What I did at WWCode Connect Asia 2019 (Part II)
Written by Anj Cerbolles
During WWCode Connect Asia 2019, the event started with the keynote, in which I describe during the first part of my previous blog.
After breakfast, at around 10:00 AM, the training and workshop have started. I attended the “Agent-K: Building a support chatbot using Machine Learning” which the speaker is Aditi Agarwal. The chatbot name is, of course, Agent-K, and if you are a big fan of Men In Black then you will know him. She describes the process walkthrough: Natural Language Processing, and Understanding the Domain. Probably the things that I’ve learned so far when making the chatbot are, keep it simple, understand your domain and users well, and understand the problem you are trying to solve and if the chatbot can solve it.
The next session that I attended was “Fault Tolerance in Wireless Networks for Rescue Operations” by Amulya Sannegowda. In here, I realized that I need to review my networking again to better understand the routing of the packets.
We had lunch and afterwards, got ready for the next event in the afternoon. I did some catch up with my former WWCode network which is the Manila Sector. Really had fun catching up with them and got to meet the new members and leaders. Also, it was also great meeting people in the other sectors like WWCode Taipei Director Jane and WWCode Singapore Director Purnima (finally!). I’m honestly scared of talking to people during that time because I would say I’m an introvert. Nonetheless, I was happy that day. I felt very comfortable because I was surrounded by very inspirational women. Lastly, I was able to converse with some recruiters as well (Not that I am looking, hehe..).
Now let’s go back to the afternoon event. The next session that I attended was “Creating Art with CSS by Chen Hui Jing. She really did a great job during the session. The session clearly shows if you combine your creativity and computation of shapes and sizes you can create a flag. Next is “Building Data Pipelines with Monitoring & Observability” by Jiaqi Liu. Then, “Chaos Engineering” by Garima Singh & Deepak Sarda of J.P Morgan. Honestly, it’s my first time hearing about Chaos Engineering as I’m not aware about this. Just to clarify, Chaos Engineering is NOT chaotic. You need to learn from failure and it is better that your application is failing while you are watching. And YES! You should do Chaos Engineering in Production.
The last session that I attended was the Panel of the WWCode Directors of Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Taipei, and Bangalore which was interviewed by Shanna Gregory, Global Leadership Director. They talk about the background of their own cities with regards to the women in tech and how they can help lift up with each other. They have various trainings, sessions and workshops that they offer
Now, you’re wondering why I did this. Actually, I was a Director of Women Who Code Manila. Me and Michie Ang (WWCode Manila Director), brought WWCode in Manila so that we can have a venue for women to learn, and be comfortable with who they are. A place where we could share our knowledge and lift up each other. One of the books that I recently read titled: The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates, has a statement that stuck to me, which says
“We need the help of every advocate now. Women and men. No one should be left out. Everyone should be brought it. Our call is to lift women up — and when we come together in this cause, we are the lift”.
To learn more about Women Who Code, visit their websites and you can find your own network, and be a member.
WWCode ConnectAsia 2019
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