Many technologies that we use today are the product of decades of research. Christine Peterson, Co-founder of the Foresight Institute and CEO at a Stealth company is researching technologies that are of fundamental importance to the human future. One of them is nanotechnology. Christine explained what nanotechnology is and challenges it can tackle in renewable energy, improving health and longevity, supplying clean water among others. We also talked about the misuses of nanotechnology and important things to have in place to prevent them.

In 1998 Christine coined the term open source. She explained how that came to be and the impact it had in the software community.

Podcasts are a way to scale mentorship. Through thoughtful conversations, a podcast listener can learn helpful things. Colleen O’Brien, Executive Communications Manager at Microsoft, and Sonia Dara, Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft talked about how they’re scaling mentorship through the Women in Business and Technology podcast. Colleen and Sonia gave an overview of the highlights of running the podcast, and various topics that have been explored. They explained how the podcast provides actionable advice that individuals and organizations can take to build inclusive environments.

When you work at a startup, it can expose you to work on different areas in a short amount of time. Jessica Lachs, Head of Analytics at DoorDash leverages data science to improve the business. We talked about what data science is, and examples of how it is used at DoorDash. Jessica also explained what it involved to launch the business in other cities.

Building robots that can interact with the physical world involves a team of scientists, engineers, academics, and business operators. Sara Wojciechowski, Mechanical Design Engineer at Kindred explains the types of problems that robots can tackle and current limitations. We talked about the components of Mechanical Design and how it’s applied in robotics. Sara explained how ideas are prototyped and developed for building robots.

Behind some of the software products that we use is a team of researchers. Research in the software industry plays an important role in the development of new products. From coming up with ideas to evaluating existing approaches, researchers work with other teams within an organization to provide insights and direction. Beth Toland, Head of Experience Research at Asana, explained the role of research in a software product. Beth talked about what user research consists of and how this influences how a product is developed. We also talked about the process of conducting research at a software company and some examples of its use at Asana.

Growth and adoption of software involves gathering metrics, evaluating them, and deciding among different strategies. Katie Guzman, Product Manager Lead at Asana explained different strategies in growth and adoption of software. We talked about metrics that can be used to evaluate this and examples of how Asana leverages that information. Katie also explained software monetization strategies and factors that can help determine what strategy to choose. At the end we talked about team leadership and how an internship program in Product Management is structured.

Getting work experience while studying in school has become more accessible, especially in the software industry. Safia Abdalla, Open Source Maintainer on the nteract project talked about her experience as an independent consultant while she was in college. We also talked about Safia’s contributions to open source software since she was a first year college student. At the end we explored topics around data science and tooling.

Taking an idea into a product involves steps like evaluation, prototyping and commercialization. Maggie Ng, Vice President at Xinova explained the process of developing products. We talked about projects from different industries and the role of intellectual property. Maggie also talked about project trends from around the world.

Product Marketing in technology varies depending on the product and the audience. In some cases it involves deep technical knowledge and understanding how developers work. Karri Alexion-Tiernan, VP of Product Marketing at Skytap, explained what product marketing consists of. We talked about effective ways of engaging with enterprise customers and developers. Karri also talked about modernizing and migrating legacy applications to the cloud and how people at Skytap are approaching this.

The way we develop software is constantly changing. Throughout the decades we see different processes and practices emerge in how we write software. Laura Butler, Vice President and Technical Fellow at Microsoft talked about her time working on Windows 95 and what it was like to write software in the 90s. We talked about debugging, performance, and becoming a better programmer. Laura also talked about leadership and building strong teams.