech we’re interested in mentoring and helping with Women && Code. Is that something I could do?

EVA:Yes, everybody can help. We have different courses. So I think we’ve talked about this HTML JavaScript and.

RAMÓN:Java.

EVA:For the moment. That will be more. But if you have a specific skill that you want to teach people whether it’s I don’t know big data, project management in IT something like that. If you can build a curriculum about that topic with, like, eight to 10 lessons. Yeah, sure. Also, if you know any of our technologies just come and be a mentor that’s.

TIMEA:I recommend it was very nice. Yeah.

EVA:I think it’s a cool experience it’s also a learning experience. You don’t have to be a pro because people start from zero, so it’s actually really good to learn yourself, because I find that I learn best. When I try and explain something to somebody. Really helpful to teach people so you can help yourself.

RAMÓN:Absolutely one thing I keep coming back to is the fact that even if you’ve been working in a specific field for so long trying to formulate it in a way that’s accessible to a newcomer really helps kind of it reminds me that there’s a lot that I take for granted when it comes to for example software development. I think it’s good, it kind of keeps things fresh. Yes that’s awesome. Well, I think we’ve been at this for a while before we close out I’m curious. Do you have any recommendations for sources for reading. We can do to help inspire others to get mentoring organizing. Yeah.

EVA:There’S actually, in Vienna there’s a new community that’s called new IT Girls. Yeah, they are doing loads of awesome stuff they’re doing meetups they’re also working now during Covid. So they are doing cool things. Yeah, I would check them out because they have very cool community and they are working while Women && Code is on pause.

TIMEA:Spoiler alert. Astrid said yes to being our guest on the podcast on they are amazing, thank you for referencing them.

EVA:They’re doing a great job. And then internationally there are also great resources. There is Women Who Code there are Black Girls Code, there is a lot of resources out there for women to get into coding and, yeah it’s really nice there. I think they called Tech Ladies like a mentorship program and community building. So, yeah there’s lots of cool stuff out there. What I always recommend when you’re trying get into something new. Whether it’s you want to learn a new skill? You want to learn for a new job you want to learn. A hobby is to get a tribe together like build an interest group of four to five people to keep you accountable. And then learn with you. And that is really helpful because if you’re not programming by yourself it can be very demotivating in there and then useful because it doesn’t work and it’s shit. But having an interest group that meets every week. Every two weeks every month and that can also happen worldwide. You can have people all over the world. And you just hang out in a Zoom call. And you say hey, I have this problem doesn’t work I’m so demotivated, you will find somebody. You interest group and will say. Yeah, I can show you how to fix that I’ve had the same problem before. And so this is really helpful. Trying to find these people might be a little bit challenging. But you can ask on Twitter you can write to any one of us. We will retweet just to find you people that will hang out with you.

TIMEA:Invite us on Women Techmakers and we can see if we can connect with others.

EVA:Yeah, sure it’s having a group of accountability bodies. Just keep you keep you added.

RAMÓN:I love it. I love it what’s that saying, it takes a village.

EVA:Sure.

TIMEA:What is it?

RAMÓN:It takes a village. I don’t know the rest. I don’t know if there is a rest.

EVA:It’s about raising children.

RAMÓN:Oh, no that’s not what I mean.

EVA:You can count for anything for. I had one of those groups for playing piano.

TIMEA:Yeah. It can be for everything, basically.

EVA:Yeah, I think it’s very helpful.

RAMÓN:That’s amazing, I love it.

TIMEA:Thank you for all the kind words recommendation for again, the work you’re doing. We are so looking forward and for you and Barbara to start this again. I hope that this time off you regain some of the energy which you manage to nicely “ausstrahlen” to shine basically in the community again. And if there’s anything how we can help you from Women Techmakers or personally, yeah, from time to time show up as a tutor, maybe come up with new topics for you companies to sponsor you and venues. We would gladly help.

EVA:Yeah we need venues.

RAMÓN:Well, I know. We asked this in the last episode. But if people want to get in touch with you what’s the best way.

EVA:Twitter @eva_trostlos that way you can reach me in easiest I’m not an email person. I get emails. I forget to answer them.

RAMÓN:Fair enough!

EVA:Feel bad for not answering them for two weeks, and then I’m like, yeah, too late now.

RAMÓN:And then you can move on. No, that sounds great. Well, thank you so much for being on once again, this has been an absolute pleasure. I hope that we can do so again soon. Hopefully in person as well. That would be amazing. I think that’s all for me, anything from you, Timea.

TIMEA:No, I just feel very grateful for this time together.

RAMÓN:Same here.

TIMEA:Thanks a lot.

EVA:Thank you.

RAMÓN:Thank you all for listening. Catch you next time.

TIMEA:Bye!

TIMEA:Are you on the forefront of gender equality? You are invited on our podcast.

RAMÓN:That’s right. Or maybe you know somebody that we could have a chat with on gender quality. You should totally get in touch with us. We’re on Twitter @GenderCoffee. Or any of the other contact methods on our show notes, we would love you to get in touch and for us to have a chat.

Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcVy3mXHceQ

Eva was our #WTMVIE keynote speaker in 2019 and one of the 2 co-founders of the Viennese community Women && Code.We talk to Eva about her experiences and her drive for getting more women into Tech.

Mentioned resources:

• Women && Code: https://womenandcode.org/
• Her keynote #WTM19: The peculiar life of a polymath by Eva Lettner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdlY8-oOSmk
• Connect with her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eva_trostlos
• Womentor: https://www.womentor.at/

• TIMEA: Hey Ramón!
• RAMÓN: Hey Timea!
• TIMEA: Let’s talk gender equality.
• RAMÓN: I love the idea. Gimme a second I just gotta grab my coffee, I hope you’ve got yours, too!
• TIMEA: Yep, right here.
• RAMÓN: Welcome to another episode of “Gender Equality over Coffee”! I am so excited to have the two of you here. We are joined today by Eva Lettner.
• TIMEA: Hi Eva! Hi everybody!
• RAMÓN: Eva is an incredible person, we are so happy to have you here today. Yeah I figured I won’t do the talking, Eva why don’t you tell us, do you have a fun nickname for us that you’d like to share?
• EVA: I don’t have a nickname since my name is so short, no, nobody’s ever bothered to make a nickname. When people call me a nickname they usually prolong my name, so yeah I’m just Eva. On the internet I’m @eva_trostlos which is a play on words for my husband’s last name.
• RAMÓN: Oh! I never knew that. Well, why don’t we start off, letting loose, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? Maybe some three random things about you?
• EVA: Some three random things… I make my own clothes! I collect fountain pens, this is my newest addition. I love it very much it’s very pretty.
• TIMEA: Wow yeah that’s cool.
• EVA: And I’m teaching myself to play the piano for two years now.
• RAMÓN: That’s awesome. I love it when people tell us about things that that that are outside of their regular things that you see them in. Timea, do you play any instruments?
• EVA: No I don’t but I was actually interested in piano a while ago so I got stuck on that point, but I never it never picked up I don’t have a keyboard at home so that kind of a keyboard but I gotta say I was thinking more about the collection like do I collect something. Do you collect something Ramón?
• RAMÓN: Do I collect something… I collect random things at home probably mostly Nintendo things it’s a bad habit of mine old Gameboys I really like old Gameboys
• TIMEA: I’ve seen some of you had some with some meetups and I was like wow I’ve never seen some stuff like this earlier and cute.
• RAMÓN: Yeah that’s a little bit of my background, yeah. So Eva you were keynoting at our Women Techmakers conference a few years ago I think it was 2017…
• TIMEA: 19! Not that far away
• EVA: Yeah but then 2020 took 38 years, so…
• RAMÓN: It just feels like a different amount of time! I’m curious what how did you get connected with Women Techmakers Vienna?
• EVA: Wow, that’s, actually I went to Women Techmakers conference ages ago, I don’t even remember if I was already working in tech or if I was just starting out but it was the first conference I ever went to.
• TIMEA: Oh yeah! I feel super, like, wow, okay, we were the first conference, cool!
• EVA: Yeah so it was either right after I started working in tech or just before. And it was just, it felt so great there were so many cool people there and I met people that I’m still friends with now, like Pilar, who is Ramón’s sister, I met her there and it was just a very nice atmosphere and I felt very empowered from all the speeches and it’s just it gave me the feeling that a woman can actually do things in tech and can be influential in a way and also this was when I saw myself first on stage, I saw those women speak and I was like “Oh I’m gonna do that too”.
• TIMEA: Wow.
• EVA: And I was terrified of public speaking all of my life it’s just nothing I ever anticipated doing it was nothing I ever looked forward to but when I went to the conference and I saw those women speak I was like ‘Yeah I’m gonna do that too at some point’. And I don’t remember what year it was, it was either 2016 or 2017. Then I went to the conference and yeah! So things happened and I wanted to volunteer for Women Techmakers at some point but I didn’t get really into it because I ran out and it was just very, I had a lot to do and it was just a little bit too stressful, but then Timea and I stayed in contact and eventually she asked me if I would give give a talk at Women Techmakers and obviously I was like ‘yeah sure’.
• TIMEA: Wow I have so many actually follow-up questions on these points, and you are by now a public figure for me especially. Since you became a Google Developer Expert and so if one Googles your name you they can find talks with you. You’ve been at meetups, spoke at conferences with over a thousand people, so that’s amazing, and the one point I want to catch on to is, in german there’s a specific word for this I really like. It’s “quereinsteigerin”.
• EVA: Oh yeah.
• TIMEA: Right, so you actually changed your profession, yeah, I want you to tell us a little bit about that aspect.
• EVA: Yeah, so initially I wanted to be a linguist. I started studying historical linguistics at university, and I was close to the end like I was already writing my thesis and I was working in in a project already, and it was all nicely laid out I have my plan, I will get my masters then I would get my PHD and I would become a linguist. And now comes the sad part of the story because then my mother got cancer and I lost steam on uni. It was just, I couldn’t focus on anything anymore, it was just getting through all these hurdles and and making it through to the next day, and so that took two and a half years, then my mother passed away, and I found myself with “Okay what am I doing now?” because I can’t go back to uni, I’m too far away now and I stopped studying so I was there without perspective and without anything so I had some random jobs here and there, I didn’t want to be anything in particular so it just bounced around, and I had different careers until at some point I thought “Hey, there was this one thing that you did as a teenager that you really enjoyed, it was building websites, but then somebody told you that you can’t do that as a career!” And by then people did it as a career so I thought “okay you know what I enjoyed this i’m gonna try this” out and I got myself back into programming and I enjoyed it really much and yeah the rest is history I just got stuck in it.
• TIMEA: Uou got into programming, at least in one of the talks you mentioned you were basically teaching yourself is so or did you do any course or Google?
• EVA: I did a course but that didn’t do much for me it. It wasn’t necessarily the fault of the course, it was just, I was used to teaching myself things from uni and afterwards it’s just like teaching myself, so I have prior knowledge so it was a lot easier for me to get into stuff, and the stuff that we learned in the course wasn’t necessarily what I wanted to do. So there was loads of PHP, and that kind of stuff that just didn’t interest me. I wanted to make things shiny and float!
• TIMEA: Right I remember at the devfest you had the talk about CSS, and that’s how you did things shiny and nice and actually cute and nerdy I was, you know, I was trained in Java most of my professional years and I’ve seen you do these amazing things with CSS I was fascinated. Is that something that also got you excited into coding?
• EVA: Yeah I always wanted to stretch the boundaries of what is possible with a certain technology and I really got stuck in CSS because I like to be a creative but I can’t draw. It’s just, that’s not in my skill set but for whatever reason maybe block stuff looks…
• TIMEA: You could draw with pixels actually! It looks so cool, you had this monster, let’s put in the show notes, a link to, I think we still have the Devfest talk.
• RAMÓN: Yeah should still be around.
• TIMEA: Right, on the YouTube channel we also make sure to link your keynote talk.
• RAMÓN: Absolutely, yeah. One thing that I’ve always appreciated about about your talk and your presence in general as a community member is this this desire to help people get inspired and and learn either, you know, by themselves or through whichever methods work for them best. I’m curious, what’s your driving factor for, you know, getting others up and running, for example in this case front-end software developers.
• EVA: I teach myself through my own excitement. I’m a very excitable person and I get really excited about things very quickly and then I learn all about them. This is how I learn and this is how I also teach, I make people excited about things so that they want to develop themselves further because when I’m giving workshops and when I’m teaching it’s not enough to just be in the workshop and do the things that I tell them to, that doesn’t cut it. You don’t become a developer from just being in a workshop you become a developer because you love it and because you’re excited about it and you want to learn more. If you’re not excited about it, it’s that’s not enough, that will not get you very far is my experience, so what I like to do is build up excitement and emotion about the topic so that you actually want to work on it, and that you want to get better at it, and I always say at the end of my workshops this is not enough this is this was for nothing if you don’t do it now in your free time if you don’t practice and learn more then you could have skipped this workshop, because it’s no use, you have to be into the topic and you have to like it and enjoy it, which is also a bit of a problem in the whole tech industry because we are made to feel that unless we code in our free time, we are not developers, we are not real developers, but you really have to weigh in what your free time looks like and what you actually can do and what your job is and, yeah so that’s the really that.
• RAMÓN: Absolutely and I definitely want to come back to that, but something you mentioned there about this desire to, you know, getting excited and getting others excited I think is a good opportunity to just briefly touch upon something that you started a handful of years ago with Barbara Ondrisek called Women && Code, so why don’t you tell us a little bit about this this organization?
• EVA: Yes, we founded a non-profit organization that aims to get more women into tech, and our goal is to teach people: teach themselves and teach each other, so we we structured our courses. They are not really courses, they they are a communal workshop where everyone teaches each other and themselves. So our courses are structured like this: you show up, if you’re there for the first time you you get a little sticker that has a 1 on it, and so you can flock to all the people that also have a 1 on it and you do a specific exercise. If you get stuck you look around the room and you find someone with a higher number than what is on your sticker and that person will be able to help you, because they have done that specific problem before, and that is the whole concept of it, so that we don’t have to teach because teaching is very tiresome and if you do it for free, in your free time, it becomes even more tiresome because you’re spending your free time on something that is fun, but also you need to make a living too, and yeah, so this becomes very very difficult with time and we did this once once or twice per week. Also, it wasn’t sustainable to teach all the time and so we we came up with this concept of people teaching each other and that has worked out great! It’s really fun and people have actually formed communities around this, and have made WhatsApp groups where they program together and learn together, people have become friends over this community, it’s just really nice to see, and we wanted to have a hands-off approach as much as possible as the founders of this movement, because we want to enable women to take care of their own path and their own learning, just because that is something that you need to learn as a developer in the future too. And yeah, it’s loads of fun. We are on an extended break now, though, because, first we took a break for mental health reasons, because it was a lot of work, and now we’re taking a COVID break, because we we did these things in person, and the concept was always to have it in person so you can walk around the room and yeah.
• RAMÓN: That’s awesome, I’m gonna put a link.
• TIMEA: Yeah, the link is a good point you have to, of course. I wanted to say that I was once at an event, participated as a tutor, and I liked the atmosphere and people were very open and there was no shyness of asking questions. That’s something that is not a given in some events and I was actually fascinated of what intriguing projects some of the participants had they were more advanced than what I ever did in some regards and I was there as a tutor and I was like “okay maybe next time” I should just come as a participant, you know.
• [Laughter]
• TIMEA: And what I also liked is I’ve noticed that at these events, people are “quereinsteigerin”, a lot of them so they are coming from different backgrounds and they want to use I.T or programming for their domains to empower them in their work, become more efficient or create something that is online available and that was, that would, I think this is what is definitely missing in a lot of tech, this multi-disciplinary aspect.
• EVA: Yeah, completely, and it was just very nice to see all those different perspectives, because we have loads of participants who come from a marketing background, because they want to learn what costs so much when they give this little task to a developer and why this is now 500 euros if it’s just a button, and that is super interesting because they want to gain knowledge in order to be more powerful and to be more assertive in their jobs. They don’t necessarily want to program themselves but they want to gain the knowledge so that they can be more assertive and that is super cool! That is just that, that keeps us going in this because we actually help them in their current situation, we don’t need to change jobs but they will become better in in their current situation and that is just really awesome.
• TIMEA: So I find this to be a direct parallel of your experience and you wanting to give back so that other people can have this experience. Is this the spark that ignited the collaboration with Barbara on Women && Code?
• EVA: Yes I think that’s exactly it, because getting into tech changed my life so much for the better, it gave me so much independence also on a monetary basis because obviously in tech we earn quite a lot more than in other professions which is sometimes very unfair, but it just gave me so much more power over my own life and I want to share this with other women.
• TIMEA: That’s so beautiful and thank you for the work you do for our community.
• EVA: It’s fun!
• [Laughter]
• RAMÓN: Well, going going back to what we’re just touching up on briefly before I think something that comes with a lot of, you know, a lot with volunteering and, you know, getting your work out there, and trying to do work outside of work is a danger of what is, especially I found this year, to be a bit of an issue and this sort of hustle sort of culture that’s come out, you know, people trying to to over extend their capabilities and, you know, come up with more ideas and projects and products and try to, you know, level up in whichever field, be it STEM or other, that they’re in, and this leads to burnout a lot, and something that I’ve always admired and actually been inspired by you Eva is that is that you are very clear in this separation. So I’ve wanted to ask, especially for our listeners who are probably starting out and thinking, you know, “I can do this all day, every day!” Why is it so important to you to have this this separation?
• EVA: This is my private space. This is where I am creative. This is where I do my own things and I don’t want to let work creep into this because I need to regain my strength, because in my job I use a lot of of my energy to be a professional… professional! And I lead a team at work, I need to have the energy to help people and to empower them so I need to regain my energy, and as an introvert I gain my energy from being alone, and just doing stuff with myself, so it’s very important to me to have that distinction and especially also with volunteering and doing extra stuff outside of work, I need to have a certain amount of free evenings to me and also have time for my relationship and have time for friends, because most of my friends are outside of tech which is very healthy, put things into perspective, because we can get in a rut of going to this meetup, if it’s not the pandemic obviously, but there was a time when every evening I was in a meetup and that was fun for a while but it was so draining, because there are so many people and so many conversations and you feel like you hustle all the time, because maybe this person will at some point give you a job and then, you know, this person and that person can mentor you and, whoa, but you also need the mind space to keep all of that in your head like who is who, and who do I ask for what, so this is just a lot of stuff that’s in your brain and it’s constantly in there, and so if you have trouble sleeping because you’re constantly worrying about things and “have I said the correct thing to that person” and “I need to go to this meet up” and “I need to give a talk there” this will cost you a lot of energy, or at least that’s what happened to me, and so at some point I decided “Okay I will say no and I will learn to say no”, and this is very difficult. I think saying no is a very important skill and also realizing that when you say no, you’re not mean, you’re not hurting anyone, you’re just saying “No, I can’t do this at the moment, maybe I will do it later, maybe I won’t do it at all.” It’s just super important to be able to say “This is not in my capabilities now, I don’t have time for this, don’t have the energy for this”. There’s also the analogy with the spoons. You have a certain amount of spoons every day, ah, I don’t have enough spoons for all of the things that I want to do and that people want me to do.
• TIMEA: This brings me to the title of your keynote which was, it had this word ‘polymath’ that I didn’t even know before and the fact that ‘the life of a polymath’, that’s the title which you described to be as a person that has eight arms involved in like an octopus, involved with in a lot of projects, a lot of things at the same time, I found it very genuine and a very good insight into your personality and how do you deal with things in general, so I think it really fits. It’s the word that sums up this tremendous energy that you put in the community and in the work and I identify myself with it and to be honest, this break because of the pandemic actually, was good for me because I could finally stand still and not go to a ton of meetups.
• EVA: Yeah.
• TIMEA: Right so I think for us this was not a bad break in that sense.
• EVA: Oddly enough I planned for 2020 to be my year of not speaking, so I had planned before we knew about the virus in anything I had planned to not give a single talk for the whole year I could I didn’t travel, I didn’t want to go anywhere, I didn’t want to do meetups, I didn’t want to do anything, I wanted to be quiet for a whole year. I didn’t know that my wish would extend to the whole world I’m very sorry for that, but yeah it was taken care of.
• RAMÓN: I hope that being here with us doesn’t count as one of those activities!
• EVA: Oh no not at all!
• TIMEA: Hey, we’re drinking coffee here, come on, yeah enjoy a friendly chat! Yeah and by the way, friendly chat, thinking about your polymath story and you also mentioned something like that basically translates in the fact that you sometimes get very easily bored of projects, ideas, tasks, you like to switch which also would potentially mean that you switch jobs and I also have quite some switches in my past 10 years of experience on my CV but in summer when I was trying to land the job someone asked from an HR department, you know, “why do you switch jobs so often?” because it was in my CV do you did you ever get this question?
• EVA: Yes.
• TIMEA: How do you deal with it, give me a hint, here give me a help!
• EVA: I didn’t know what to say. I was speechless. That question I didn’t expect, there are always different reasons of why you switch jobs, I mean sometimes you switch a job or at least I switch jobs when I can’t learn anything anymore at this specific company, specific position, because either I don’t get promoted or I just I reached the point in this company where where I can go and that is it, and I can’t learn anything anymore, so what am I still doing there. Then there is also the case of, as women and we know this, there is data on this, you get promoted less often than men, so if I want a promotion and a raise I need to switch jobs most of the time, and that has happened for me in in a couple of situations where I wanted to to get a raise or get a promotion and I couldn’t but if I switched jobs I would suddenly earn a lot more money, so that is also a reason to go. There are also multiple reasons, sometimes maybe in a job you get harassed, or you get discriminated against, or your male colleague will be promoted even though he has less experience, these are all things that happen all the time and these are all reasons to go, because why should I stick around if I have the possibility to go somewhere else, where somebody made me a great offer. But yeah especially in Austria we have this thing where you need to start at the company and you need to be there until you retire but that is still…
• TIMEA: Do you think it’s fair that they ask you this?
• EVA: No I think it’s horrible, because there are situations of why I needed to switch, and I have no problem explaining that to an HR person of why I went from that job and why I quit that job and where why I left there I will explain all of that to them but they are not interested, they don’t care.
• TIMEA: I don’t know, they see you like a fluctuation cost or they see was “Ah, this person, you know, is not loyal.” Yeah, but I think the underlying point there would have been “Can I as a company offer this person that obviously is striving for more and learning? Can I offer that environment?”
• EVA: Yeah sure. That’s what I just wanted to say if I’m willing to stay forever if you offer me an environment where I can grow, where I…
• TIMEA: Don’t get bored…
• EVA: My skill set, and where I can grow and do all the things that I want to do and learn more things do more things get promoted when it’s feasible, and when it makes sense, and be treated fairly, then I have no problem staying forever. I have not found the company.
• TIMEA: Yeah me neither so I was looking into founding my own actually but basically the question basically you would go into explaining the HR person for each job the reason?
• EVA: I have done that before but they don’t care.
• TIMEA: Okay, so that doesn’t it’s not necessarily helpful, but that’s the truth in the end of the day, yeah.
• RAMÓN: So I can’t freely, no, I can’t speak from experience because I’ve never actually worked full time before but I get the feeling from conversations with other people that this is kind of a vestige from an older generation, an older world, where where benefits and incentives could keep people in a company for their entire career, and I find that especially in in a software development, and I’m sorry to call it this, but a bubble I feel like this is kind of a norm now, and expected of people to be able to jump between companies once every one to two years, and that it’s healthy and encouraged, you know. STEM is a completely different case for for people working in something other than software engineering.
• TIMEA: Oh, I’ve researched this topic and I think I can do a whole podcast just on that.
• RAMÓN: I think we found our topic for another episode.
• TIMEA: Yeah! But let’s let’s leave it to another time, because I’m of a different opinion about that. I just wanted, from another woman in I.T to see how she deals with this bias of HR people, which I found out to be something quite extensive happening in between millennials, that they switch jobs often and I’m hoping that somehow the next generation is more loyal if the company also you know invests in them to be loyal.
• EVA: I wish companies would learn that they can keep even millennials, if they provide a nurturing environment, but they are many companies that are still stuck in the old ways. My dad started his job when he was 17. He’s still in this company and he will retire there.
• TIMEA: And that’s not bad but we just want a little bit more like maybe a learning budget, yeah that’s something that I always appreciate in job offers.
• RAMÓN: Yeah it sounds like we’re going to have to really research and go into it, I definitely got to read up on this and get ready for a big throw down we have one to talk about. Well let’s not not keep you forever Eva I know you’re busy and got stuff to do. One question that we always ask our guests here is, this is a big purpose of this podcast is to for people to be able to find where they can do their volunteering, how they can find mentors, and get started in doing their part to improve the intersectionality and inclusivity of organizations and and activities and so I’m wondering, do you have any advice that you would like to pass on to people that are interested in starting out here?
• TIMEA: Or quereinstegerinnen?
• RAMÓN: Them, yeah, I’m not going to try and pronounce that.
• TIMEA: It’s a mouthful for me too but I like the word.
• EVA: There are actually programs where you can sign up if you’re starting out and you want a mentor, one of these programs actually was developed and was the idea was born in a hackathon that Barbara and I organized and it’s called Womentor so it’s mentors for women and it’s, there’s those women that actually founded the organization, I think they got to know each other through Women && Code, or at least they were part of the Women && Code community and that is super awesome.
• TIMEA: Cool, right, because this is what happens at Women Techmakers too and I’m always so proud of that sparking and empowering other communities to show up. Yeah I know we meant that I’m hoping we can get somebody on our podcast.
• EVA: Yeah! They had this great idea and it’s just, it became a whole movement and yeah. I enjoyed it a lot. I know people who are mentored there I mentor somebody as well through Womentor. That’s a structured approach to finding a mentor, because it can be super scary to just write to somebody if you want a mentor, that feels kind of weird.
• TIMEA: For introverts difficult to do, I myself like that.
• EVA: Yeah, so especially in a digital age in 2020 where we don’t go anywhere, you can’t meet potential mentors, so there are a couple of networks also internationally where you can actually find a mentor, some of them are paid but it gives you a good network of people that you can reach out to when you can go outside again, and when there are meetups again, obviously going to meetups and meeting people is super fun, going to conferences and then talking to the speakers is also really great ideam because you might think that’s super scary but you can talk to one of the speakers because I enjoy talking to people and so does everybody else of the speakers that I know and we’re just normal people that hang out at a conference, and it’s completely normal to go up to us and ask us questions and chat with us, and have lunch with us, because there have been conferences where I had lunch alone, because nobody dared approach me. Yeah, so we are normal people! Please talk to us, it’s fine we might be a little bit shy.
• RAMÓN: Yeah, can relate.
• EVA: That’s also a way to get to know people that are in the industry and that have their foot in the door already.
• TIMEA: Thank you for telling that aspect of how it is to be a speaker and eating lunch alone because people think you’re, I don’t know, unapproachable. Not true, people, not true.
• EVA: But I know from going to conferences before I was actually speaking there, I was like “Oh I can’t talk to the speaker they are super famous”, but that is not true, this is not a rock star thing, they are normal people, yes on stage and that talk about stuff that they’re proud of.
• TIMEA: Most importantly everybody can be a public speaker and at Women Techmakers we try to make space also for newcomers, that speak the first time and are just passionate about their domain or their project.
• EVA: And you mentor them too, in making their talk professional, and losing stage fright, if they have it, and that is super cool! That’s a great first time speaking experience because it’s a very positive environment and yeah, speaking is super fun and it was very scary for me for the first time, but practicing in front of a small crowd first, and then giving the talk at a conference really helps, being prepared really helps, and yeah it’s a lot of fun. You get so much energy from the people that listen to your talk.
• RAMÓN: That’s amazing, thank you. Yeah I think to add on to that, if I may, one thing that I’ve experienced a lot with public speaking is that some folks that I think to myself these people could be amazing public speakers and I try to gently, very friendly, nudge them in that direction sometimes some folks really are just not interested in becoming public speakers, or the concept of being on a stage in front of dozens, hundreds, thousands of people is just not something they jibe with. And I think it’s important to remember, I guess I’m saying this more to 24 year old me if you feel like you should be on stage but don’t want to, don’t force yourself either.
• EVA: No of course not, it’s not a career driver, I mean it is a little bit, but it doesn’t give you more than than if you would just do your job that’s it’s completely fine to not do it. It’s a great experience, especially when you can travel, you see different cities, you meet a lot of people, it’s a cool experience, but if it’s not something that you feel will benefit you then don’t do it. Try it out and see if you like it but if you don’t like it, it’s fine it’s fine to just listen it’s fine to just go to conferences it’s fine to watch them on YouTube, it’s completely fine. You don’t have to be a conference speaker to be a developer, there is no such thing.
• RAMÓN: That’s awesome, thanks a lot Eva. I think with that, we’ve taken enough of your time. We’re so grateful that you could come on today, Eva. One last tiny thing, is there anywhere that people can get in touch with you if they’d like to, or maybe a shout out you’d like to give to some organization that we can put in our show notes?
• EVA: I am reachable on Twitter it’s the easiest that’s @eva_trostlos and with the organization you just caught me off guard.
• TIMEA: women and code!
• EVA: Yeah but we are on break so I don’t want to really advertise that until we are back.
• TIMEA: Okay, let’s talk about it in the next episode.
• RAMÓN: All good! Well, thanks a lot see you next time have a good day.
• EVA: Bye!
• TIMEA: Bye bye to everybody!
• TIMEA: Are you on the forefront of gender equality? You are invited on our podcast.
• RAMÓN: That’s right! Or maybe you know somebody that we could have a chat with on gender equality? You should totally get in touch with us! We’re on twitter @GenderCoffee or any of the other contact methods on our show notes. We would love to you to get in touch and for us to have a chat.

Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVymPmvTBe8

Krisztina Orosz was Main Organizer of #WTMVIE conference back in 2016. Listen to our podcast about how years of volunteering shape a person’s future;the positive bias of putting the word “women” in your community name;why being authentic is important also in startups, especially being an authentic leader and about the startup environment, how it is really like.

If you want to know more about what Krisz’ job role at Anyline(https://anyline.com/) is, we reference another cool podcast where Krisz was invited on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVu4Sjq-6vo

Additional resources mentioned during and after the podcast which Krisz wanted to you know about:

Books:

• Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

Podcast:

• I Weigh with Kameela Jamil - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-weigh-with-jameela-jamil/id1498855031
• Happy Place with Flo Perry: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/flo-perry/id1353058891?i=1000467161491

WTMVIE talk:

• How to break the brotopian cycle by Kaitlyn Chang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLpAfoZ3DSg&list=PLVr4my5fwE_XrRRqwW4LIYsPN2z5eaV2O
• Krisz’ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisztinaorosz/
• Krisz’ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kriszly/

• TIMEA: Hey Ramón!
• RAMÓN: Hey Timea!
• TIMEA: Let’s talk gender equality.
• RAMÓN: I love the idea. Gimme a second I just gotta grab my coffee, I hope you’ve got yours, too!

• TIMEA: Yep, right here.

• TIMEA: Hello to all our podcasters. Hi Ramón!
• RAMÓN: Hey Timea and welcome Krisztina.
• KRISZ: Thank you Hi.
• TIMEA: Hi, do you have a nickname Krisztina.
• KRISZ: Not officially, no, but on social media Ido I do use a nickname but I’m not gonna say it. People have to find it out,it sounds funny if you say it out loud so I’m not gonna say it!
• TIMEA: But I am gonna call you Krisz though, right?’s
• KRISZ: Yeah that’s fine.I don’t really consider that a nickname it’s just a short version of my name.
• TIMEA: Okay thanks for being on our podcast,you are our first guest!
• KRISZ: Thank you I’mreally really honored to have that badge, thank you.
• RAMÓN: As are we. We are so excited that youagreed to to come and chat with us a little bit about what you’ve been doingand how your efforts towards gender diversity and equality have continuedforward. I’m super humbled!
• KRISZ: Thank you.
• TIMEA: So Kriszwe go back a long time but still we would like our podcasters to get to knowyou a little bit better, so let’s just start with listing three random thingsabout you.
• KRISZ: I am a very big plant mama,and I’ve always been a plant mama but I kind of really gave into this hobbyduring the quarantine so now in a small apartment I am the proud owner of over50 plants and this collection is probably not going to become any smaller.I only learned how to ride a bike this year so I’m very proud of myself! It wasFebruary it was raining and I just bought a bike and I went out and learned itand after I learned how to ride a bike I have not ridden a bike anymore becauseit was only the challenge, it was just doing it.
• TIMEA: Yeah but it wasalso the lockdown.
• KRISZ: Yes that’s true and a third random factis that I know a lot of random facts like I know where cichlids come from and Iknow which two lakes in africa have the most amount of cichlids and I know whatwater PH water should have for certain several fish types to livecomfortably, or you know spread them facts mostly about animals. Yeah biganimals fan.
• TIMEA: Feel free todrop some of them.
• KRISZ: Most of the ones I know are dirty animalfacts so probably not the best medium.
• RAMÓN: Ah, because I was about to ask what is yourfavorite one but I think we might not beable to air it in that case.
• KRISZ: No, no, I mean I can say it and you cancut it out but I don’t know if you wantthe work…
• TIMEA: No, no, let’s go back to our cupof coffee and tea.
• KRISZ: Yes
• TIMEA: And to ourgender equality topic. So, one of the main reasons why we’ve invited you todayis because you took the challenge in 2016 to organize one of the yearly WomenTechmakers Vienna conferences, so you were what we call a main organizer.
• KRISZ: Yes.
• TIMEA: And I’d like to focus a bit on the years that you did a lot ofvolunteering in different organizations where we also met, and then convergedto the topic of gender equality. Why did you get involved back then, and thengoing into what does it mean for you now with the role that you have? So, let’sjust talk freely, tell me about your volunteering years.
• KRISZ: So, funnily it started during highschool in coming from Romania we were encouraged to volunteer especially if wewanted to go abroad at some point and I started volunteering at Habitat forHumanity, they build houses for underprivileged people or people who can’tafford to get a loan via normal channels, so they still have to pay for theirhouse but they only pay for the materials. All of the construction work is doneby volunteers and I was one of those volunteers, I had a chance to meet a lot ofinternational people a lot of companies are doing team building events wherethey go and build houses. So it was a really, really cool experience and youreally felt that you’re doing something that matters, and in that period Irealized that very often the people who were applying for these houses werealso either single mothers or women who were fleeing from abusive situations orthey were the stay-at-home mom because they had to be the stay-at-homemom because the husband was the only one who could have a job or who couldafford to have a job and someone had to stay at home to take care of the kids.So it wasn’t, I was a bit too young to kind of understand that this has to dowith gender equality, but thinking back, you know, hindsight is always 20 20 sothinking back I kind of noticed this as well. And then I continued my volunteerpath also during my student years in an organization called board ofeuropean students of technology where we (Timea) also met, actually, and it’s also funnybecause it’s a technical student organization but I was studying economics, sonot really technical, but I was also doing construction work duringmy high school years, so you know, a lot of random stuff about me and I met a lotof different people during that my time in that organization, obviously women inSTEM and women in technology is a big topic, and I think oftentimes peopleforget that it starts at a very early age. So when you’re already a student orwhen you’re already working, as a woman in STEM or tech, it’s perhapssometimes a bit too late to kind of learn new things, or it’s verydifficult to get rid of all the societal input that you’ve gotten over the pasttwo years, even if it’s in your subconscious, because it’s a feeling and veryoften times it’s difficult to put into words, soobviously meeting a lot of women who were studying tech or studying I.T,computer science, machine learning, engineering or whatever. I started to get adifferent feeling about it. I never really considered myself a woman in techbecause I was studying economics and most people who study economics are women,even though most people who win nobel prizes for economics are guys. Veryinteresting. Anyway…
• TIMEA: It’s true. So but with the studentorganization with BEST you had more exposure to the technical domains.
• KRISZ: Exactly yeah and I started having more and morediscussions and putting myself in the shoes or finding myself in the shoes ofwomen in tech because I was suddenly being considered a woman in tech simplybecause I was volunteering in that organization right and growing up one ofthe, let’s say, unintended positive consequences of communism in Romania isthat people of my our generation who grew up, they were never reallydiscouraged from studying anything technical because during communism it was‘you just do the thing you do’ it doesn’t matter if you’re a woman or a man, soI never….
• TIMEA: Was felt less of a bias, basically.
• KRISZ: Exactly, everyone was equal, everyone wasthe same, and I never really had that feeling that I’m different or that Ican’t do what I want because of my gender and funnily enough I startedrealizing this more, and more, in the western world after moving to Vienna andvolunteering more and more in these types of organizations and.
• TIMEA: Then you did the volunteering inbest you did in Vienna.
• KRISZ: I started in romania but most ofit was here. I started in Romania yeah but most of it was here in Vienna. So Iwas part of the board here at the technical university, and I did a lot moreevents and then the next step with your help was to go into Women Techmakersand being part of the organization team and then actually being the mainorganizer one year. But anyway, it’s obviously a team effort. You can’t organizean event like that by yourself, it’s insane.
• TIMEA: I think Ramón was already there by then, 2016.
• KRISZ: I think your sister Pilarwas there.
• RAMÓN: Pilar was an organizer. I might haveattended 2016 was that the one in Microsoft.
• KRISZ: Yeah.
• RAMÓN: Yeah, no, I sadly didn’t make it.
• KRISZ: Yeah, it was a good event.And yeah it reinforced my belief that okay there issomething wrong in this environment and we should talk about it and we shouldaddress it and obviously then I started working in technical startups wherethere the disparity continues so I try also to do within my company ortalking to other women in other companies, we’re trying to maybe build somethingup now where we can support each other and where we continue having thisconversation, so that as I said all of the things that you learn and you havestored in your subconscious can come out and be broken and that you can grow asa woman in tech.
• TIMEA: So from your story it seems like anatural flow that you went into women techmakers where you could maybe get abetter influence over the situation or understand it more and back then youwere already working with startups, right?
• KRISZ: Yes, so I started at astartup then I moved on to an incubator where I saw different kinds ofstartups and now I’m at a scale-up former startup depends on your definitioneveryone has their own definition of a startup.
• TIMEA: Okay, so you’re very much anchored in thestartup ecosystem and you know the issues for women in startups in a tech startup.
• KRISZ: Yes, very much.
• TIMEA: Okay,and you say that you’re looking to network people and women that are in thissituation.
• KRISZ: Yeah so there was this plan with afriend of mine laura from mindmeister which is also quite a successful startupyou should have her as well on, we are talking now to make ourown little, probably a meet-up at the beginning, to kind of assess a bit theenvironment of women in startups and see what they need and continue. I thinkthe big difference that we of how we want to do things is a lot of these eventsfocusing on supporting women in tech are women-only, and if you have aconversation about a problem but you only talk amongst yourselves it’s verydifficult to get the word out and oftentimes you need to have the the wordwomen in the name for example because you need to make it clear that you wantto target women but having the name or the word women discourages a lot of menfrom attending because you have the feeling that it’s only for women.
• TIMEA: You learned probably fromWomen Techmakers.
• KRISZ: Exactly, because we were trying a lot to get men as well to the event and yes weactually heard the feedback that “but I thought it’s a women-only event becauseit has women in the name”.
• TIMEA: Yeah that was kind of followed us for awhile.
• KRISZ: Exactlyyeah, so we’re trying now to we’re only in the brainstorm phase but we’retrying to start up something and see if it works and obviously we’re focusingfirst on Anyline and MindMeister because we know our teammates butthe next step is to then make an official announcement and invite anyone fromthe startup scene who wants to join.
• TIMEA: Yeah tell us when that happensbecause if it’s one thing we love to do at Women Techmakers is to showcaseother communities and gatherings and meetups and initiatives for that matter sothat’s really cool! Okay, so you still keep this flavor of volunteering and inyour life one way or another besides the plan?
• KRISZ: I mean I love my job and I love myplants but I mean I do need to socialize more with non-colleagues so I’m tryingto find new ways of doing that while maybe making an impact.
• RAMÓN: So I’m curious is there is there anykind of place where our viewers and listeners could keep an eye on, maybe onour show show notes where an announcement could come.
• KRISZ: I mean I will definitely let youknow when there’s something but as I said we’re only in brainstorming phase nownothing is official I think it’s gonna take a little bit of time. But yeah, no,definitely I will let you guys know and I’m hoping that our as our communitygrows then we can do something together as well I think yeah bringing indifferent points of view is is very very important.
• RAMÓN: Absolutely, and I think your ideaof exposure which is something that seems to sometimes be lacking is so key. SoI think it’s really interesting that you’re approaching it from this angle,this idea of communicating the need for gender diversity and equality.
• TIMEA: Thinking back on 2016 I really likethat you brought in the community for us back then the whole topic of startups.It was something we haven’t focused on before, the women in startups and sincethen I’ve been also flirting with startups myself and started to understandsome of the issues that are in that environment and the event back then wasfocused on putting female role models that founded successful companies inVienna, for example on stage and that was great because you had this community,this network that you could bring into the event and I really enjoyed it. Ifondly think about it and just recently I watched one of the videos, thekeynote from back then and I like that you’re still on the same topic andmixing them together at the same time. Can you tell us a little bit what someconcrete issues that you see from gender equality perspective in the startupworld and potentially what do you want to pinpoint with your new endeavor?
• KRISZ: So first of all I think a lot of theseinitiatives focus on female founders I think it’s absolutely great to supportfemale founders, but I’m not a founder. I’m a women in tech in a startup and Idon’t want to be a founder I’m not good at it and I know where my strengths areand so this would be one of the first, I wouldn’t call it an issue, but let’ssay in areas that we have identified is that there are a lot of women who arein tech and who are struggling sometimes but they are not founders and thereisn’t really a specific community or guidelines or a program that supportsthem. As well you have a lot of mentoring programs for founders but you don’thave mentoring programs for just women in tech it doesn’t matter if you’re afounder so that way.
• TIMEA: You mean women in tech instartups.
• KRISZ: Yeah exactly. Okay so yeah, we’retalking about the startups, yeah okay that would be the first one. Second one,this would be an issue I would say is startups of course came from the U.S in away or this concept and there’s this very big mentality of the frat boy wearinga hoodie who’s building their startup and I know that in Europe it’s not aspervasive but I have the feeling that a lot of times especially because manystartup founders are young (funnily enough successful startup founders are notas young as people would expect) but many first-time startup founders are youngguys and they grow up with this idea that you have to emulate this americanstyle founder, and unfortunately that also leads sometimes to attitudes or tobehaviors that first of all are not as common in Europe second of all they mayactually discourage a lot more women of joining a company or a startup thanmaybe in the U.S even because maybe women are just used to it in the U.S whichis a very sad fact if it’s true but disclaimer I’m not sure if this is true.So this would be the second one is trying to showcase that you can be authenticand you should be authentic in your leadership style and having a balancebetween a more aggressive masculine way of thinking and a more nurturingfeminine way of thinking is actually the best way to move forward because it’syin and yang, it’s the balance in the world and you can’t just bulldoze yourway through things, you know, you bulldoze a little bit and then you sweep upthe little branches that were not caught by the bulldozer so, (very badanalogy) but you know what I mean. So this this balance between a softerapproach and a more aggressive approach can actually cater to a lot more peopleand it can help a varied type of people grow, and I see that at Anyline, wehave people from so many different cultures from America to South Africa toBrazil, so you know, Romania, really, everywhere, and some of them don’t reactto an aggressive way but some do because that’s what they’re used to. So youneed to find this balance and this would be the second part. So let’s say abigger issue that I see that I would like to address trying to showcase thatpeople believe in authenticity and whether that authenticity is soft caringnurturing or aggressive to the point, bullish even, there is a difference andthat’s fine if you have different ways of expressing yourself there isn’t justone way of behaving for you to be successful
• TIMEA: Yes andbeing different and being authentic is fine. I think that’s a very importantmessage which I wanted to underline because what I’ve experienced in myenvironment so far is women in startup situations as founders or maybe asmembers taking on this bro culture, like trying to be one of the bros and thenit just comes out wrong right, like you see the authenticity is totally out ofthe window, first of all, and then you just see these mixed signals that youdon’t even know why they behave the way they do and then you start tounderstand that, oh, this is the pressure, the social pressure of being in thisculture that makes you portray some skills that you probably don’t even havejust to look tough just to be included. I don’t know what it completely is, butit was just awkward at the end of the day.
• KRISZ: Yeah, and this is something thatthat not only applies to women it applies to men as well. They’re- Not all menhave this way of behaving or have this way of leading there are many differentkinds of people in the world out there. It doesn’t matter what gender you haveand showcasing the fact that you can be yourself is very important. Once we dida leadership course last year and I asked the coach whether if this is the onlyway that I can become a leader, that I have to yell and shout and be superaggressive, then I don’t want to do this and he had so much experience and Iasked him honestly like “Do you believe that I can grow in my role the way I amor do I have to behave like someone else please tell me because then I don’twant to go down” that path and he said actually that for every first of all youneed to be authentic. All leaders in the world have this common trait is thatthey are authentic and second is for every one person that is visible andshouting out there there are a hundred quiet ones in the background who youdon’t know anything about who are doing perhaps a much better job, and I reallybelieve in that.
• TIMEA: Yeah I’m so happy that you brought inthe aspect that this is not just affecting women but all genders yeah also menequally, that don’t want to or don’t fit in the bro culture basically, and atthe same time I see how you worked on yourself to understand to overcome thisbro culture societal pressure in a way and discover that. I think it’s alsoabout what what is woman leadership or what is authentic leadership right, so Ithink we are still kind of in transition and the society is trying tounderstand that hopefully we’re going to see more amazing women leaders likethe prime minister in new zealand has always given us a good example, so Ithink you like her too.
• KRISZ: Yeah.
• TIMEA: Ramón what is yourtake on it, listening to two women talking about it?
• RAMÓN: Well something that’s beenbubbling in my head a lot as we’ve been having this conversation is you know,whenever I think of the the startup mentality the phrase “move fast and breakthings” comes up, right? And how actually toxic that phrase is because there’syou know breaking things, breakingm you know, I know it’s meant to be cute andlike, you know, breaking breaking industries, or whatever, but it’s alsobreaking people it’s breaking… And what I find interesting is when thesethese cultures are called out or not, maybe not called out but also givenfeedback, let’s say, how unreceptive they are and how slow to change these arebecause of hiding, it would seem, behind a veneer of something like, “businessas usual”, you know? “Business is slow, business is hard to change, but I’myoung and I wear a hoodie, so move fast and break things but don’t tell me howto change please.” I’m curious because my experience with startups is veryminimal just from reading, you know, social media and the news I’m curious,given that you’ve been at this for a while do you feel that there is some kindof reception to change coming a little more actively, lately? Or is that stillkind of slow to adapt to different needs, different cultures…
• TIMEA: Or is this the reason why you’recreating a new community?
• KRISZ: I can only talk about like, Austria,Europe, a little bit, and I do see that we have a different style of doingthings and it’s a combination, because of course, if most of the startups thatare successful have this way of thinking of move fast and break things then ofcourse people are going to think that’s the way to go, because they aresuccessful. But I see a lot more our venture capital firm RBC project, fromBerlin they have a much more holistic way of doing things, they’re much moresupportive of different ways, they encourage you, they want you to grow, butthey also care about the founders and the portfolio companies they have, and ifyou have such a company in the background supporting you, then you are alsomore confident that you can do things in a different way, which we are tryingto do. I see that there is a distancing in a way from the American style ofhaving a startup compared to the European style of having a startup. Yes, thatmay lead to perhaps less unicorns, but it also leads to a better quality oflife, to better happiness of the people too, even if you have successes ifyou’re, if you have, I don’t know, 1 billion euro exit or a 2 billion euro exitis that really any different? Like, is there really a difference between that?I mean it’s really, it’s difficult to say in a way it sounds a bit eutopic,like it’s, you know, money is not everything, of course money can make yourlife easier, but if there’s still a difference and if you want to have a clearconscience that you did the things the best way you could, and people are happyworking with you, and you’ve achieved something together as a team, then Ithink this is very different than the the type of culture we perhaps originallysaw with startups, and I feel that this is going in the right direction in atleast in Europe, at least in Austria.
• RAMÓN: That’s a great, answer thank you, sorry I interrupted you!
• KRISZ: No it’s okay, the wholegender topic of why I want to want to start this community is simply because Isee a gap for communities supporting women who are not founders but stillstruggle with diversity issues and that is my main motivation because I canstill continue women technicals but again I’m not really a tech maker, eventhough I align with a lot of the values of Women Techmakers, I can’t go to anystartup founder female mentorship programs because I’m not a startup founderbut I am in a leadership role I am a woman in tech and I have 20 colleagues whoare in my position and who want to grow and who struggle sometimes with dealingwith their senior male counterparts or simply with their senior counterpartsand if I can provide a little bit to help them grow then I’m super happy withthat. So that’s my main motivation of why I want to do something and I want toinvolve guys in the discussion I don’t want to start talking about women intech about you know only with women because that’s only half of the problem,like I want to fix the entire thing not just half of it.
• RAMÓN: It’s really inspiring, thank you so much. Well, thank you.
• TIMEA: Let’s ask chris one morepoint about: if you have any resources or advice that you want to drop in thepodcast for our listeners about the context that you’re coming from and I wantto mention one point we have in the past in our conference invited KaitlynChang and she did a talk “How to break the brotopian cycle”, so we wanna putthat in the show notes because she talks exactly about this brotopian broculture, in her Women Techmakers Vienna talk.
• KRISZ: Yeah so I completely agree with thattalkthe second one is just gather a lot ofknowledge that you canso for that I would recommend the bookInvisible Women by, I think it’sCaroline,maybe you have it.
• TIMEA: Yeah, because youborrowed it to me
• KRISZ: Yes exactly, it’s Caroline Criado Perezand it’s just, it’s enlightening. It’s not only about startups but just generalinformation about how the world is in a way built, and just read all the booksthat you can even if you don’t agree with them. For example I read “Lean In”by Sheryl Sandberg, I do not agree with it, it’s an interesting book but itdoesn’t fit me and if it doesn’t fit you either, that’s fine, but it’s still aninteresting viewpoint to have. Just get a lot of knowledge and then try andmake your own opinion about things, I think that’s the most important thing,don’t just don’t get swayed in a direction. Try and read the opposite of it,if it’s you know, it reminded me of one video from the School of Life and onevideo was ‘why you should have children’ and then one week later they uploadedanother video and the video is “why you shouldn’t have children” and that’skind of the exact thing like you have to look at one two sides of the same coinbecause only then can you form your own opinion about things, so I think that’svery important, regardless of what you read, always read the opposite
• TIMEA: Very good.
• RAMÓN: Awesome advice thank you.
• KRISZ: Yeah you’rewelcome.
• RAMÓN: It has been an absolute pleasure to haveyou Krisz. Before we let you go we’d love to ask: is there anywhere whereour listeners and viewers can follow you or follow your work that you wouldlike to give a shout out.
• KRISZ: I’m gonna sound super corporate now butLinkedIn is the the, my social media of choice. Instagram if you want to seemy plants.
• RAMÓN: There we go, I’ll link both of those inthe show notes.
• KRISZ: Pleasure talking to you guys, thank youso much for the invitationand super, super happy to be the firstone on your podcast.I’m very excited.
• RAMÓN: The pleasure is allours, thank you so much.
• TIMEA: Thank youit was very lovely, and thank you to all our podcast listeners. This was aflavor of one of our podcasts with having a guest over so we’re very happy, andstay tuned!
• RAMÓN: See you next time!
• KRISZ: Bye!
• TIMEA: Are you on the forefront of gender equality? You are invited on our podcast.
• RAMÓN: That’s right! Or maybe you know somebodythat we could have a chat with on gender equality? You should totally get intouch with us! We’re on twitter @GenderCoffee or any of the other contactmethods on our show notes. We would love to you to get in touch and for us tohave a chat.

Watch us on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqDf4Ru-4EM

Ramón and Timea talk about 8 years of Women Techmakers Vienna: why was it created, what happens in the community, how local impact is achieved, what is our target audience, how to get sponsors and venues, how to move to an online conference, how to keep going.

• Kids workshop photos: https://www.womentechmakers.at/photos/
• Women Techmakers Vienna Code of conduct: https://www.womentechmakers.at/cod/
• Women Techmakers Vienna team: https://www.womentechmakers.at/team/
• Online conference experience & know how from our conference in 2020: https://ramonh.dev/2020/10/25/running-a-conference-online/

Some referenced talks:

• Tissue Engineering by Minu Karthika Ganesan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VsJLeVq3Dw
• How AI is Enhancing Journalism by Carolyn Stransky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qZCRHwnnbM
• Creating more Inclusive Products and Services By Andra Bria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3Dmkn5E0rE

Ashe Dryden’s post on why have a Code of Conduct:

https://www.ashedryden.com/blog/codes-of-conduct-101-faq#coc101why

Are you active in pushing for a more inclusive, intersectional space? Do youknow of someone who would be great for us to talk to? Get in touch with us:

• [email protected]
• https://twitter.com/GenderCoffee

• TIMEA: Hey Ramón!
• RAMÓN: Hey Timea!
• TIMEA: Let’s talk gender equality.
• RAMÓN: I love the idea. Gimme a second I just gotta grab my coffee, I hope you’ve got yours, too!
• TIMEA: Yep, right here.
• RAMÓN: I think is an excellent moment to segue into what women techmakers vienna is because we’ve got a lot to say about that we are both part of the women techmakers vienna organization and you’ve been around for much longer than I have, Timea! Why why don’t you start by telling us what what women techmakers vienna is?
• TIMEA: Sure. Actually, I think January we will be have we’ll have our eighth year anniversary since we founded the community in Vienna and it’s it started from the Google Developer Group which is a community of people interested in Google products and frameworks and technology alike and this big conference that happened yearly at Google in San Francisco. Well, the women that participated there were like “but it’s kind of lonely around here where where are all the women” that come to these big tech conferences and I think that’s the where the need actually started to push into “let’s do something about it”. So yeah, Women Techmakers was started at this one of these big Google conferences in San Francisco eight or nine years ago and through the Google Developer Communities they were like “hey, would you like to start a local chapter? We provide you with the name with the visual identity”. We have our logo, colors, brands, all that just you know with the simple goal of bringing more women into STEM-
• RAMÓN: Sorry, STEM being?
• TIMEA: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
• RAMÓN: Right yes of course.
• TIMEA: Yeah so that was the beginning.
• RAMÓN: Awesome, and you been doing this, you said eight years in january.
• TIMEA: Yeah, I can’t believe it, myself.
• [Laughter]
• RAMÓN: Yeah that’s so that’s eight years that you’ve been running a a yearly conference
• TIMEA: Yes, right, at the beginning we had a 50 participant meet up. To be honest we didn’t call it conference quite the beginning and then it started to grow from 50 to 60 to 70 to 200.
• RAMÓN: Yeah the ones I’ve been to have had 200 at least!
• TIMEA: And you were at the beginning were a participant but not at women time makers but the devfest, right?
• RAMÓN: Yeah it’s… Your memory is better than mine. So I’ve been helping out with Women Techmakers now, this 2020 would have been my third year of participating of being in an organization member. Then in 2017 I gave a talk at the Women Techmakers conference about teaching children to code and then before that I was a participant, er, an attendee, sorry.
• TIMEA: I actually remember meeting you the first time at devfest where Pilar was coming along, your sister, right?
• RAMÓN: That’s right.
• TIMEA: First pilar got interested in our community I think and then you joined.
• RAMÓN: Yes, so my sister Pilar. It’s a fun story, because at the time, this was 2014 and Devfest Vienna was taking place, which is the yearly local GDG, or Google Developer Group conference. I had been working in tech for four years or so, and I was still in an even more shy place, and so my sister who was studying biology at the time said “hey, why don’t you just go I’ll come with you. I’ll have free pizza and whatever, and I’ll, you know, check out some of the talks” and she just fell in love with the community. We both did! She liked it so much that she changed her career from microbiology to software engineering, and she’s now studying at a university in London. Remotely, of course right now.
• TIMEA: So how about we invite her on a chat with us to tell us her story?
• RAMÓN: I think she’ll be able to tell it so much better than I would.
• TIMEA: Yeah let’s let’s do that I really would like to get Pilar to motivate and inspire us as well.
• RAMÓN: Totally, she’s doing some fantastic stuff. But I’ll let her toot her own horn. So I just had such a good time you know attending and speaking at women techmakers that I think I either wrote to you or to someone else who was organizing I said “Listen, I want to help, you know, I want to keep this going” and it was a great time and-
• TIMEA: Look where we are today and with a crazy podcast, yeah.
• RAMÓN: It’s definitely one of the more out there experiences for me right now! I didn’t think… you know, I’ve got this microphone but I didn’t think that I would use it for podcasting I thought i’d be doing it for giving talks
• TIMEA: You can do both.
• RAMÓN: Absolutely, you never know where it’s going to go. But yeah, so the objective of these conferences, right, we wanted to showcase women in STEM who are doing really fascinating things and inspiring, mostly, because our target group was mostly students, right?
• TIMEA: Yeah, we started with students and we were mostly located and we’re still located at the technical university with our conference so yeah as a side effect it attracts the students there, but I have to admit that because we’re already eight years old, we kind of grew with the community and the community with us so I noticed that it turned from students into, you know, people that have already five to ten years experience on the job so I would say now it’s more the young professionals and I include students in that as well.
• RAMÓN: Yeah absolutely and what I like about having that opportunity is that we can help folks that are trying to figure out where they want to go in their careers show them what the possibilities are. One of the talks that inspired me so much is we had we had a scientist come on, I think it was last year or the year before, who showed us how they were creating artificial heart valves, do you remember?
• TIMEA: The tissue engineering, wasn’t it? Yes, that was fascinated everybody at the conference we haven’t gotten so many amazing positive feedback replies like we did for for that talk so that was pretty something.
• RAMÓN: Do we have a link to that? We could put it in the show notes.
• TIMEA: Yeah we ought to have it on our YouTube channel, we’ll have to look that up.
• RAMÓN: Exactly, I mean, on the note of the YouTube, as we’ve been doing this conference for a few years, we’ve been recording these talks and putting them online for for people to watch.
• TIMEA: Yes, and this that’s where our podcast will also be going to. It’s the same channel, basically. Right, so the aim of the conference was always to showcase female role models from STEM not just I.T. but really different domains and because it’s different domains we hadn’t had the opportunity to go into in-depth of a particular domain, so we always kept it on a generic level of “let’s get people introduced into tissue engineering” or, y’know, machine learning, AI, AI in journalism. We had the topic this year about interfaces, inclusive interfaces, so it’s very different. We had also two years ago a conference that was more focused on environmental engineering and civil engineering together.
• RAMÓN: Yeah I remember one that had a big focus on sustainable, civil engineering.
• TIMEA: And a couple of years before we also had one focused on startups, even we had some really cool talks of female startup founders, basically. So yeah it’s a big topic and sustainability alike. So we’ve been always trying to see what does the community want from our conference and try to deliver that content. And also about four years ago we started doing kids’ workshops in parallel to the main track.
• RAMÓN: That was something that that really blew me away. When I first attended I thought, there’s that big problem, right? For women working in the STEM fields of how they can take out… The conference, for context, takes place on a Saturday so you know that is time normally spent with family, and being able to offer this this workshop so that so that our organizers and people giving the workshop could watch these children, teach them something cool, and the kids, they do some cool stuff.
• TIMEA: Oh my god, I wanted to be part of this, there are some pictures online on the website.
• RAMÓN: Yeah, we’ll put that in the show notes too, yeah. They do stuff like, um, we had one…
• TIMEA: Toothpaste elephant, remember that?
• RAMÓN: I do not!
• TIMEA: They basically posted all the, well, it was in a seminar room at the table, and they posted the whole room with foil, basically, to clean it up, easy. And then in the middle of the room they had this plastic something, where they put all these ingredients together, and then it started to grow, and grow, and grow, and it grew over and if like spilled over the table, this elephant toothpaste, I think it was blue, or some color, wow! And it was just so fantastic and the parents were at the door looking up “what are they doing” we have pictures of that. The kids were so excited and they were like “Oh my god I want to do chemistry in my life” and “This is so cool” and they alsothey froze a rose in liquid nitrogen. Again, like, everybody wanted to see what’s going on. That’s right, that’s what gets you excited about science.
• RAMÓN: Absolutely, yeah I remember helping someone set up a “programming for children” course. That was also pretty fun, getting the kids interested in how computers work and how they could look into programming as a hobby and/or career. Yeah and I think having that from a young age as, well, especially having that exposure really helps show folks. Especially having someone as a from a mentorship, someone a little more diverse like a woman or, y’know, someone who’s not a white man, show them these amazing opportunities I think it really helps keep people motivated, so to speak.
• TIMEA: Yes it was always about raising awareness and giving the opportunity for those that didn’t have so far, because everything for the conference is for free. For us, we always believe that education, motivation, this kind of aspect should be for free for our members.
• RAMÓN: So given, let’s say, that I don’t have a lot of experience organizing a conference how does getting funding for that work how does working out deals with, let’s say a venue for 200 people. How would you go about that?
• TIMEA: Oh, this is a big topic how much…
• RAMÓN: I opened the can of worms!
• TIMEA: No, well, in a nutshell, we targeted a very specific talent pool. Women in STEM and that. Even now, this year I’ve started to realize how valuable that is for, for example, for companies that are looking to hire women in STEM, so I think you got the hint. Here our collaboration partners were on one side, the companies, and on one side the other NGOs and also the university. So with the university we got last year into i’m going to tiara frown uh of the woo program
• RAMÓN: That’s German, isn’t it?
• TIMEA: Yes it was. Last year, they were celebrating at the technical university 100 years since women went to teach at the university. They were allowed to teach finally. And they wanted to do a whole year program around this supporting diversity and gender equality, NGOs and events. And that just happened to be also for us an opportunity that we got to be part of the program which led to us getting the venue under a partnership, but to get to this level before that, work with the informatics department, we worked with the entrepreneur- with the innovation center. We had a partnership, and we still collaborate with them, the career center, and the gender competence department. Yeah, so a lot of entities and people that had to come together over years for us to solidify this partnership with the university to be able to get the venue sponsored.
• RAMÓN: Sounds like it takes a while!
• TIMEA: Yeah, but it doesn’t mean that with a new NGO you cannot have it faster. It definitely can also work out faster, but what the point that I wanted to say is that for us the venue was always very important, because the value venue sets the atmosphere, and the tone and I think from the beginning i wanted to have an event in the Kuppelsaal also it took me, what, six years to realize that dream of mine because I always felt like Kuppelsaal it’s this huge hall at the technical university is mostly all out of wood and it just sets a very, I would say, comfortable and proper atmosphere because we wanted to create a comfort zone for our participants to be okay to share. Yeah, and unfortunately not just always the positive aspects but also the negative aspects of, you know, being the single woman on team XYZ and once I think, once we managed to create this comfort zone, then we managed to migrate the conference into something that is an inclusive welcoming atmosphere that goes beyond gender. It should be about diversity at the end of the day because we believe in Women Techmakers in diversity and equality regardless of gender, right? So you know, it just takes time that all these things shift and go towards our diversity vision. It just didn’t happen from the get-go like that and it wouldn’t have been possible without the community sort of reflecting or telling us in which direction to go.
• RAMÓN: Absolutely. You need to have that that open communication channel and a lot of work, a lot of patience and, correct me if I’m wrong, but Women Techmakers is purely run by volunteers, is that right?
• TIMEA: Yep, none of us are paid by Google or by Women Techmakers to do this. We only, as you know, do it on the side of our full-time jobs or part-time jobs, weekends, evenings, yeah, and it’s a lot of passion.
• RAMÓN: Absolutely, out of passion, and I mean people like you and I we have the privilege to be able to have the resources to be able to dedicate this time to it, so if we can, why not, right? It’s a lot of work to be able to pull something like this off and, of course, not everything goes perfectly smoothly. We have our bumps. I remember I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this to you, I’m going to mention this to you on a recording! For the first time, the first year that I organized, helped organized Women Techmakers Vienna I was in charge- in the afternoon half I was in charge of recording the speakers, and I had a camera on a stand. I had to stand up on a box and make sure that the camera was pointing-
• TIMEA: We have a picture of you doing this.
• RAMÓN: Oh no! Well at some point, I don’t remember who was speaking, but there was a there was a speaker who liked to- who when speaking moved around a lot, like, walked around like some speakers tend to wander around the stage and, I don’t know what happened but my brain just shut off for a while. I was just focusing on the speaker and the talk like not looking at the camera but looking past the camera at the stage. And I look at the camera and the speaker’s nowhere to be found on the camera! I’m like “oh my god i lost the speaker on the camera!” So there’s like at least… I don’t know, maybe two, maybe five, hopefully maximum five minutes of footage of the just the wall! Anyhow I mean the point is it happens, you know. You’re doing your best, you learn from your mistakes, and you know, I think what makes a good- I think what makes an organization and and a conference like this successful is the fact that you are receptive to that feedback, because I’ve seen in my years of attending- so for context I’m a software engineer I spend a lot of my time going to software engineering conferences, and I find a lot of the I find there are more than I would like to say, there are a few events that you know receive this feedback and then don’t respond well to it, dig their heels in, so to speak, and I think what makes something successful is when somebody comes to us say for Women Techmakers and say “I’m so bored of of you all serving those bagels for lunch every year. Can we get something else?” To listen to them and say “Okay, this works, this doesn’t, how can we make a response that’s satisfactory and also you know internalize that feedback and sort of grow from it”. You know what I mean?
• TIMEA: It’s not easy, to be honest, yeah and we also had to learn to do that actually. But yeah at the same time I have to also say that lately I’m yearning for feedback from the community actually more than usual, it shifts.
• RAMÓN: Absolutely. I mean this year for the first, because of the need to be remote we tried our hand at something completely new which was the Women Techmakers online conference and that was completely new for us. We tried a bunch of new things, some worked, some we still need to figure out we could probably dedicate an episode of this podcast to talk about online conferences that’s something near and dear to my heart.
• TIMEA: Meanwhile, read the blog post that Ramón wrote about the whole experience of moving an offline conference to an online. Let’s put that in the show notes.
• RAMÓN: I guess I’ll have to remember to to promote myself in the show notes.
• TIMEA: that’s what i’m here for
• RAMÓN: Yeah we gotta do this for each other.Yeah learning, yearning for more feedback and just youknow hopefully seeing what works, seeing what doesn’t work, and being receptiveto it. It’s important, absolutely. Speaking of importance another thing that Ifind that really, correct me if I’m wrong I’m curious to hear. So forconferences for me having as a speaker, having a code of conduct is absolutelyessential to me right if I get invited to, or apply to speak at aconference I notice that if they don’t have a code of conduct I’ll find “hmmI should really ask them why they don’t have a code of conduct”. There’s a blogpost by Ashe Dryden that I will post in the show notes about why it’s importantto have a code of conduct for you as a speaker as an attendee and even as anorganizer to feel safe. But that’s enough of my monologue. I’m curious Timea,what’s the history of Women Techmakers and the code of conduct ifthat’s not putting you on the spot
• TIMEA: I know, yeah,we’ve been working on it several times so I think this is like the third orfourth iteration that we have on our website. The last time actually Pilar Ithink worked on it maybe together with you.
• RAMÓN: Is it? I think two years ago Iadapted the Berlin code of conduct, yeah that’s the one.
• TIMEA: Yes, so Ican’t say that I personally was much involved in the topic, but you and Pilarhad a very good point especially from your experiences from other conferencesthat this is something that should be very important and not taken for granted.So I remember as the fact that, yes, we changed it we improved it and then we hada dedicated space always in the beginning of the conference and also on ourchat platforms to flash that there’s a code of conduct contact if something isgoing wrong then you can talk to XYZ at the conference so I think in thepast two years that became for us a must, part of the best practices becausewe want to build an inclusive conference and atmosphere whereeverybody’s safe, and I think that’s just one big step that needs to happen forus to be taken seriously
• RAMÓN: Absolutely. I think thethe big sticking point of the code of conduct is that of enforceability, right?Because one thing is to just have a copy-paste code of conduct and say we’redone here and then when an incident actually happens you don’t knowhow to act on it, because it’s not set in crystal terms what happens if acode of conduct breach happens. So I’ve met a lot of folks in my journey who- or a few conferences that say something like “but we’re alladults we don’t need a code of conduct it’ll be fine we’ll figure it out” and alot of the times those are the events and those are the people withwhom these let’s say these transgressions take place, you know.
• TIMEA: Beyond conferences Ithink this is necessary in companies as well and some of the companies have itand it’s called, you know, anti-harassment, for example, or whatever you want tocall it as a policy. And it shouldn’t be taken lightly because you have tohave a guideline of how should I act if something happens and you have tohave, if you have a code of contact you have a very good argument toshowcase that there was a wrongdoing that’s all what I want to say about that, yeah.
• RAMÓN: No, I thank you. Though I think, Iknow that in the past I’ve as as you hinted earlier meand my sister we’ve kind of been the sticklers that are coming constantly to thecode of conduct and then trying to push that to be enforcedfurther I think what we’ve done now is get us to a point as wellsomething I’d like to touch on is to whom it applies, because what I findinteresting about a code of conduct is also that an attendeeneeds to abide by the code of conduct, a speaker needs to abide by the code ofconduct (it’s a little more involved because they also need to make sure thatwith their talk with their slides they don’t breakthe code of conduct), but as organizers we need to abide by the code ofcontract, as well. As humans, we can mess up and so what one thing for example ifI may ruminate about here is I’m wondering what can we do toenforce to have a team of folks enforce the code of conductseparated separatedly from the organizing team do you know what i mean
• TIMEA: Yeah, it’s something like you don’t see the forest because of the trees.
• RAMÓN: Kind of, as anorganizer maybe if as an organizer you could also break the code of conduct andthen how do you enforce a code of conduct on yourself how do your fellowattendees enforce a code of conduct on you without breaking some sort ofhierarchy that may or may not exist inside that organization team because forexample maybe one thing we could go into in a bit is that Women Techmakers on ayearly basis for the last, I’m not sure how many years you’re going to correctme in a moment has had rotating lead organizers, right, so what happens if thatlead organizer breaks the code of conduct that’s where the argument comes infor having a team separate from the organizing team called the code of conductenforcement team or code of conduct team without making it sound too…
• TIMEA: I see what you mean.
• RAMÓN: Yeah have you had any experience with that?
• TIMEA: I can relate to it but I haven’t hadexperience with it. For me it’s always like, okay I’ve been there for WomenTechmakers constantly for the last eight years and yes the every year the mainorganizer changes but it has to do a lot with my how I approach people. Iwant to say that I always trust people and put always the good first and I’msometimes in the wrong but I expect my fellow organizer or organizers to makeme aware if I’m doing something wrong or if somebody else is doing somethingwrong, so that’s why we are so many. I mean we are many and we can do that. We never had actually the problem to that extentthat somebody didn’t- do something wrong. And I mean if that’s thepoint then I think you would as an organizer immediately not feel good in theteam anymore because then we that means that we don’t share the same values. So it’s sort of likeyeah I think did you have any experience?
• RAMÓN: I’m sorry toput you on the spot.
• TIMEA: Just discussing here it’s fine.
• RAMÓN: Yeah, no, I mean I’ve been, as it may become clear if we do more of it, if we do end up turningit this into a long-running podcast, I go to a lot of conferences and I reallylike them so I’m always looking into how other teams are organizing theirs. I find it interesting to to to see how these people try to create aninclusive safe environment so that people can thrive, connect, communicate, andand grow in their careers grow as people, so I have seen, havebeen witness to conferences that have had incidents, yes, of course. Imean, these things happen especially behind the scenes a lot more than we takethan we take for granted. And I think- I find it interestingto think how can we- that’s why I find myself a lot of the timethinking how can we prevent incidents like these from taking placeespecially from an organizational standpoint, a I think you put itquite well when you said you know that this person a person who’s inan organizational team who witnesses something that they don’t like they ifif they don’t speak up if anything it says more about the the structure itselfof the team that’s not working, which fortunately I don’t, I think canconfidently say we haven’t had yet in Women Techmakers yet.
• TIMEA: If I have a team member that doesn’t speak up then I’m failing absolutely with what we’redoing here. Like, it’s that I would see as a fail in the first place andlikely I’m hoping that we didn’t have that, yeah.
• RAMÓN: Yeah, hopefully. But let’slet’s go into that because I think so there’s a few conferences I go to that dohave rotating teams. For example there’s the European ruby conference that whatthey do every year is it takes place in a different city in europe, and alsoheaded up by a completely different team, so nobody who organized lastyear’s EuRuKo in the Netherlands will be organizing the onethat takes place next year in Helsinki so I’m curious what was the impetus for trying this with Women Techmakers by having a leadorganizer be different every year?
• TIMEA: Well, it wasn’t necessarily the plan thatit’s every year different, it’s just quite some work, yeah, and after organizingit for a year you want a break, sure, that’s one aspect, and the secondaspect is it’s just natural because you want to develop yourself. So I alreadydid this, I learned a lot, what’s next? Like what can I do next to grow andthat can be that you take again a different role potentially on differenttasks and you learn there something, or it also happens that we havemembers that left to join other organizations or just focus on their careers,that’s also absolutely fine. So the whole rotating is just it justkind of happened like that and at the same time it leaves a space for someoneelse to grow in this role. I can’t say that everybody who was in a mainorganizer position had all the skills and know-how from the get-go, but therewas opportunity to grow into this and to learn from it so it’s natural andthat’s one aspect, but the rest of the team, I’m happy to say that we havekind of a core team that kind of is the same every year and that gives youextra support because you know the people already that you’re gonna be workingwith, there are friendships that are created internally so there’s a supportsystem. However I can’t say that it’s perfect because to besuper honest here we also had the case where the main organizer after theconferences were almost burned out, or actually burned out, because it’s youknow, full-time job, you do this on the side… ‘Main organizer’ means more or lessbeing a project manager for a huge conference huge 200 people which isnot little.
• RAMÓN: It’s pretty big.
• TIMEA: You have a teamof sixm seven people, different tasks that you have to juggle and manage andthen I think that the month right before the conference is super intense, and I can’t say that it’s perfect in how we organize ourselves because itwas, always the feedback sometimes the feedback that after the confidence thatthere’s a burnout of the main organizer and that’s something that Iwanted to overcome, and we, for that reason, we had last year the conference wherewe had two main organizers it kind of worked and it actually, it actuallymore worked than it didn’t and we definitely didn’t have this feedback of itwas too much for one person.
• RAMÓN: That’s good.
• TIMEA: This year he was just one, Mahek, an organizer but the problem was not the conference was the fact that wehad to cancel it one week before everything was set up and we were like “let’sgo”, and then the lockdown happened and then we had to shift it, and sometimein June we got back on track and was like ‘okay let’s do it online’. So that wasthat was a different disappointment for the main organizer. However thedetails I would actually like to discuss with the actual main organizersthemselves because we want to invite them on the podcast
• RAMÓN: Absolutely. I think giving themgiving them the space to talk about what their experiences are, what theylearned and…
• TIMEA: Yeah, the good and the bad.
• RAMÓN: The good and the bad yeah, warts and all, as they say…On that note, Timea, for you because you’ve been doing this for a while could youyou know enumerate these these successes that you’vehad?
• TIMEA: Oh, well, I think I want tocategorize this into personal successes and community successes. So first of all,I already mentioned that one big goal of mine and dream was that we have theconference in the Kuppelsaal that was that was a big success for me. I neverthought that I could see in a volunteer organization so much dedication thattransforms into a sustainable team that stays the same over years. That for me is a huge positive feedback, yeah, that the people just wantto stick around. So that’s for me personally also beyond my expectation. You know, you’re also in here for whatthree years now so yeah do you know why you stick around? Obviously there’ssomething.
• RAMÓN: I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.
• TIMEA: Awesome, and that’s we managed to grow organically to 200 attendees at the conferencewhich is what we had last year, the last face-to-face conference, plus theenormous positive feedback from the community that we actually managed tocreate an inclusive environment, welcoming, that’s also something that we thathappened organically for I can’t really say or I don’t even haveparticular points to say ‘okay we did this on purpose’ to become inclusive,it’s something that comes from the community as feedback after each conference, so it’s a bit of a personal goals mixed with community goals
• RAMÓN: Which I think are fantastic motivatorshonestly. Okay and…
• TIMEA: And there’s more! Alsoa big success that i would call a big success is the fact that we don’tneed to actively go and, how I call, fundraise or find partnerships for theconference. They knock at our door, and that for me is, again, you know, we managedto establish ourselves, what we stand for and the companies or the partnersalready know about us, and want to partner with us, because we are known forquality or for providing specific tailored to their needs, solutions totheir needs, that’s also very relieving however COVID happened, so I think everything is about to change.
• RAMÓN: Fingers crossed, we can keep doing a good job at providing these platforms for people.
• TIMEA: Yes, but after eight years, the COVID situation happening Ithink we need to get out of the comfort zone again, yet again, and reinventourselves. I don’t think that for example, so we know for sure thatthe conference as it happened last year, we cannot provide that next year. It’svery unlikely that we can have a face-to-face conference, just too muchuncertainty. So we either do it online, learning from this year or we simplyreinvent ourselves such as the podcast whatever else our organizers andcommunity members want, they should just email us, because we can make it happen. Not everything in thewhole world but you know, we can discuss it.
• RAMÓN: So what you’re saying is the themilkshake bar at the conference is probably not going to happen anytime soon.
• TIMEA: Never say wish for it but never say never.
• RAMÓN: Cool, awesome, awesome. You know, just really, it’s been such an honor to be on thisorganizing team because I think like you said it’s been we’ve been at this fora while, you see we’ve kind of built up the sense of camaraderie that spills over when newpeople join in, or when people have to leave, because they want to pursuedifferent efforts, or they have to move to another city. I feel like that senseof sticking together really means a lot to me, because I think itspills out into the conference, as well, and like you said I’m kindof really liking your emphasis on jumping out of the comfort zone. I thinkby fostering this and and by keeping going, you know, something that apersonal objective of mine with the Women Techmakers online conference was toestablish some sort of online community that we could then push forwards andfoster. It’s been a bit dormant lately I’ll admit, probably, partly on me, wewe started up a Discord community where people can chat and attend. Weused it during the conference to sort of attend the conference where peoplecould chat and ask questions. We found out some things along the way I’m justgoing to quickly drop this because I loved it so we had a voice- If you’reunfamiliar with Discord discord is a kind of an online hangout community,chat platform, also voice platform initially used for games but now it’s alsohas a bigger online community emphasis, and so Timea had this idea thatwe do an online breakfast at the beginning of the second we split it into twodays…
• TIMEA: I think it wasn’t my idea, it was Mahek’s idea.
• RAMÓN: It wasn’t youridea? My bad, sorry. Well you did have an idea that I wanted-we had this this voice channel where we had a breakfastand then you had the idea where you just went into that voice channel, werenamed it to ‘voice hangout’ and you just hung out there and attendees woulddrop in every now and then. Do you remember?
• TIMEA: We called it the ‘Lounge’.
• RAMÓN: That’s-the lounge, love it, and I was so blown away by this because A) I’d never seenit before at an online conference, and B) it would have never occurred to me in amillion years that people would want to voice chat during talks. I thought thatwas incredible and I think that’s where I think this whole emphasis on steppingout of your comfort zone goes really well, because you don’t know what’s goingto come from it right.
• TIMEA: Yeah unless you try it.
• RAMÓN: Unless you try it. I kind oflike that unless you try it.
• TIMEA: This year was also for me personally alot of going out of the comfort zone. So I’m trying to almost get comfortablewith being out of the comfort zone.
• RAMÓN: I like that.
• TIMEA: You could say that, andI think it’s at the same time a good opportunity to tackle new topics to trynew things also for Women Techmakers Vienna.
• RAMÓN: Awesome, cool.Well, you know, we’ve been chatting here for a bit yeah I think we could startwinding down I think we’ve…
• TIMEA: My last sips of thecoffee.
• RAMÓN: Oh, mine’s gone.That’s a good sign of yes, well I think this I don’t know about you butI’ve had a wonderful time talking now, I think you know once we we can startbringing on guests we can start figuring out where this podcast will go how wecan make it grow and, you know, make it, make us grow with it I’m… I don’t know,about you, how are you feeling too, now that we’ve been at this for a while…
• TIMEA: I’m still excited, it’s like “awesome”.
• RAMÓN: Yeah me too a lot, so I think with thatwe can say our goodbyes.
• TIMEA: See you next time.
• RAMÓN: Absolutely take care everybody.
• TIMEA: Bye.
• TIMEA: Are you on the forefront of gender equality? You are invited on our podcast.
• RAMÓN: That’s right! Or maybe you know somebodythat we could have a chat with on gender equality? You should totally get intouch with us! We’re on twitter @GenderCoffee or any of the other contactmethods on our show notes. We would love to you to get in touch and for us tohave a chat.