At EwiT for the second time
European Women in Technology is a large two-day conference that attracts more than 5,000 IT women from different sectors to Amsterdam every year. It is part of a wider Women in Tech series, also including Women in Silicon Roundabout, Women in Tech Texas and Women in Tech DC, and we attended the European version for the second time. When we first arrived at the RAI in Amsterdam, we were impressed by the size of the conference and the number of participants and exhibitors. This year, however, we went with our own experience as organizers of the 3rd edition of Slovak Women in Tech, on the one hand to look for suggestions and inspiration, and on the other hand to confront our conference concept with the already established European one.
Unexpected meetings
EwiT welcomed us once again with a rich programme that ran like clockwork. The Whoa app helped to navigate the complex conference, where all three of us kept track of our individually set agendas.
In addition to the main stage, which unfortunately did not impress us with its motivational programme, we focused on smaller thematic stages, workshop rooms and interactive stands of companies. It was in one of them that we had a nice surprise, when we met Barbara Zuzana Bodnár from Takeda, whom we know through our partnership of several years, quite by chance.
Differences and overlaps or why we want it different
Probably the workshops were the ones that interested us the most, I was especially interested in Ana Alvarez from Migrapreneur’s How to bring more migrant women into Tech workshop, where we got data on migrant participation in GDP in their new home countries and especially the overall need to redefine the term. Although the organizers declare that there is something for all women at the conference, we noticed that especially junior women are given less space. Companies were mostly looking for female juniors or seniors. We, however, struggled the whole time with the feeling that we had it different. And although we left with a lot of experiences and inspiration, we were also accompanied by the affirmation that rather than an open noisy space and obvious on site head hunting in a big way, we prefer to create an intimate and safe space for women to be inspired, to learn, to learn something new and to connect with each other.
Learning by sharing of experience
After two conference days, we also visited a nice residential area in Amsterdam, where we visited the Netwerkpro organisation. It provides women with training programmes that focus on improving their professional position in the labour market. We were particularly interested in the organisation’s mentoring programme, which involves up to 240 volunteer mentors. Over coffee and Dutch pastries, founder and director Arinou Huijboom revealed to us what her personal journey has been like and why she decided to capitalise on her passion to connect people as the cornerstone of building an organisation to improve the financial situation of women. She also introduced us to their modus operandi, which we reciprocated with our best practices.
After a very enjoyable and fruitful morning, we spent the remaining time sampling more local specialties and cruising the Amsterdam canal. You can taste some of the Amsterdam inspirations we brought back from our trip on 10 October in Bratislava at our all-day multi-genre conference Slovak Women in Tech.
Don’t miss it!
