Ada's List Conf 2019 - that's a wrap!

Holy moly what a day full of wonderful people, great friendships, and awesome content. We had over 90 submissions for our call for proposals; 99% of them Ada's List members. We selected 23 talks, 100% of them Ada's List members. And for the first time ever, we had 3 (!) tracks throughout most of the day - tech, workshops and product, and leadership. The feedback was really great - and actually people wished they'd been able to go to simultaneous talks.

So hey, way to go Adas on having some great things to say. Now, onto the day...

First of all, we launched two exciting new things:

The Ada’s List Partner Network - a group of organisations who are committed to making their workplaces work for women and people of colour. (Join here) 

The Ada’s List Board Channel - a private channel for NEDs & board members. We’re all about changing the tech industry to make it better and now we want to apply this focus to a new area - the boardroom. (Join here)

The whole day’s vibe can be summed up by these words from our co-founders’ welcome talk: leave the door open

+ the fact that our attendees kept telling us this was the friendliest & most welcoming tech event they had ever been to.

It was friendly - but also everyone knew their s***, talked about it, asked great questions, and helped everyone progress, together.

Now, onto the keynotes and panels...

First off was Kajal Odedra, UK Director, Change.org and Author, 'Do Something: Activism For Everyone'. She gave a fabulous talk 'We Should All Be Activists'. Her key takeaways:

• Kajal told the story of growing up in a hostile environment, highlighting the importance of diversity in senior decision making roles and chief executives.
• People are often held back from starting a campaign / activism because of issues around: confidence, being time poor, feeling they don’t know enough about the issue. The solution is: collaboration + thinking of ‘the little big thing’ than you could change about a wider issue.
• She encourages all women: “The next time you see injustice, speak out: You have more power than society tells you.”

Our afternoon keynote was long-time Ada's List member, Patrice John-Baptiste from FIRST UK who talked to us about "Building more than robots: Tackling self-exclusion in STEM." So many great takeaways from this talk - most importantly, know that self-exclusion starts early so make sure to support your kiddos (or your friends' kiddos) and encourage them along.

Our closing panel was a mishmash of wonderful people all talking about one of my favourite topics: Doing The Right Thing and doing important work matters. It was a panel discussion and pep rally for tech for good with Deborah Okenla (CEO YSYS), Pauline Roche (CEO RnR) and Elle Tweedy (Design Lead, FutureGov).

Key takeaways:
“Organisations come to me and say diverse talent is hard to reach - I say to them, no you are  the one who’s hard to reach. Think about where you show up, where you host events” - Deborah

There's so much more to talk about...Like let's never have an all male panel again? Perhaps next year we'll invent a real time turner? How about more people going to conferences by themselves and being ok with it? And so many awesome talks from the conf that we'll have to cover elsewhere.

And now, a huge, sincere thank you to our sponsors, without whom none of the above would be possible.

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Platinum Sponsor

Spotify (this is their second time sponsoring #adaslistconf!)

Bulb

Silver sponsor

Workspace 

Bronze sponsors
FutureGov (this is their FOURTH time sponsoring #adaslistconf! )

OneTech

TrueLayer 

Xenzone

Bursary Ticket + Travel Sponsor

Public Digital

 Venue Sponsor 

FT 

Non-alcoholic drinks reception

Everleaf

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Thanks again to everyone - our sponsors, our volunteers, our speakers, and our attendees for making it an awesome day - stay tuned for 2020 Conf info! 

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