With the Roller Commercial Team becoming some of Women In Tech's most recent attendees, we're only just uncovering just how powerful and immense the Nottingham technology event scene is. So when we got the chance to sit down with one of its forefront leads, Emma Seward - one of the minds behind Tech on Toast, Tech Nottingham, Women In Tech, Hack24 and many other projects - we couldn't resist finding out what inspired her to champion women in technology!
What made you choose Nottingham as your home for Women in Technology?
It felt like it was the missing meetup in Nottingham. Nottingham has a huge number of tech meetups (around 30 a month), but the audience of a lot of these is largely male. We’d seen other Women in Tech (WiT) meetups around the country, and felt that it was something that Nottingham could really benefit from. There’s a large gender disparity in technology companies, and we wanted to shout about the fantastic people working in tech that were often overlooked, and have WiT Notts be a gateway event to all the other fantastic meetups in Nottingham. It’s been truly wonderful seeing it develop over the last two years and the friendships and working relationships that have blossomed.
How did Women in Tech begin? What’s its origin story?
WiT Notts was set up by Jessica White in 2016 - it’s not long had its second birthday! Andrew (my husband, who runs Tech Nottingham with me) and myself encouraged Jessica White to set up it (we have excellent powers of persuasion) as she was the perfect person to run it - smart, organised and a well known woman in tech in Nottingham. Last summer Jess decided to take a step back, and along with Helen Clark, we at Tech Nottingham took on the organising of WiT Notts and it now falls under the umbrella of Tech Nottingham.
Tech Nottingham is an organisation with the mission to make Nottingham a better place to live and work in technology and we do that in a number of ways.
We run three regular monthly meetups in Nottingham, plus our annual hackathon Hack24, a student outreach programme, an online business surgery, and we have one of the largest online communities outside of London (at the time of writing it stands at 1627 people!).
Tech Nottingham monthly is the biggest event we run (bar Hack24) - it’s a general, non-language specific tech event, meeting on the first Monday of each month at Antenna and attracting an audience of around 90-120 people making it one of the largest in Nottingham.
We think of Tech on Toast as Tech Nottingham lite - it gives people who might not be able to attend an evening event, for childcare reasons for example, the opportunity to attend a tech meetup that they might otherwise miss out on. Plus they get a free breakfast and copious amounts of coffee! It meets on the fourth Wednesday of each month at Accelerate Places.
Women in Tech celebrates and highlights female and gender minority speakers and meets on the first Thursday of each month at Accelerate Places. Everyone is welcome (it’s not just for women!) and we have food, drinks and fantastic local and national speakers.
One of the most successful things we run is definitely our Student Outreach Programme. Sponsored by Experian, we work with the local universities, and the tech societies in particular, namely Hack Soc at UoN and Dev Soc at Nottingham Trent, with the main aim of our programme being to keep students in Nottingham after graduating and stop them running down to London and joining an investment bank. We think living and working in tech in Nottingham is way better! Every year we start afresh as there’s a new influx of students, and we work with the new leadership team of the societies and work with them to let the students knows what is happening in tech in Nottingham, and letting them know that they, as students of technology, are part of that local tech community. Students now make up around a third of our community, many of them have spoken at our events, and even more have stayed in Nottingham after graduation - mission accomplished!
So you created Women in Tech to give women a voice. Why do you think women are still marginalised in technology?
In my opinion, historically, technology has been very male dominated, and I believe that this status quo needs to be addressed. To be honest, I’m not sure what all the reasons are for such a large gender disparity, and I certainly don’t have all the answers. I do think that we need to challenge the idea that’s taught from such a young age that ‘tech is for boys’. Teaching young girls that tech is exciting and an aspirational and legitimate career path for them, and highlighting inspirational women working in tech, can only be a good thing.
Who inspires you as a woman in technology?
Honestly, until recently I didn’t consider myself to be a ‘woman in tech’, because I don't have a background in tech. But you know what? I organise tech events and work with people in tech all the time, so I think I’m finally admitting myself that I might just be a woman in tech!
In terms of women who inspire me, it has to be all those I’ve met through organising our various meetups. There are too many to count, but I will highlight three that stand out. Jess White (of UNiDAYS fame) is phenomenal. She started off studying neuroscience, and then switched to computer science, and now she’s on all of the one to watch lists, is an international conference speaker, award winner: she’s a real rising star in Nottingham. Jessica Rose is another - I love that she describes herself on twitter as ‘technology’s den mother’ - she really is! She’s very supportive of Tech Nottingham and the work we do, and we’ve had her come speak at a lot of meetups in Nottingham; her advice and support has been invaluable to me. I will also mention my WiT Notts co-organiser Helen - queen of UX, she’s my other half when it comes to WiT Notts - can I say wife?! (Sorry Andrew)
What is your greatest achievement from Women in Technology?
I’ve just been highlighted as influential in Nottingham in the Tech Nation report. Up until a couple of years ago, Nottingham wasn’t mentioned in at all in the Tech Nation report. We’ve worked really hard over the last couple of years to ensure that Nottingham has a place on the tech map, and somehow this has resulted in me being included in the report!
Where do you plan to go next with the meet ups?
I think that someday it would be nice if the Women in Tech meetup didn’t need to exist, and that all the women who attend WiT Notts felt comfortable going to all of the tech events in Nottingham, rendering WiT Notts obsolete. But to be honest, if that did happen, I’d be very sad to see it go - it’s my favourite event!
If I could do anything at all though, if money was no object, I would love Tech Nottingham to have a premises, a real physical space in the city, maybe with with a coffee bar, a coworking space, meeting rooms... It’s a dream at the moment, but one day, who knows?
I’d also love for us to be able to offer affordable training and education, especially to those groups that don’t currently have access to it, or those who would like to retrain. It would be fantastic to be able to reach even more people and to get them really excited about technology.
(Featuring: Jess White)
So for you personally, in 10 years, where do you want to be?
I would love for us to finally own our own house, with a big garden where I could have my bee hives, and sit and chat with them with a cup of coffee in the mornings (yes, I am that person). I’d also like to do one more talk, as I did one talk on the value of community last year, and although I swore I’d never to do it again (it was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done!), I think it’s good to challenge myself sometimes.
I think my other goals might be a bit more manageable:
I want to like stilton. I feel like I'm missing out on a whole other level of cheese experience, and I want to train my palate to like stilton. So far it's an upward battle but I'm working on it. And it's gross.I also want to make a book about bees in the average suburban garden. I have tentative plans of working with a well known wildlife author/journalist (she's keen, she'll do the words, I'll provide the photography) so ten years gives us plenty of time!
If you want to find out more about Emma or any of her meet up events, then please don't hesitate to follow her at @MrsEmma on Twitter, or to email her at: [email protected]! Also, if you would like to be featured in one of our interviews, drop us an email about your innovative project or idea at [email protected]!
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