The conference day! Women in Data Science.

Women in Data Science, Mumbai Conference, 10th March

This year I tried something different. It all started with one thought that pricked me, Data Science is an interesting field, there is just so much that keeps happening in this field, what if I get to build a community where people get to understand how working in this field feels like and the various projects that can be undertaken in it. That was when I came across Women in Data Science, a Global Conference organised by the Stanford University, ICME Department. Being a strong supporter of diversity, I felt this is just the right platform I needed, so I reached out to the co-ordinators and expressed my willingness to take a stand and organize a similar conference in Mumbai with their constant support. Meeting my co-ambassadors Julian, Khushboo and Aqsa and working together to make it happen was a journey full of learning, encouraging, meeting new people and finally successfully pulling off this conference. Here goes the highlights! 

Recently Forbes stated that the biggest event on the data science community calendar is the one that showcases women in the field. Global Women in Data Science is the largest analytics conference on Earth. The first edition of Mumbai WiDS conference held on 10th of March at VJTI College featured 8 female speakers and was attended by around 105 participants composed of a mixed group of students, industry experts and researchers.

The conference started off with the WiDS ambassadors welcoming all the attendees and placing the agenda for the day. 

The Keynote speaker, Mrunali Sathe who is a business oriented leader addressed the audience and talked about taking control of the narrative. She totally encouraged the women to look for growing up in what they are doing and the importance of data in the business. 

The next keynote speaker, Shweta Doshi talked about her EdTech Startup journey and inspired the audience and made them realize how important a good networking helps to achieve more and more. 

(Left-Mrunali Sathe, Right-Shweta Doshi)

Kritika Jalan a business analyst, our next speaker gave a brief overview on the learning path to become a data scientist giving example of her own learning curve. It is the interest that drives you to learn more in this field and it is never too late to start off. 

Link to Slides: https://github.com/WiDSMumbai/10-03-18-Conference-Slides/blob/master/KritikaJalan.pptx

Dr. Anjali Chopra who is a consumer insights specialist and educationalist spoke next and thoroughly grabbed the attention of the audience by sharing her vast knowledge in Role of Marketing Analytics and Text Mining in targeting the right customer. Through various case studies she explained the role of logistic regression and how to interpret the odds ratio. She briefed about using the data modelling platform called RapidMiner and about validating the results. 

Our next speaker Sarah Masud who is a data scientist at RedHat talked on a very interesting topic of seven sins of a data science newbie and how not to commit them. She covered 7 various misconceptions that a college student working on data science projects would have and gave the reality check of after college work environment. It was very insightful. 

Link to Slides: 

https://github.com/WiDSMumbai/10-03-18-Conference-Slides/blob/master/SarahMasud.pdf

We broke off for the networking lunch at this point and also tried to cover the delayed broadcast of Latanya Sweeney’s keynote address from the main Stanford WiDS conference held on 5th of March during the lunch. 

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLyPxzR29eI

Post the lunch break Saloni Bhogale who is a Young India Fellow at Ashoka University took charge of the dais. Knowing about her work with Political Data and Parliamentary Research was very fascinating. It definitely opened up a new interest among the audience to work with such data. 

Link to Slides: https://github.com/WiDSMumbai/10-03-18-Conference-Slides/blob/master/SaloniBhogale.pptx

Next up was Sahiba Chopra who is a data scientist at SugarBox, she talked on the intersection of behavioral economics and data science. How the social media feeds get tailored with news using the user’s confirmation bias and noticing that fake news encounters maximum engagement makes us realise that we need to cross check whatever we share online. 

Link to Slides: 

https://github.com/WiDSMumbai/10-03-18-Conference-Slides/blob/master/SahibaChopra.pptx

The last speaker was Nitika Goel, a data scientist at FlexiLoans, who shared insights from the FinTech world. She gave an overview of Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods used to lend money to the right customers. 

Link to Slides: 

https://github.com/WiDSMumbai/10-03-18-Conference-Slides/blob/master/NitikaGoel.pdf

To sum it up, it was a very engaging day that opened up new interests in everybody and it was great to see the amazing networking going on among all the attendees. We also had prizes for a small filler quiz session and the best tweet of the conference. Huge thanks to our sponsors, Fractal Analytics, VJTI Alumni Association, DataGiri and GreyAtoms for all the support. 

It was amazing working in this team! (From left to right- Khushboo, Aqsa, myself and Julian) 

Thanks a lot to Judy and Ashley from WiDS Stanford to constantly supporting us and giving us this opportunity.

Just as an end note, if anyone is in support of this initiative and wants it to grow more next year can feel free to hit me up for further discussions.

Cheers!!