WEBVTT 00:00:00.944 --> 00:00:13.327 And that's a great thing about technology. You feel alone until you're able to see that you're not alone. And technology has been able to bridge that gap through these organizations like Wonderful Code. 00:00:19.728 --> 00:00:30.480 Hey, and welcome to Metacast, the podcast about podcasting, where we invite podcasters and podcast tech developers and talk about all things related to podcasting. 00:00:30.480 --> 00:00:43.728 Today, we have people who produce the podcast for the organization called Women Who Code, JL and Kimberly. JL, Kimberly, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Thank you. Why don't you introduce yourself? 00:00:43.728 --> 00:00:54.719 I'm Kimberly Jacobs, Senior Communications Manager at Women Who Code. I'm JL Lewitt, Senior Producer of Press and Digital Content at Women Who Code. Cool. 00:00:54.719 --> 00:01:08.688 So maybe let's start with a bit of your background and how you got into podcasting. So we're always curious how people get into podcasting. There is no degree for podcasting. So people somehow end their, you know, different paths. Kimberly, you want to start? 00:01:08.912 --> 00:01:12.896 Actually, I think JL should start because... 00:01:12.896 --> 00:01:27.183 He has a little bit more history. We both got started, though, at Women Who Code. I've done some producing. I have a journalism background, storytelling, communications, all that. A little bit of PR, too. 00:01:27.183 --> 00:01:39.775 It was just a matter of an opportunity and a space and time for us to use that to become podcast producers. I've loved podcasts since they started coming out. 00:01:39.775 --> 00:01:54.079 I used to love audiobooks as a kid and podcasts are sort of like that. The Women Who Code podcast started in 2016 and it was started by Tara Hernandez, a woman who's the board vice chair for Women Who Code now, but at the time she was just an amateur. 00:01:54.079 --> 00:02:09.056 Well, not an amateur. She was a volunteer, you know, doing it in her spare time whenever she could. A few episodes came out. They were amazing because the content is just naturally amazing, which is sort of why this exists. But again, she was a busy person. 00:02:09.056 --> 00:02:12.975 an engineer, a senior engineer, so after a while it dropped off. 00:02:12.975 --> 00:02:27.280 Meanwhile, Women Who Code was doing this thing where we were working with companies to interview these amazing women in technology who were doing these awesome things. We're video recording them and taking those video recordings and we were transcribing them. 00:02:27.280 --> 00:02:30.048 we're turning them into blogs, and then we're throwing out the video. 00:02:30.048 --> 00:02:43.376 That's because we had a very traditional in-person way of doing business and way of supporting people. And also it was a very small team. So we didn't have video editors and audio designers, all the graphic work that goes into that. 00:02:43.376 --> 00:02:57.680 and that's what we used to do but then the team started growing and started growing really when kimberly came on in 2021 and like knocked things up to the next level like super charged everything at that point you know kimberly came on and then we had sarah 00:02:57.680 --> 00:03:11.919 and Shanita and Natalia, the team grew amazingly. And as it did, we had this capacity to look at what we were doing and be like, we have amazing content here that's multimedia, but it goes across audio, across video, and we don't just have to throw it up on a blog. 00:03:11.919 --> 00:03:23.919 can produce it into a show. We can make these people stars. We can shine a spotlight on them and do this whole thing. And it was amazing that we had this content and we could start producing the show just like that. It was already there. 00:03:23.919 --> 00:03:37.455 And then we started doing it and I instantly just got crazy about how cool it all was. And Kimberly was such a support and was building it and producing things. And I was like, okay, well, obviously we're going to expand now, right? Why not? 00:03:37.455 --> 00:03:49.599 And so I looked around and we all looked around and we're like, oh, wait, Women Who Code used to produce five events a week in person for about six, seven years at the beginning. And then 2020 happened and couldn't go in person anymore. 00:03:49.599 --> 00:04:00.592 Company pivoted immediately within two months. Bam, all digital. Since 2020, like whenever the quarantine started, we have 1,600 videos on YouTube now. 00:04:00.592 --> 00:04:14.927 1,600 videos of these brilliant, diverse women popping in and saying these mind-blowing technical things and things that they're working on. They're teaching masterclasses and they're giving these amazing lectures that are delving into the depths of technology. 00:04:14.927 --> 00:04:16.766 We're not producing that into a show. 00:04:16.766 --> 00:04:31.327 And so we started doing that. And before we knew it, we had three shows. It was the Women Who Code Talks Tech for highly technical stuff, Women Who Code Career Nav for the career navigation, obviously. And then Women Who Code Conversations, as the name implies, two or more awesome women in tech. 00:04:31.327 --> 00:04:37.168 talking about their lives and professional stuff so so our 00:04:37.168 --> 00:04:51.471 Sorry. This is Arnav, by the way, for listeners, co-host of the show. I think last episode we had a joke about this. We'll get back to it in our meta-zone. Was my intro too long? I'm so sorry. 00:04:51.471 --> 00:04:52.447 Yeah. 00:04:52.447 --> 00:05:06.831 I get passionate about this stuff. Kimberly knows. I'm bad about that. Oh, no, no. That was awesome. I actually had a follow-up question to you about that. But the joke that Ilya and I were laughing about was that the last episode, I did the intro and I did not. 00:05:06.831 --> 00:05:21.040 introduce ilia so i introduced myself this time but anyway so the thing that i was going to ask about was are most of the content that you're doing right now youtube or video 00:05:21.040 --> 00:05:36.831 focus and then you also take that and put it into a podcast or how does that work and when we were looking at your podcast there are like three four different types of episodes that you have and you mix it in all like how do you decide to go about when to release which one and all that. 00:05:36.831 --> 00:05:51.375 Everything is member focused. So when coming up with the podcast idea, it was like how we can incorporate the members. So it started with having them interview these awesome women from other companies and giving them the opportunity. 00:05:51.375 --> 00:06:05.663 to connect with them and build relationships with them after the podcast process. And then our members wanted to create individual podcasts for their networks. Our networks are equivalent to like chapters, but networks is more techie. 00:06:05.663 --> 00:06:12.048 And in an effort to kind of streamline things and make it where... 00:06:12.048 --> 00:06:26.319 People can participate without taking on the burden. Not that it's a burden, but when you're a volunteer, eventually, you know, life happens and the motivation weans away. And so the solve for that was to just incorporate them. 00:06:26.319 --> 00:06:35.199 into the Women Who Code podcast. I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves, but we have three to four different ways that members can be involved in the podcast. 00:06:35.199 --> 00:06:44.975 So interviewing someone, being a host as well, they can also apply to be on the podcast and talk about their technical topics. 00:06:44.975 --> 00:06:53.312 And then as mentioned, us using some of the content from digital events as podcast episodes to highlight the. 00:06:53.312 --> 00:07:07.600 awesome expertise that they've already distributed and like shared with the community. So yeah, it's like member focus, but also what they like and what they're interested in, which is tech and they want to know. 00:07:07.600 --> 00:07:21.807 how to navigate their career but then with the conversations it's really about highlighting their experiences and other women's experiences in tech and especially women that are high level in their career but we don't only have 00:07:21.807 --> 00:07:36.016 women who are in executive level positions. We do also like to interview the everyday engineer that's working at a really cool company and doing great things and have about two to five years of experience as well. 00:07:36.016 --> 00:07:45.327 So yeah, the members were the forefront and also just like all the great content they were already helping us create naturally for the YouTube channel. 00:07:45.456 --> 00:07:57.600 I just had one more quick thing. We heard JL told us that you started in 2021. What do you do at Women Who Code podcast? Is the podcast your primary focus? What else do you do there? 00:07:57.600 --> 00:08:05.615 I am responsible for creating strategy around getting content and creating content and kind of leading on that. 00:08:05.615 --> 00:08:19.887 especially from a member experience side of things. We do have lead generation as well, but I kind of more so focus right now on user experience. And then the podcast and the blog also play a part. 00:08:19.887 --> 00:08:32.192 in that, in the strategy and implementation. And then we just come together as a team. And then I more so produce the Women Who Code conversation episodes and then JL produces more so the tech. 00:08:32.192 --> 00:08:46.495 talks and career nav conversations. And we discussed together these awesome women who have sent in their applications to be on the podcast and like how to make it work and fit it into our content strategy. 00:08:46.495 --> 00:08:58.480 I wanted to go back a little bit to talk about the organization itself. As the name implies, it's a community of women who code, which sounds like it's a technical community of primary engineers. 00:08:58.480 --> 00:09:09.456 Can you give us some background on what's the size of the organization, how many countries it's present in, and just generally how it operates so our listeners can get the perspective of what the organization is? 00:09:09.456 --> 00:09:24.048 Yeah, so it's a community of women, diverse technologists. So we do include non-binary and we do have men also apart. But so the name is Women Who Code, but it really is diverse. 00:09:24.048 --> 00:09:35.504 who code and just like providing a space to empower them to stay in the tech industry and not drop off in the pipeline. We have 340. 00:09:35.504 --> 00:09:46.192 three thousand three hundred and forty three yes thousand members i'm like a hundred goes in there somewhere but the hundred is inside 00:09:46.192 --> 00:10:00.687 And we're in 147 countries and we have 70 networks. We've been digital since the pandemic, but in March, we started back in-person events for our networks that are in... 00:10:00.687 --> 00:10:08.864 So when did it start? Give us a bit of the history. 00:10:08.864 --> 00:10:23.183 Okay. So Women Co. started as a meetup group for women in San Francisco. Our CEO and co-founder, Elena Percival, was one of them, one of the co-founders, along with three other women. And it eventually grew. 00:10:23.183 --> 00:10:37.392 from san francisco to another city and another city and partnering with technology companies that can host these events and it just kind of like exploded worldwide and we've been in business 00:10:37.392 --> 00:10:50.912 Well, it started in 2011 and then it was turned into a nonprofit around 2012, 2013. So we're roughly 10 years old. Wow. And are you folks actually employees or are you volunteers? 00:10:50.912 --> 00:10:53.871 So we're employees right now. 00:10:53.871 --> 00:11:08.303 I want to say we're like between 30 and 50 employees, but we have all these members all over and the volunteers who drive the networks and put on the events and we support them through the staff. Also, we have like... 00:11:08.303 --> 00:11:22.511 scholarship opportunities. And we have a job board that was created specifically for our members so that it addresses the things that women specifically want to see in a job board and will be more open and feel comfortable. 00:11:22.511 --> 00:11:36.720 applying to because women are more likely not to apply for a job if they don't have all the skill sets in the application I guess job posting but men they will have like 30 percent of the things on there and apply 00:11:36.720 --> 00:11:50.927 Anyway, so we figured a way to combat that and increase that is to have our job or customers focus on the things that are really important to our members and also have them take out the things that. 00:11:50.927 --> 00:12:02.864 they really don't need in the job posting. You don't need a full stack per se. You just need Python. So why do you have all these other stacks, including your job listing? 00:12:02.864 --> 00:12:17.135 So things of that nature. So we just provide a lot of different resources to help them become thought leaders, to help them grow their technical skills, of course, and to just feel more confident and have community around their experiences and not feel alone. 00:12:17.135 --> 00:12:30.943 own as women and non-binary people who are, you know, not a part of the quote unquote bro culture and empower them to just like speak up, ask for the raise, ask for the promotion. 00:12:30.943 --> 00:12:45.679 This is how you go about getting a promotion. So yeah, it's just like really empowering and fun and exciting because these women are really, really brilliant. Yeah. One thing I wanted to mention as we were talking before we started recording. 00:12:45.679 --> 00:12:59.951 In the organization where both Arunab and I worked at Amazon, we had a VP who was a woman. And then when she took over, I think almost overnight, we started to get a lot more interest from other women. And we ended up, I think, having two or three women. 00:12:59.951 --> 00:13:12.495 leadership positions and then a few women kind of in the IC engineer roles. For our team specifically, we hired somebody who came out of a boot camp for women. She was a former teacher. 00:13:12.495 --> 00:13:21.152 And she retrained to be an engineer and Amazon hired her, but then we hired her into our team. And I just remember how it was, how that just changes the dynamic. 00:13:21.152 --> 00:13:34.879 when you have a woman and not necessarily like a fresh college grad, but actually somebody who has a lot of experience also like teaching kids. You have somebody who has a lot of life experience and also a different perspective in life, but who is also an engineer. 00:13:34.879 --> 00:13:48.975 Whereas like you were saying, like bro culture, you know, I wouldn't say we had the bro culture in our team, but I get the sentiment. I had the same, actually same thing at Google in the team that I work right now. Basically our leadership is half women and we have lots of women in all different roles. 00:13:48.975 --> 00:14:02.384 Whereas if you look at some of the other organizations where all of the head is men, it tends to attract other men and almost like repel women away because women, I forgot who exactly I was talking to, but it was one of the people who joined our team at Amazon. 00:14:02.384 --> 00:14:13.679 She was choosing between our team and some other team, and she chose ours because she's like, oh, you have this person, that person, and your VP is a woman. So like all else equal, I choose your team. 00:14:13.679 --> 00:14:27.488 And then she attracted more people. It's just like a flywheel. So that's kind of speaking about the gender gap, right? The diversity gap. I think planting that seed is what really makes a lot of difference. I don't know. What's your perspective on this? Do you think about that at all? 00:14:27.488 --> 00:14:41.840 Just adding a little bit more because Ilya ditched our team in like 2020 summer and went off to Google or something. But I think this thing that you talked about planting the seed and accelerating that, that kept on growing. 00:14:41.840 --> 00:14:55.440 Last year, I also left Amazon, but the point that I had left like last summer, there was more women than men in our team across like different senior engineers, junior engineers at all levels. And that was amazing. 00:14:55.440 --> 00:15:04.176 There are not many teams, I think, in big tech that can say that. Yeah. Let's get back to Ilya, your question. Sorry, more context in there. Yeah. 00:15:04.176 --> 00:15:11.744 Um, so there's about 25, 26% of women in tech and we want to increase that. 00:15:11.744 --> 00:15:23.792 And not only that, but keep that number going because the research shows that between the start and the 10-year mark, at the 10-year mark, women typically leave tech. 00:15:23.792 --> 00:15:38.096 So we want women to keep going and get to that 20 years, get to that 30 years. But it's important for the industry itself to create space for them. So it is important for women to see other women in the industry and on these. 00:15:38.096 --> 00:15:43.440 teams and excelling and even being in C-suite and executive positions. 00:15:43.440 --> 00:15:58.351 And then it's also important for them to feel empowered in those positions to speak up for their ideas to be validated and for them to have guidance and mentorship. And that's kind of where Women Who Code comes into play. 00:15:58.351 --> 00:16:12.655 If a woman doesn't experience that, they have a community to experience that and also to feel empowered to move to a company that will empower them also to keep going in their career. It also gives them... 00:16:12.655 --> 00:16:24.864 space to learn and try different things in their tech career. We have hackathons. We have 100 Days of Code. We have a lot of different programming. We even have our Connect conferences. 00:16:24.864 --> 00:16:34.607 And we have our dev summits where a lot of them can talk about their experience from a technical point of view and become thought leaders and showcase their expertise. 00:16:34.607 --> 00:16:48.912 So it's just a matter of giving more diverse technologists from around the world, not even just in the U.S., experience to showcase how awesome they are and to talk about the things that they're experiencing together. 00:16:48.912 --> 00:17:02.032 but to still go forth and feel empowered to be innovative and add their expertise, their perspective to the things that tech needs. Because we know with AI. 00:17:02.032 --> 00:17:13.742 and data science and all this evolving technology, we need more diverse people, especially diverse women. And we also know that it's great for companies' business models. 00:17:13.742 --> 00:17:20.160 Oh, it's interesting, actually, when it comes to analyzing data and getting insights and recommendations based on data. 00:17:20.160 --> 00:17:30.127 So you do want to have that perspective of the analyst or this data science engineer who isn't just focused on the narrow view of the world, but has a, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. 00:17:30.127 --> 00:17:42.432 While we are on the topic of data, you mentioned it's about 20 to 25 percent right now. What was it, say, 10 years back, five years back? What is the year on year? 00:17:42.432 --> 00:17:54.544 increase hopefully that you're seeing i don't have those numbers but i do believe it grew from like 23 to 24 over the last couple of years but 00:17:54.544 --> 00:18:08.847 For more perspective and context, in the 80s and 90s, there were a lot more women joining tech and computer science, and then there was a drop-off towards the end of the 90s up until about the mid-2000s. 00:18:08.847 --> 00:18:21.584 So that's where there was a need for a women who code and other organizations that have been sprouting up over time. So like around 2010, 2011. And that's a great thing about technology. 00:18:21.584 --> 00:18:31.455 You feel alone until you're able to see that you're not alone and technology has been able to bridge that gap through these organizations like Women Who Code. 00:18:31.455 --> 00:18:46.000 I'm sure pretty much everybody who's listening to our podcast already knows what Women Who Code is. But let's say somebody is starting out fresh. They don't know about it. Then they're a person, like you said, not necessarily just restricting to women, but a person. 00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:55.567 who is interested in joining this, right? How do they sign up for these meetups? What do they get out of it? Or if they wanna do it online, how do they find that? 00:18:55.663 --> 00:19:09.200 Simply go to womenwhocode.com. On the top left-hand corner, you'll see join. You click that button, enter your email address, and you are officially a member. All of our programming is free. 00:19:09.200 --> 00:19:23.471 Also, we have our YouTube channel for resources, but you can find a lot of resources on the website as well. If you click the network button, you can find a network and join the network. We have Slack groups. So once you join a specific network, you can join the Slack group. 00:19:23.471 --> 00:19:37.680 that we have. And then we have volunteer positions. If you want to be more involved and become a director, a lead evangelist, if you want to become a speaker, if you want to become a track fellow, we have a fellowship program. 00:19:37.680 --> 00:19:52.192 for six different tracks, a cohort every year. Our new cohort applications are coming up soon. Actually, it's for Python, cloud, data science, front-end, mobile. Am I missing one? 00:19:52.192 --> 00:19:55.855 JL. Cloud. Yeah, I think he got him. 00:19:55.855 --> 00:20:10.415 Yeah, so there's a lot of opportunities to be a part of Women Who Code as much as you want to or as little as you want to. And I think that's where the podcast also comes into play where you may not want to join an event. 00:20:10.415 --> 00:20:13.152 but you have time to listen to a podcast. So. 00:20:13.152 --> 00:20:27.536 You do that or you may want to continuously study a specific tech stack. And so you go to our YouTube channel and you just watch all the videos. And then you can also have discussions. 00:20:27.536 --> 00:20:38.000 meet more people. We also do a lot of events through Meetup as well. So once you go to our website and find events, it'll take you to the Meetup to actually sign up. 00:20:38.031 --> 00:20:46.912 Talking about the podcast, one thing that I really liked is I found it very inspiring to hear so many different voices. 00:20:46.912 --> 00:21:01.263 Almost every episode that I'm like going reverse chronologically. So the latest first and like listening to a few over the last week as we prepared for this today's recording. Right. And there are so many different voices, different topics that you're discussing. 00:21:01.263 --> 00:21:15.887 How do you go about selecting or are these also volunteers who are coming in to say, like, I want to host an episode? How does it work? The voice you hear at the very beginning of every single podcast is Kimberly's right there. Welcome to the Women of Code podcast. 00:21:15.887 --> 00:21:30.192 So that's the beginning. How do we pick people for the podcast? We do follow a pretty strict content strategy where we do try to match what we're talking about on the podcast at any given time with what the rest of the organization is talking about in our newsletters, on social media. 00:21:30.192 --> 00:21:42.144 media and stuff. The people we pick are pretty much volunteers, either volunteers or, you know, someone from the team who's an employee will host or interview. But we want to highlight these people. We want to make them stars. We want to shine the spotlight them. 00:21:42.144 --> 00:21:46.751 We want them to go to Hollywood and walk the red carpet because they're that good. 00:21:46.751 --> 00:21:57.183 That's the whole point of what we do. And the rotating hosts, it allows us to show all the different voices that make up women who code and women in technology. It's awesome. 00:21:57.183 --> 00:22:04.784 Are some of the hosts volunteers too? Or is that from your team usually? Most of the hosts are volunteers. Yeah. 00:22:04.816 --> 00:22:12.192 So that seems like a great opportunity too. Yeah. For people who want to like jump into this. Yeah. Okay. It's all about elevating. 00:22:12.192 --> 00:22:22.864 I'm curious logistically how you source them. Is there like a forum or like an email? So if somebody, one of those 343,000 people wants to be in the podcast, how do they get on it? 00:22:22.864 --> 00:22:37.231 We have a podcast guest application. Again, we have a 343,000 member community that's constantly talking to each other on Slack and on social media and through our newsletter. We're the communications team for Women Who Code. We're communicating with these people. 00:22:37.231 --> 00:22:51.440 all the time. And the volunteers step up to be hosts or they volunteer to be guests on the podcast. We have a volunteer podcast guest form. We have a volunteer podcast host form and a team of people from NuCode evaluate them. 00:22:51.440 --> 00:23:03.039 every couple of weeks to make sure that they're actually someone who is awesome and has a background that's correct and will be able to inform the audience. Yeah, then we choose them and they come on. 00:23:03.039 --> 00:23:07.119 I think they're just amazing. It's just there. It's already there, really. 00:23:07.119 --> 00:23:18.703 And I do want to add, we do collaborate with our programs team on getting members as well to find who's interested for specific interviews that we might already have scheduled. 00:23:18.703 --> 00:23:33.375 and that align with what they're interested in in tech. And that just makes the interview a lot more interesting because they get to geek out and be like, oh, can you tell us about this data science, machine learning, this and the other. 00:23:33.375 --> 00:23:38.991 I could never come up with that question as much of a journalist as I'm, you know, am. 00:23:38.991 --> 00:23:53.327 I don't know tech as well as our members do. So knowing that they can come forward and ask these questions and really ask the questions that the listeners want to hear also is the focus. 00:23:53.327 --> 00:24:06.000 But I do help them like if they have trouble with the questions or like have the questions put in a way where it flows in the conversation. So that's where like the communications aspect comes into play. But they come up with the questions. 00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:20.304 I may rearrange them into a way that it tells a story throughout the whole interview. And, you know, it just comes together great. And the women are always so excited to like talk to each other and ask these questions and learn. 00:24:20.304 --> 00:24:29.647 how they went about things. I do want to add too, it's very important for us also to highlight things that interest. 00:24:29.647 --> 00:24:43.920 the technologists as well outside of just work and show them as human beings, show them as technologists who are also mothers, who are also world travelers and hikers and bikers and bakers and gardeners. 00:24:43.920 --> 00:24:58.799 and all of these other different things as well to just like continue to redefine what a technologist looks like. Because technically, like I could be a technologist and you never would know. I mean, I'm not, but the... 00:24:58.799 --> 00:25:06.640 Thought process is just that anybody that you walk by can be a technologist. There's no specific look or face or... 00:25:06.640 --> 00:25:16.064 person that is a technologist. And we think it's important to just continue to highlight that through all the different hosts and guests and interviewers and stuff. 00:25:16.064 --> 00:25:30.271 Did I hear you correctly that you said that your hosts prepare interview questions in advance and then you review them and help them make the story better, et cetera. So basically there is a fixed set of questions that gets asked in those interviews. 00:25:30.271 --> 00:25:44.832 Yeah, it's not a fixed number, but we do want to make sure that we keep it within a certain time frame because with anything that you're passionate about, you can talk about it all day and all night. And also you might ask questions that. 00:25:44.832 --> 00:25:59.087 maybe redundant or maybe like not so open-ended questions. So it's just a matter of helping them frame the questions in a way to get the most out of the person answering the questions and get the answers that they want and a little bit more. 00:25:59.087 --> 00:26:12.751 So, you know, those are things that are more taught as a communication specialist in that arena. We want them to focus on the tech part and we help them and guide them on the communications part. 00:26:12.751 --> 00:26:25.263 Kimberly is so much more structured than me. It's amazing. My podcast episodes are chaos. They're just, you know, it's a storm and you ride it in and amazing things come out and she's much better at it than me. 00:26:25.423 --> 00:26:40.288 Yeah. In our podcast, we also, we do prepare, we do have a list of topics, but we almost never follow it. Follow the way we, you know, we never really tried to follow it. We're like, okay, we just ask the seeding questions and then just see how it goes. 00:26:40.288 --> 00:26:54.240 Like today we're like jumping all over, like some of these things are naturally coming up that we were going to talk about anyway. So we're going in there, but yeah, we're jumping all over the space, which is great. I love the natural conversational flow. 00:26:54.240 --> 00:27:08.528 Absolutely. I will say the questions do help them to feel more at ease because a lot of times people are nervous, especially if they're just doing it one time. Whereas like the two of you, you're doing these interviews often. 00:27:08.528 --> 00:27:22.736 have a rhythm and a flow and the nervousness is easing, I'm sure, more and more as time goes. Right. But for someone who's just like doing a one-off interview or, you know, doing it every so often, that nervousness kicks in. 00:27:22.736 --> 00:27:33.375 having a little bit of structure helps ease it. But JL does a great job of producing. He's not as chaotic as he's trying to make it seem. 00:27:33.375 --> 00:27:45.599 I think it makes sense, especially for somebody who's doing it for the first time. I think this is something that Ilya and I have talked about. Our guests have also said is over-prepare a little bit more. 00:27:45.599 --> 00:27:59.887 Because what also tends to happen is you get confidence that way, but also sometimes the conversation is just not flowing between you and your interviewee. And that's when it helps to have a lot of topics to cover. 00:27:59.887 --> 00:28:14.288 and discuss so that you can bring in. Because sometimes you would ask something and they would say, yeah, no, I didn't do that. And just move along to the next thing, right? So it's good to have that repository of things to talk about. Yeah. So I'm curious, JL, what's your process like? 00:28:14.895 --> 00:28:25.248 I'm a firm believer in that humans know how to speak to humans and that good things will come of it. 00:28:25.248 --> 00:28:39.663 I do an outline, of course. Search, you got to look into it and you got to look them up and figure out what you're going to talk, talking points and all that and provide it for the host and the guests. And then I say, here's the document, erase everything I wrote, write whatever you want. 00:28:39.663 --> 00:28:51.551 Make a mess all over it. And then when you come to the interview or to the episode, talk like human beings. You're both technologists. You're both in this field. You've got a million things to talk about. And if not, we'll figure something out. 00:28:51.551 --> 00:28:59.935 I have a lot of faith in good things happening and we'll see when that blows up. Yeah. No, I love that. Yeah. 00:28:59.935 --> 00:29:11.503 It allows a lot of, I think, creativity and I think bolsters the confidence of the, especially the new interviewees to be given, like, just go figure it out. And people seem to thrive in that. 00:29:11.503 --> 00:29:25.263 I also want to go back to the topic of content strategy, because you said you want to stick to the content strategy that the organization has on all the communication that happens. How far ahead do you plan the topics and newsletters and podcasts? 00:29:25.263 --> 00:29:36.799 I'm just curious what your time horizon is. So when I first started, we had no strategy. It was just like, this works, let's do it. We were a very small company back then. 00:29:36.799 --> 00:29:51.135 Yeah. And I am a little more structured, or I try to be. So to answer your question, the 2023 editorial calendar was completed by December 2022. Whoa! For the whole year? 00:29:51.135 --> 00:29:56.271 Wow. A little more structured, yes. 00:29:56.271 --> 00:30:10.895 Yeah, we do try to think about things that are coming up tech-wise and DEI-wise because we're really big on advocacy as well, just as much as tech. So we can get ahead of them and plan properly and as a team. 00:30:10.895 --> 00:30:23.503 talk through things for creative purposes. And then we break down each month as they come along and kind of dig deeper into it, maybe like a month or two in advance. So yeah. 00:30:23.503 --> 00:30:28.336 I'm curious, how do you handle, let's say like recently, last couple of months, 00:30:28.336 --> 00:30:40.559 I mean, everything is abuzz with chat GPT and now Bing and Bird and all that. And how do you plan this into your or how do you mold your strategy to adapt for these new kind of topics that come in? 00:30:40.559 --> 00:30:53.167 That's the beauty of having a plan because we know where to fit these things that come up into our workflow because we already know what we're working on ahead of time when things like mass shootings come up. 00:30:53.167 --> 00:31:07.440 or chat GTP come up, we're able to pivot and incorporate that into our workflow a lot easier versus, you know, we already didn't have a plan and now we're trying to incorporate these things into the plan. 00:31:07.440 --> 00:31:19.248 a lot of moving pieces too. You know, we have a design team. We have a social media team. We have an email team. And then you have me, JL, and then our director, Natalia. 00:31:19.248 --> 00:31:31.663 We need to be on one accord and make our lives a little easier by knowing what's coming up the pipeline to be able to pivot for the things that may surprise us. And just for an idea of how quick that Women Who Code can pivot. 00:31:31.663 --> 00:31:42.943 Speaking of chat GPT, I'm entirely AI generated. So just so you know. Yeah, deep fake. Yeah. Coco. 00:31:42.943 --> 00:31:55.519 I mean, you're kidding, but we're not too far from that. Am I kidding? I looked at some videos where like Will Smith eating spaghetti or something. 00:31:55.519 --> 00:32:07.375 that looked pretty horrible. So I think we are still ways out in terms of like the video generation. I think pictures are pretty good, but the video is still pretty, like you can tell if it's not a real person. I think not just video voice also. 00:32:07.375 --> 00:32:21.743 We are at the cusp of it where some voices that we have a lot of data set on, we're able to generate pretty natural sounding audio for any text that you give it. But for most things, it doesn't sound as appealing. But I feel like... 00:32:21.743 --> 00:32:36.432 the day when you say, oh, I want a movie about a bank robbery and I want this actor and that actor and just generate this for me. I don't think that's too far off. I think I sound very natural. 00:32:36.432 --> 00:32:50.624 Also curious to talk about the logistics of the podcast. So you have all these different people. Not all of them have proper equipment like microphones or rooms that are treated for recording. Can you talk to us a bit about... 00:32:50.624 --> 00:32:57.375 How do you prepare your guests for recording and getting the max audio quality out of the process? 00:32:57.375 --> 00:33:11.759 I think it's very similar to what you told us to do to come on this podcast. I mean, just be in a quiet room, make sure your mic works, make sure your cameras work. If you have a phone, turn it on silent, all that stuff. I think one of the benefits of our podcast really is the fact that it's... 00:33:11.759 --> 00:33:26.319 so many different people. It could be someone in India or someone in Tokyo or someone in Chicago, and you get to see how they're living. And yeah, maybe their internet isn't the best, but that's real life. That's what their real life lived experience is. That comes across, I think, on the show. 00:33:26.319 --> 00:33:38.463 Yeah. What tool do you use to record the podcast? We use Zoom. Do you then process the recordings separately, the isolated tracks, or you just take the whole thing that Zoom produces and just publish it? 00:33:38.463 --> 00:33:52.751 How much post-production happens on top of what's recorded? We take separate tracks. We do extensive video editing on it. If you look at our YouTube versions of the podcast, I mean, they're not like Hollywood blockbuster level, but they're made. 00:33:52.751 --> 00:34:07.567 CNN level because we do the graphics, the intro, the music, the title cards, the whole documentary thing. We try to give it a polished touch that it deserves. Do you have like audio and video editors that are part of your team or you folks do it yourself? 00:34:07.567 --> 00:34:21.728 It's in-team and out-team. We've all done a little bit of it, and as we're developing, some expertise is starting to emerge either within the team or externally, and we're bringing people in, but it's sort of both. So when you use external parties, 00:34:21.728 --> 00:34:30.751 Can you share how expensive is it to produce an episode? So we don't really deal with the financial part of that. We leave that to HR. 00:34:30.751 --> 00:34:41.503 But yeah, we find great video editors and transcriptionists because we do, for accessibility reasons, turn the podcast episode into a blog as well. 00:34:41.503 --> 00:34:47.407 So if you want to read it, you can read it. If you want to watch it, you can watch it. If you want to listen to it, you can listen to it. 00:34:47.407 --> 00:35:01.679 Yeah, I mean, it helps to be at an organization like Women Who Code because we don't have to worry about those things. We just ask them and they say, yes, we can have a video editor or no, we can't have a video editor. You know, we let them handle that stuff. 00:35:01.679 --> 00:35:07.887 And we get to stay creative. Oh, that's cool. So you publish audio and you publish video. 00:35:07.887 --> 00:35:18.896 Is the content one for one or maybe there is like a different process for editing audio? Maybe audio typically would end up shorter because you cut more silence, which you wouldn't cut in video. So I'm curious how you approach that. 00:35:18.896 --> 00:35:33.456 Yeah, I mean, audio is a different medium. So when people take awkward pauses like I'm doing right now, you can cut that out in audio. But in video, it would look a little awkward to have somebody being over here and saying, um, and just snapped over. 00:35:33.456 --> 00:35:43.599 there it's a little bit of a different process but they're pretty close because at the end of the day the content is what matters and the core that we get to is really the content and the speaker right 00:35:43.599 --> 00:35:56.831 So, and how long does it take to produce an episode? So from the moment it's recorded to the moment it's ready to be published. I'm curious about your workflow and how long it takes. Can you say six to eight weeks, Kimberly? Four to six. 00:35:56.831 --> 00:36:08.431 Well, yeah, four to six weeks. Sometimes it might take longer if we need to get approvals on certain things, but for the most part, four to six weeks. And then publishing sometimes takes a little longer. Yeah. 00:36:08.431 --> 00:36:15.648 And of those four to six weeks, how many like hours of human work is going into that editing and all that? 00:36:15.648 --> 00:36:30.063 It's a team effort. That's hard to tell. I mean, there's, you know, the production, the producer side where you're emailing back and forth with these people and trying to figure out if they're good. There's the team side where we're as a committee deciding on whether you should be on the podcast, whether you should be a host. 00:36:30.063 --> 00:36:44.384 side, the volunteer host has to come up with those questions, and that's that side, and then we have to come back and help them refine those questions, and there's a speaker preparing, and then the recording happens, and then the rest happens. And after that, there's an editor. 00:36:44.384 --> 00:36:54.032 Oh, okay. No, no. About the rest, the sound editing, video editing, approximately, do you know how many hours you're putting into per episode? Again, it's different teams. I know. 00:36:54.032 --> 00:37:08.304 When I do audio, it's a few hours. It's not a huge lift, but video is more. And there's social media that gets graphed and graphics that get put up. And there's a transcriptionist writing and there's blog that has to be posted and formatted. Like there's so many moving. 00:37:08.304 --> 00:37:15.072 parts that how many hours does it take x number of hours too many hours x squared 00:37:15.072 --> 00:37:28.751 Yeah, our last guests, when we asked them how long it takes them to produce an episode, they just like in unison said it's too damn long. Yeah, both of them immediately, the first thing they said, yes. 00:37:28.751 --> 00:37:41.583 Yeah, it's kind of a common problem for people who produce everything themselves. It's just a lot of technical work that goes in there. So one quick thing, if you were to say, like, this is the mission of Women Who Code. 00:37:41.583 --> 00:38:04.911 in like a few words what is that and how does the podcast connect with that the mission is very clear women who code we are empowering diverse technologists to excel in their tech careers And the podcast allows them to come on and gain experience, talk about their experience, learn as a listener. 00:38:04.911 --> 00:38:12.815 as people on the podcast, they become thought leaders or they become recognized as thought leaders because they already are brilliant. 00:38:12.815 --> 00:38:22.751 They just get to showcase that more. It builds up their confidence, which empowers them to go after those jobs and get those promotions and raises that they deserve. 00:38:22.751 --> 00:38:37.039 Am I leaving anything out, JL? We want to make them all into Hollywood stars because they deserve it. I have this real weird red carpet thing, and Kimberly can attest to it. Since the podcast started, I want to take over Disney and Netflix and just do Women Who Code content. 00:38:37.039 --> 00:38:47.920 and I think next year is the year. We move for God bless. Subscription-based. Absolutely. Join us on the tail carpet. 00:38:47.920 --> 00:39:02.431 I just want to ask, are you able to share any numbers in terms of how a podcast performs, how many downloads you get? A lot. I don't know exactly what numbers we can share, so I would be more comfortable not necessarily getting exact numbers, but it's a lot and growing. 00:39:02.431 --> 00:39:11.856 I can certainly tell you that. You mentioned approvals before, so I was curious if you have to run every episode by legal, PR, how much overhead you had there. 00:39:11.856 --> 00:39:26.224 Well, JL is PR, but we do have a consent form that we have them signed, just giving us permission to share on social media and being able to share multiple times if we want to. As far as approvals, it's... 00:39:26.224 --> 00:39:34.719 Just more so with branding and yeah, making sure branding is on par and everyone is happy about it. 00:39:34.719 --> 00:39:44.304 especially when we're kind of incorporating more of those high level executive guests on the show, they may be a little more particular about. 00:39:44.304 --> 00:39:58.592 how they're represented in the copy that we might write or maybe even how their logo may appear or title may appear, those types of things. But it's very minimal. We have a lot of freedom. The great thing about... 00:39:58.592 --> 00:40:11.152 our members is that they trust us because of how we run our organization. They know we're not going to do anything to compromise them or what they said. We're here to amplify them and make them look. 00:40:11.152 --> 00:40:25.952 and sound the best as possible on top of how great they already do sound. So I think it's important for people to know that we're here to do great things with you, not gossip blogging and all that weird online stuff. 00:40:25.952 --> 00:40:39.967 So if you have somebody on the show who works for, let's say, a big company and it's an executive, did you ever have to deal with the PR of those companies who want to make sure that certain things get said or certain things don't get said? 00:40:39.967 --> 00:40:43.168 I don't know. Have we ever had to deal with that? 00:40:43.168 --> 00:40:57.423 We have. Well, just before you start, I think as soon as Ilya started talking about it, you both started smiling. So I'm waiting to hear some stories now. 00:40:57.423 --> 00:41:11.280 I don't want to tell too many stories, but on a serious note, for the most part, our partners are really great. What we do to mitigate those things is we encourage them, their PR team, to join the recording. 00:41:11.280 --> 00:41:25.552 We go over the questions beforehand so they know what's kind of going to be asked. And also, I do make a note to say after the recording, but before we leave the Zoom call, like, is there anything proprietary in this? 00:41:25.552 --> 00:41:38.896 that we should note and edit out. So we try to get ahead of those things so that it doesn't slow us down in that four to six week process of post-production. Cool. And you mentioned consent. What does it look like? 00:41:38.896 --> 00:41:50.992 Is it like a document, like an e-document or something? It's a DocuSign. Yeah, PDF DocuSign. Cool. Yeah, I just realized actually it's the first time we have guests who are running a podcast for an organization. 00:41:50.992 --> 00:42:04.976 Because previously we were only talking to indie producers, right? Right. It feels it's different. Right. We're so corporate and fancy. No, but it's just like the scale makes it different, right? With great power comes great responsibility. 00:42:05.168 --> 00:42:06.032 Yeah. 00:42:06.351 --> 00:42:20.943 Okay. Okay. So going back, I had one more thing to ask you about the mission of amplifying the voice of these women, right? I think that's great. What are some of the main challenges you've seen people? 00:42:20.943 --> 00:42:22.480 all go through in that. 00:42:22.480 --> 00:42:36.847 Especially from the perspective of the women and not necessarily just about the podcast, but let's say somebody is aspiring or is on their way to the C-suite or becoming like a senior technology staff engineer. 00:42:36.847 --> 00:42:40.367 What are some of the main challenges that you see? 00:42:40.367 --> 00:42:54.768 yeah i would just uh add a little bit to that you mentioned that women are less likely to apply to jobs where they don't meet most of the qualifications so i think kind of piggybacking on our apps question just like for me as a man it would be actually really interesting to understand 00:42:54.768 --> 00:43:06.927 to better empathize what are those challenges where women may not be necessarily behaving the same way as men just because of you know how they're designed right something that we should be paying attention to and helping them 00:43:06.927 --> 00:43:20.896 I would just note that it's more socialization than it is like by design. But yeah, I think JL can speak more to some of the things that come up when people join the podcast. 00:43:20.896 --> 00:43:33.231 Yeah. Am I accurate in that? I mean, you know, the biggest thing we hear about is probably imposter syndrome, right? That's a huge topic that comes up when you're talking about applying for the job. The interesting thing is that. 00:43:33.231 --> 00:43:47.536 Everybody has a different way of writing, and men and women have a slightly different way of writing. And so if you're writing a job post, men will be like, we're looking for a super rock star who's willing to put the grind to the bottom. And women will be like, we're looking for someone who could help grow our team and nurture things and build. 00:43:47.536 --> 00:43:50.623 things out and make it better for and so like 00:43:50.623 --> 00:44:04.943 They won't apply because the language is not conducive to that. It doesn't speak to them. And so the more women we can get into positions of leadership, the more we can elevate women, the more they'll be writing those job descriptions, the more they'll be making those tiring decisions, the more that we can ensure. 00:44:04.943 --> 00:44:19.119 sure a certain amount of equality there because they'll be the ones making those decisions for the future and that'll just open the pipeline up more and more exponentially as it goes. I thought chat GPT is writing all the job descriptions now. 00:44:19.376 --> 00:44:30.016 They are, but someone has to interview these people, right? And we got a trained chat GPT to be right. 00:44:30.016 --> 00:44:44.032 What are some of these advantages that we don't usually recognize that women have? Talking about like some of the challenges, we just talked about it on the flip side of it. What are some of those advantages that are not very commonly known? 00:44:44.032 --> 00:44:58.512 Creativity, innovative, collaborative. They offered a different perspective that is needed, especially for products that are going forward to customers that are also diverse. The list can go on and on. 00:44:58.512 --> 00:45:11.871 Did I say empathy already? I think just in general, being able to just take charge and get things done. I think that's like the biggest thing is just like we can get things done and we're motivated to. 00:45:11.871 --> 00:45:23.248 in the midst of whatever we're going through in life. And we want to do great things and show the world all the great things that we can do and not feel stifled in that. 00:45:23.248 --> 00:45:31.519 So that's what I can speak to as a woman who may not necessarily be a technologist, but is in tech. 00:45:31.519 --> 00:45:45.807 and what I hear them talk about as well. And I think the other great thing about having women on your team is just the level of camaraderie and support as well. It's always just like, you need help with this? I'm here to help. 00:45:45.807 --> 00:45:57.648 I think that's also at the basis of our community, too, where it's like they may not know something, but they know that they can rely on the community to help guide them, answer their questions. 00:45:57.648 --> 00:46:12.576 and even provide additional resources that they may have. The more diverse your team, the more perspective your team will have, the better it will perform. That's all. Just a bit of a personal, I think, reflection on this. 00:46:12.576 --> 00:46:26.960 When I was at Amazon, we used to have these monthly reviews of how the team is doing. It's kind of like anonymous employees like submit their, every day there's a question and then you submit an answer to it. And at the end of it, there are some metrics and we talk. 00:46:26.960 --> 00:46:41.168 And very frequently, our team, which I said at the end was like more 60% women or so at that point, the thing that overwhelmingly every month came up was that everybody is so helpful, especially. 00:46:41.168 --> 00:46:55.376 from people who had come from other teams within Amazon, where it was basically anybody can come in. They don't feel like this is a stupid question or anything like that. Anybody can ask anything and people empathize and respond to it. And I think a big part... 00:46:55.376 --> 00:47:05.327 of that is because, well, not the big part, maybe the reason for that is having that kind of a diverse mix of people and so many women in the team. 00:47:05.327 --> 00:47:19.552 It completely changes the dynamic. And I think, Ilya, you and I can go back to our first team, first small team together, where there were, I think, four or five men only. And that was a very different dynamic. 00:47:19.552 --> 00:47:27.664 And I think the entire leadership chain was also meant. Yes. Yeah. It is a different dynamic for sure. Yeah. So I think we'll start to wrap up. Yeah. 00:47:27.664 --> 00:47:38.288 So for companies who want to get more women on board, how do they engage with women who code? What can they get out of the collaboration there? 00:47:38.288 --> 00:47:43.215 Well, we have a partnerships team who can tell them that. 00:47:43.215 --> 00:47:57.519 But we do have a lot of opportunities for collaboration with companies. And then, of course, our job board. You can always post jobs on our job board. And we have someone, a part of our customer service, happiness, and partnership. 00:47:57.519 --> 00:48:07.536 that can also assist with that as well. How do these companies reach out the partnership team? Partnerships at womenwhocode.com. 00:48:07.536 --> 00:48:21.840 Or they can go on womenwhocode.com and find the page. I'm sorry, I don't know it off the top of my head, but I'm sure it's probably backslash partnerships, right, JL? And then there's more information. You can also donate. 00:48:21.840 --> 00:48:34.367 You may not be a big company or you may be a big company. You can donate. That supports us a lot. And $27 allows us to provide free memberships to women for a year. 00:48:34.367 --> 00:48:43.936 But of course, you know, you want to help more than one woman. So donate more. One of our models is join, volunteer, donate. 00:48:43.936 --> 00:48:58.719 So, yeah. And if you want to get a better idea of how diverse our organization and our members are, we did also just announce our 100 Technologists to Watch winners. And we have the Applaud Her Awards coming up towards the end of May. 00:48:58.719 --> 00:49:09.824 Also subscribe to the podcast, womenofcode.com backslash podcast. Speaking about the podcast, do you know which app do you get the most listens on? 00:49:09.824 --> 00:49:23.599 This is Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube. We get the most on Apple with Spotify being pretty close behind. Yeah, cool. All right. Where can people find YouTube? Are you on social media at all? Do you post? Where can people subscribe? 00:49:23.599 --> 00:49:35.664 You can find me on LinkedIn, Kimberly Jacobs, and someone hacked my Twitter. So yeah, Twitter, I'm trying to figure out what the next steps are with that. 00:49:35.664 --> 00:49:45.744 But yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best. Might not be a bad idea to stay away from Twitter anyway. 00:49:45.744 --> 00:49:58.815 And what about JL? Yeah, I'm just on LinkedIn too. LinkedIn backslash Joseph Lewitton. That's JL. That's where it comes from. And that's the best way to find me. Yeah, and we will have all of those links in our show notes. 00:49:58.815 --> 00:50:13.135 And to all of you who are listening, please don't forget to give us a five-star rating or any rating. Subscribe to our podcast and subscribe to our newsletter at newsletter.metacastpodcast.com. And also, we are always happy to hear back from people. 00:50:13.135 --> 00:50:22.032 send us a note at hello at metacastpodcast.com. And before we close, what are your favorite podcasts, Kimberly and JL? 00:50:22.032 --> 00:50:31.039 Women Who Code podcast, of course. Is there any other podcast? That's what I listen to on repeat all day. 00:50:31.039 --> 00:50:45.088 This is the second past I've ever heard of. I think there's one called Metacast. I've heard it's really good. I might check that one out. That's my favorite. Yeah. Second favorite. 00:50:45.088 --> 00:50:58.000 Cool. All right. Cool. Well, thank you, Kimberly. Thank you, JL. Thank you. This was a lot of fun. That was awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having us. This was great.