Women to talk tech without distraction of being in minority

When the Ohio’s Women in Analytics Conference takes place on Thursday to a sold-out crowd at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, all presenters and speakers will be women.

“But we hope people feel it’s a strong analytics conference that featured women as speakers,” said one of the organizers, Katie Sasso of the Columbus Collaboratory, a technology enterprise created by major central Ohio players to develop technologies that will help companies be more efficient, more secure and more customer-focused.

Or, as one of the speakers at the conference recently posted on social media: “She doesn’t perceive of herself as a female astrophysicist, but as an astrophysicist” who happens to be a woman, said another organizer, Rehgan Avon of Open Data Group.

“It is called Women in Analytics because we hope to bring a shift in perspective,” Avon said. “Oftentimes you go to big conferences that feature hot topics in the industry and the panels are mostly men.”

So, as the conference was being organized, Avon said, “we had the chief data officer at Chase say, ‘Here’s a way to avoid a ‘man-el,’ an all-male panel.”

The conference is something that might not have happened decades ago, when the preponderance of men in tech fields was a given.

“I have a systems engineering degree with a specialization in analytics,” Avon said. “I had a decent amount of computer science courses and there was definitely a disproportion in gender. I was one of four women in a computer science class of 75.”

Being in that kind of overwhelming minority can be difficult.

“Obviously, you feel the weight of the stereotype of being female in a technology field,” Sasso said. “In general, if you feel you’re a minority in a situation, that is something that can adversely affect your performance.”