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Inspired. Motivated. Focused. Three words summarising how I felt walking out after two days at the Liquid Learning, Women in ICT and Digital Leadership Summit 2019.

I’m Emma Judd, Group Marketing Manager at Place Design Group and I was the lucky winner of the Women in Digital LinkedIn competition, to attend this Summit from July 23 2019 to July 24 2019.

You may have seen, I took over the @womenindigital Instagram Stories for the duration of the conference and can view my stories on their highlights here.

While it was two days jam-packed with an amazing lineup of speakers, the below will give you a brief insight and share some knowledge nuggets and relatable advice I personally took from this event.

DAY 1: 23 July

On day one of the summit we heard from some fantastic speakers, with the line-up including:

Joanna Murray, Program Manager, Transformation & Innovation, Boral
Chris Locke, Chief Information Officer, Flight Centre
Deb Assheton, Expert Facilitator, The Amplify Group
Wendy Bryant, Chief Information Officer, Transport for NSW
Keli Saville, Regional Head of Data, AsiaPac, Vanguard
Niamh Collins, General Manager, Digital, HFC
Jade Carson, Director, IT Investments, Department of Education & Training
Kirsty McKay, Group Manager, Program Delivery & Digital Transformation, Coates Hire
Katie Payten, Director, Technology Assurance & Governance, Australian Securities & Investments Commission
Kylie McLean, Chief Digital Officer, Australia & New Zealand, IBM
Simon Noonan, Chief Information Officer, SportsBet

The first day, the first speaker at a conference is always exciting and generally sets the tone for what you can expect and Joanna Murray, Program Manager, Transformation & Innovation at Boral, did just that.

Setting us up for the day, Joanne asked us to reflect back to the start of our careers. Did we know what we wanted to be, and how we planned to get there? I know myself. I definitely had a plan and thought it would go a certain way but reflecting back, it was actually a very different path I’d taken. I think this is a really positive thought to reflect on, especially if you are a mentor or in a leadership role guiding your team through their career journey.

My favourite quote from Joanne’s presentation was, “Great leaders don’t think they’re great; great leaders think they’re human.”

From career reflection to career reflecting. Chris Locke, Chief Information Officer, Flight Centre, shared some great career advice which I’ve shared below:

Don’t be afraid of trying different things in different industries
Make a plan and make it happen
Be resilient, but patient
Get experience – think outside the square

This was also a lovely flow into the third speaker, Deb Assheton, Expert Facilitator, The Amplify Group, who spoke on the importance of true self-confidence, the value of vulnerability and gratitude along with self-awareness.

A nice reminder that Deb left us with was that the struggle ends where gratitude begins. Practising daily gratitude makes us 5-10% happier, and costs us nothing.

“What are you grateful for today?”

I think one of my favourite, most thought-provoking parts of the day was Wendy Bryant’s presentation. Wendy Bryant, Chief Information Officer, Transport for NSW, spoke on ‘Unconscious Bias’. To explain this, Wendy made this really relatable asking us all to discuss at our tables if there were any roles we automatically associate with a man or a woman; knowing perfectly well that both genders actually worked in that particular role. For example, when one thinks of a pilot, a doctor, a nurse or a kindergarten teacher, does one stereotype a particular gender? Needless to say, most people, by default of unconscious bias, did so.

Wendy also reflected on her time as the only woman in an IT team working with all men. She refused to be the ‘cake cutter’ at workplace celebrations, as the default was to ‘leave it to Wendy because she was the woman’. Reflecting on our own workplaces, I feel there is so much that can be consciously done or implemented to improve this default gender bias. Some ideas Wendy shared with us included:

Unconscious bias training
Focus on bias in AI – change your Siri voice to male
- I found this topic extremely interesting. Here is an article from Google that discusses it in more detail.
Specific actions on diversity in hiring processes and opportunities

Post lunch, we returned to the room for a panel discussion on ‘Whether work-life balance is possible?’. And great news – it is! And here are the panellists’ top tips for making it happen:

Find what works for you. If you play a sport or enjoy gym as an outlet – prioritise that and make a routine that works.
Plan holidays in advance and stick to them – If you’re busy, it’s easy to not plan your downtime, but time with family and friends is important. Book it in. Booking it in advance gives you something to look forward to.
Don’t hesitate to raise your hand if you need help. A great tip. Learn to delegate and ask those around you for help when needed.
Work smarter using smarter working techniques. Again something to Google, but what it comes down to is the fact that we all have 24 hours in a day. Use them wisely. The one thing money can’t buy is time.
As women in leadership, WE need to support flexibility. This is so important. If your team comes to you wanting to discuss flexible working options, be the change. Listen to their request and see what may be possible.
Flexibility in the workplace. Break down the barriers and become outcomes-based. This is such a positive and practical way to frame this thought process, as just because someone sits at their desk all day, it doesn’t mean they are being any more productive than someone working from home. Change the focus to be on outcomes, not on the number of hours sitting at a desk, and encourage flexible working arrangements.

The final two presenters for day one, Kylie McLean, Chief Digital Officer, Australia & New Zealand, IBM and Simon Noonan, Chief Information Officer, SportsBet, touched on workplace culture. Kylie really drove home the message that as leaders, it’s so important to create a culture that gets your team to thrive. This was a fantastic leeway into Simon’s Case Study around transforming workplace culture, with SportsBet as an example. Honestly, SportsBet sounds like an amazing place to work with a fantastic culture. Guided by its purpose, and underpinned by its values, SportsBet doesn’t just have its values hung on the wall; they live its values, which makes all the difference.

DAY 2: 24 July

Inspired from day one, excited for day two and it did not disappoint. The fantastic line-up of speakers included:

Stuart Harrison, Chief Information Security Officer, Medibank
Megan James, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Data Centres & President, Women in IT & Communications
Arabella Macpherson, Founder & Communications Coach, Resonate Communications
Jade Carson, Director IT Investments, Department of Education & Training
Brendan Mills, Chief Information Officer, NIB Health Funds Limited
Sarah McCullough, Head of eTech Operations, Essential Energy
Kathryn Porter, Director, Customer Experience, Cisco
Joyce Harkness, Chief Information Officer, Avant Mutual Group Limited
Kirsten Murray, Director International, Faculty of Engineering & IT, the University of Technology Sydney
Catherine Nolan, Director & Principal Coach, Gender Gap Gone

Stuart Harrison, Chief Information Security Officer, Medibank, kicked-off day two proceedings by sharing some words of wisdom about realising your leadership potential. A key theme that came through reflecting on day one was to show vulnerability. As leaders, you do need to stay strong for your team, but vulnerability is not a sign of weakness, but a sign that you are human. Showing vulnerability can often lead to building rapport and relationships with your team. A really lovely reminder for all leaders.

From the importance of vulnerability in leadership to the importance of resilience as leaders. Resilience was the topic Megan James, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Data Centres & President, Women in IT & Communications, covered in her personal career journey she shared with attendees. Megan is a very inspirational woman, and since the conference, I have shared parts of her story with many of my colleagues. They say you may not remember what people say, but you will always remember how they made you feel. In this case, I remembered what Megan said because of how it made me feel and how much it resonated. If you get the opportunity to hear Megan speak, I would highly recommend you take it and hear her story first-hand. I will share my key takeaways from Megan’s presentation below and hope you take some inspiration from this too:

Stay in your lane and stand up for what you believe in – no matter what
Always hold true to your values – above all else
Value your soft skills – emotional intelligence
Be present and always show up
Everyone has a story – so listen
Engage with people – see how you get the best out of people – allow the creative opportunity
Don’t compromise on any of the above

As leaders and mentors, it’s always useful to have references or tools to provide the best possible guidance and advice to enable meaningful conversations with your teams and mentees. Arabella Macpherson, Founder & Communications Coach, at Resonate Communications shared with us some great tips for unleashing your power as a mentor. I’ve summarised them below:

Coaching
- Ask questions
- Make suggestions
- Share experiences
Chunking
- Use chunking to open up or delve deeper into topics
Matching
- Give all of your attention
- Match 60%: physically and vocally
- Repeat words and phrases back to show acknowledgement

Towards the end of day two, the discussion changed to be more around the future of work. Jade Carson, Director of IT Investments, Department of Education & Training, spoke passionately on the topic of engaging and attracting future female leaders to IT roles.

Some ideas and strategies Jade touched on started right back at engaging young girls to show interest in IT. Whether that be at home, at school or at play. It’s also about attracting girls and women to a career in IT by changing the image/perception of tech, promoting meaningful careers and addressing the unconscious bias. On top of this, growing the focus on the culture around tech, closing the confidence gap through training and education and having strong female mentors or sponsors will help attract female IT talent. Jade concluded that we should keep a focus on culture being equitable and reflective of diversity. And that job design or redesign for flexibility is important. Overarching, she highlighted female role models across the IT industry is key.

Continuing the future of work discussion, panellists’ thoughts covered:

The importance of business and IT partnerships – with the increase in technologies in the workplace, it’s important for businesses and IT leaders to work closely for the best possible outcomes
Portfolio careers – showing depth and breadth of experience
Being location agnostic – it’s not about where you’re physically working from. With technology, you are enabled to work from anywhere. This also ties into the earlier discussion around being outcomes focused.
Gig Economy – presents great opportunities but also new challenges

And that’s a wrap! Catherine Nolan, Director & Principal Coach, at Gender Gap Gone, was our facilitator across the two-day summit and presented a great summary of the insights from across the event. A few practical tips she left us with include:

Create a Vision Board – use Pinterest or Canva to get started. If you see it, you’ll achieve it.
Create your 40-page resume – a dumping ground for YOU only. List examples as they happen so that when the time comes, you have the content and are ready to apply for that dream job.
Watch the Amy Cuddy Ted Talk – ‘Your body language may shape who you are’

There were honestly so many fantastic insights and inspirational moments over the two days. I hope this blog post shares just some of that post-summit magic with you all.

Thank you for reading.

Emma Judd

Instagram: @emajudd

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emajudd/

Do you have more insightful leadership tips? Share them in the comments below.

By Kathy Wilson

It wasn’t all that long ago that seeking part-time work was like hanging a sign across your LinkedIn profile saying “not that interested in my career.” Not only was there a salary penalty but promotions suddenly became “unavailable” and career-enhancing projects would disappear like a puff of smoke.

But in 2007, Tim Ferriss forced the world to take a look at the way we all work with his international bestseller “The Four Hour Workweek.” No longer was there a direct link between hours worked and commitment and success.

The flow-on effect has been slow in coming but is now picking up steam. Finally, like a shy little sister at the dance, part-time work is stepping out of shadows and presenting herself as a powerful career tool.

All over the world, millions of dollars are flooding into part-time and flexible work in 2018 as both employers and employees catch on to its advantages.

But have the tables turned so much that part-time work now actually boost your career?

In many cases yes. And for women in digital, it’s a “hell yes!”

So let’s take a look at six specific ways you can use part-time work to skyrocket your career.

1. Use job-sharing to make you part of an unbeatable package.

By developing a strategic job-share partnership, you can take you from a “maybe” candidate for a stretch job to a “must have.”

By matching your skills with someone similar but complimentary, you can potentially double the expertise, experience and skill sets you bring to a role. It also means that when and if the need arises, there is the ability to scale up rapidly (e.g. for a launch/end of financial year/time-sensitive report).

Increasingly – job sharing is a thing. And for senior, well-paid and challenging roles.

Companies are becoming open to hiring senior people on a flexible basis, according to recruitment firm Timewise.

“The British company surveyed 200 local senior managers and found that two out of five would consider hiring candidates for a senior role as part of a job-share. It also estimated that 770,000 high-income earners in Britain now work part-time, an increase of 5.7% on the previous year.

There are no losers in this scenario and big wins for innovative employees.

2. Use the flexibility of part-time work allows to develop skills in new areas

Very often, even the best full-time jobs involve using the same skill set over and over. I kind of rinse and repeat. Sure, you may have mastered the skills required but once you have done that a plateau can set in.

That’s what happened to Tracey – a coder in Sydney.

“When I first started my job

Part-time work, by its very nature, frees you up for things other than your primary job.

Spend it to upskill in new areas that can take you in a whole different career direction.

3. Get your foot in the door at an up and coming company.

Once you have a few years experience, you expect a certain salary – and that’s a good thing.

But what about if your dream company is a bit speculative and can’t afford you at that rate?

Easy.

Negotiate a part-time contract to get your foot in the door.

4. Make more money

This may sound counter-intuitive, but sometimes, working part-time can mean you end up bringing in more money.

If, for example, you take on a 30 hour a week gig and a 15 hour a week gig, your total income might exceed a full-time salary.

5. Be available to last minute and short-term opportunities

By its nature, part-time jobs mean you are free to dabble in small, cool and/or one-off projects.

Who knows, maybe that small gig you pick up might lead to you being the next big thing in digital in a few years.

And finally…

6. Part-time work can make you happy – and that makes you a far better company asset.

According to an article in Fast Company, happy workers are more productive workers.

Here’s what the article said: “A recent study by economists at the University of Warwick found that happiness led to a 12% spike in productivity, while unhappy workers proved 10% less productive. As the research team put it, “We find that human happiness has large and positive causal effects on productivity. Positive emotions appear to invigorate human beings.”

If you can find your work/life balance that works for you, you’ll be far better and your job – and a much more valued employee.

Shawn Anchor, the author of The Happiness Advantage, has found that the brain works much better when a person is feeling positive. At those times, individuals tend to be more creative and better at solving problems.

Kathy Wilson from Elite Reputations gets women great part-time jobs. She knows that starting a job search can push everyone single, insecure button you have and she has a plan for you to follow that is simple and easy and will get you a new job in 4 weeks or less. And she’s released a course called “The World’s Most Real Guide to getting a part-time job that isn’t crap and pays what you deserve“.

By Jeannine Meyer

If you are currently active in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) or have a hankering to explore and understand the depths of machine learning, then you have most probably heard of recent PhD graduate and co-founder of Brisbane’s own AI meetup, Natalie Rens. What is even more intriguing is how this South African born ballet dancer turned neuroscience extraordinaire came to be one of Australia’s most up and coming AI experts.

Upon entering university life, Natalie first saw herself as an adventurer who would take a trip to the Amazon, discover unknown exotic plants and ultimately create brand new pharmaceuticals out of them. As fate would have it, her travel log and academic journey would deviate from where it originally began upon the completion of her undergraduate in biomedical science in England. Natalie continued her studies by undertaking a Masters in neuroscience in Portugal and France, which then led her over to Australia where she continued to pursue her interest in neuroscience and thus began her PhD at the University of Queensland in Brisbane.

So, how does one write and submit a thesis in which they combine the works of both neuroimaging with machine learning? Natalie explains that she was first introduced to machine learning through one of the new techniques that had come out in neuroscience called “multi-voxel pattern analysis” (a tool Natalie used throughout her own research) which is presented in the context of “brain reading” programs that showcase how certain mental states can be picked out and translated. Natalie’s first study was created within virtual environments that revealed where in our brain the information for upcoming complex decisions was actually stored – similar to how Alice in Wonderland is required to find the right lock that fits the tiny golden key! Her study (just published – https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00610/full) showed widespread brain activity when individuals prepared to make their own choices, the opposite to when being told to follow instructions – (Bear with me I was just as astounded!).

Throughout Natalie’s next studies, she states she went more philosophical, saying she looked at whether you could decode whether somebody had another option available to them or not – with the idea, that if we navigate flexibly in our environment then we would store all the options available to us. Natalie found that she could decode whether an individual making a decision had alternative options available, but also, somewhat controversially, that the strength of this decoding correlated to how free they said they felt when making their decision.

After gaining some insight into Natalie’s studies, I wanted to immerse myself completely into her story. I personally find AI to be quite a specific yet complex area, and so I was curious as to what led Natalie here. She claims that while you are in academia you are in a bubble of theoretical knowledge of science, however one day she heard that a cohort from San Diego were visiting UQ and were talking about the future of emerging technologies, including AI. It was then that Natalie discovered how significant the impact would be as she came across a powerful discussion amongst the panel surrounding AI and how important it was for companies and society alike to be aware of the engineering and increase in computers that attempt to appear more human and thus, replicate human intelligence. Her fascination led her to Silicon Valley in 2016 where she became passionate about the idea that people needed to have an understanding about AI in order to not fall behind but to also be able to utilise it. As Natalie says, “it allows you to do everything, better”.

I wondered what the defining characteristics of the Australian AI market are and are there any top courses that a novice, someone like myself, could go to learn more about AI? Sadly, Natalie tells me, that in terms of AI courses here in Brisbane, it does not look too promising at the moment and that it is actually quite a problem as there are currently no tertiary institutions in Queensland that promote specialised AI programs, however Natalie recently spoke to some of the universities here who are looking at introducing programs in the near future. With the help of the established AI community, Natalie says they recently finished running the first Brisbane AI deep learning project course. In addition to developing their own projects, participants followed an online course from Fast.AI, a research institute dedicated to making deep learning more accessible, which is run by its democratic AI founders Australian data scientist Jeremy Howard and American academic Rachel Thomas. The 8-week project course just concluded, however she intends on expanding this into a series of courses this year, encouraging people to come along and learn.

Natalie explains that Australia is slightly disadvantaged in the way that “we don’t have the numbers that other countries do”. She goes on to say that, we do not have federal policy yet on AI development and technology start-ups here also struggle to find investment, in comparison to bigger hubs such as Silicon Valley. However, she says, “We can actually grow a good independent scene without having to necessarily face all the competition that they do”. She believes we have an advantage, especially in Queensland, which is home to a strong health community that boasts some of the best health research such as biofabrication research, robotics for healthcare and bionics research companies. With a confident tone, Natalie says Australia has the opportunity to just grow and start a niche start-up AI scene here – and that is exactly what Natalie has done by successfully establishing the first-ever Brisbane AI meetup.

The Brisbane AI meetup was created post attending a conference in California two years ago where Natalie asked the question, “There is this concern about the fact that if only technology companies really know what is going on and they are the only ones utilising this technology, what are we going to do?” Upon her return, Natalie attended a Brisbane robotics meetup where she spoke to Juxi, who would become future co-founder, about the idea of having a place where people could come together to learn about AI. The idea grew rapidly – to the point where they had 150 people attend their first ever meetup. The representation of females, however, within the Brisbane AI community is small, reflecting global numbers that stand at 13% – a percentage that Natalie hopes will increase as word gets out, as there is a huge demand for women in this area.

Natalie expresses that she knows there are many women out there in this environment and should you want to be involved in the community then simply reach out to Natalie or to anyone else in this space! “We are all there to support one another”. Natalie says she hopes to host another “Woman’s cocktail hour” before the next Brisbane AI meetup so that she can get more women together and form a consistent, ever-growing group of female AI leaders!

You can visit/contact Natalie Rens at the Brisbane AI website or sign up and head along to the next meetup – https://www.meetup.com/Brisbane-Artificial-Intelligence/

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Liquid Learning, Women in ICT and Digital Leadership Summit 2019

6 ways job sharing can boost your digital career

Brisbane’s own AI expert: Natalie Rens

Acknowledgement