This November I attended DevFest Cape Town. This has to be one of my favourite conferences that I've been to in Cape Town. The content was really good and there were a number of female speakers that I just had to interview some of them. In this episode I speak to Rebecca Franks from Over, Maia Grotepass from Civic Technologies and Ridhawana Khan at Smile Identity. https://devfest.co.za/ https://www.madewithover.com/ https://www.civic.com/ https://riggaroo.co.za/ https://twitter.com/riggaroo https://twitter.com/maiatoday https://github.com/maiatoday https://ridhwana.com/ https://twitter.com/Ridhwana_K

In this episode we talk to Kentse Radebe who talks about The Counselling Hub and how important mental health awareness is.  The Counselling Hub in Cape Town offers low cost mental health services in order to increase access for people living and working in the surrounds.  With one-on-one sessions at only R50, and free workshops, people with low incomes can now seek the professional support they need to navigate their life challenges. As well as the podcast Mzansi Mentality which centres around mental health. We also talk to Leo Gopal about his personal journey which helped him start WPHugs and recently joining WP&Up which gives mental health support to those in the tech and WordPress community. https://www.mzansimentality.co.za/ http://counsellinghub.org.za/ https://wpandup.org/

Baratang Miya has been running a coding school for under privileged girls for over 15yrs. She's seen a lot of changes in the tech industry and we talk to her about how those changes have impacted her business. Baratang is an incredible voice for the local tech community and you can catch her regularly talking on panels and conferences. https://www.linkedin.com/in/baratang-miya-1270a99 https://www.coworker.com/south-africa/cape-town/uhuru-space https://girlhype.co.za/

Season Two is here, but where have we been. This quick episode explains where Open File Backup has been for the last 2 months and what we have in store for Season Two. We also have new theme music which we love!

This week we talk with Machine Learning Engineer, Jade Abbott. We cover a lot of really interesting topics, from how Jade wanted to build a robot friend, deep fake videos and explaining how sentencing software contain bias.  Jade works at Retro Rabbit and frequently talks at dev conferences in and around South Africa. You can catch her on twitter at @alienelf

Palesa Nombula is currently completing her Masters in Astrophysics at the University of Cape Town. She is also working at SKA in Commercialisation. SKA will be the largest radio telescope ever built and will produce science that changes our understanding of the universe. We talked about everything from the telescope in the Karoo here in South Africa, to how toilet paper revolutionalised her grandparents life. Palesa is a knowledgeable and switched on human being who was an absolute pleasure to talk to. Keep your eye on her career, she's going to change the world. You can find Palesa at https://www.linkedin.com/in/palesa-nombula-83673847/ or on twitter at https://twitter.com/p_nombula If you have any comments or questions on this episode, please email at [email protected] Don't forget to subscribe and Share :)

Sam Wright started the website techgirl.co.za and is a host for local and international eSports tournaments. Sam has been in the gaming industry for a long time and it was really interesting to get her opinion on the state of both the gaming and tech industry in terms of being a female in those industry. I really enjoyed this conversation, it was both thought provoking and inspiring. You can find Sam at http://techgirl.co.za, @techgirlza - Instagram and @TechGirlZA - Twitter If you have any comments or questions on this episode, please email at [email protected] Don't forget to subscribe and Share :)

In this episode we speak to Lynette Hundermark who is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Useful and Beautiful. We touch on what it's been like to work in tech since the early 2000's and the challenges of running a company in the male dominated tech industry. Lynette tells her all about her upcoming event, Moving To Mastery, which is a Women in Tech & Digital Conference being held in Cape Town on 12 June 2019 and in Johannesburg on 10 July 2019.

Celina Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Zindi Africa, a Data Science competition platform. Celina is originally from California in the States, and we delved into what it was moving to South Africa, the challenges she's face in helping to create Zindi Africa and what is needed to become a Data Scientist.  Links mentioned in the podcast episode: Zindi Africa - https://zindi.africa/ Ixio Analytics - http://www.ixioanalytics.com/ Kaggle - https://www.kaggle.com/competitions

Marina Pape talks about starting the WordPress Hackathon in Lebanon, working with NGO’s, empowering women and diversity in tech.

Using WordPress for Good

Organising a WordPress charity hackthon in Lebanon

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