>> Live from Stanford University,
it's theCUBE.
Covering Global Women in Data Science Conference.
Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media.
>> Welcome back to theCUBE I'm Lisa Martin.
We've been live all day at the fourth annual
Women in Data Science Conference.
I'm with John Furrier, John,
this is not just WiDS fourth annual,
it's theCUBE's fourth time covering this event.
There were, as Margot Gerritsen, Co-Founder
stopped by this afternoon and was chatting with me
saying, there's over 20,000 people they expect today
just to watch the WiDS livestream from Stanford.
Another 100,000 engaging in over 150 regional WiDS events,
and 50 countries, CUBE's been there since the beginning
tell us a little bit about that.
>> Well what's exciting about this event
is that we've been there from the beginning,
present at creation with these folks.
Great community, Judy Logan, Karen Matthys, Margot.
They're all been great, but the vision from day one
has been put together smart people, okay,
on a stage, in a room,
and bring it, syndicate it out to anyone
who's available, meet ups
and groups around the world.
And if you bet on good content and quality people
the community with self-form.
And with the Stanford brand behind it,
it really was a formula for success from day one.
And this is the new model, this is the new reality,
where, if you have high quality people in context,
the global opportunity around the content and community
work well together, and I think they cracked the code.
Something that we feel similar at theCUBE is
high quality conversations, builds community
so content drives community and keep that fly wheel going
this is what women in data science have figured out.
And I'm sure they have the data behind it,
they have the women who can analyze the data.
But more importantly is a great community and it's just
it's steamrolling forward ahead, it's just great to see.
50 countries, 125 cities, 150 events.
And it's just getting started so,
we're proud to be part of it,
and be part of the creation but continue to broadcast
and you know you're doing a great job,
and I wish I was interviewing,
some of the ladies myself but,
>> I know you do >> I get jealous.
>> you're always in the background,
yes I know you do.
You know you talk about fly wheel and Margot Gerritsen
we had her on the WiDS broadcast last year,
and she said, you know, it's such a short period of time
its been three and a half years.
That they have generated this incredible momentum
and groundswell that every time,
when you walk in the door,
of the Stanford Arrillaga Alumni Center
it's one of my favorite events as you know,
you feel this support and this positivity
and this movement as soon as you step foot in the door.
But Margot said this actually really was an idea
that she and her Co-Founders had a few years ago.
As almost sort of an anti, a revenge conference.
Because they go to so many events, as do we John,
where there are so many male, non-female, keynote speakers.
And you and theCUBE have long been supporters
of women in technology, and the time is now,
the momentum is self-generating,
this fly wheel is going as you mentioned.
>> Well I think one of the things that
they did really well was they,
not only the revenge on the concept
of having women at the event,
not being some sort of, you know
part of an event, look we have brought women in tech
on stage, you know this is all power women right?
It's not built for the trend of having women conference
there's actual horsepower here, and the payload
of the content agenda is second to none.
If you look at what they're talking about,
it's hardcore computer science, its data analytics,
it's all the top concepts that the pros
are talking about and it just happens to be all women.
Now, you combine that with what they did around openness
they created a real open environment around
opening up the content and not making it restrictive.
So in a way that's, you know, counter intuitive
to most events and finally,
they created a video model
where they livestream it, theCUBE is here,
they open up the video format
to everybody and they have great people.
And I think the counter intuitive ones
become the standard because not everyone is doing it.
So that's how success is, it's usually
the ones you don't see coming that are doing it
and they think they did it.
>> I agree, you know this is a technical conference
and you talked about there's a lot of hardcore data science
and technology being discussed today.
Some of the interesting things, John, that I
really heard thematically across all the guests
that I was able to interview today is,
is the importance, maybe equal weight,
maybe more so some of the other skills,
that, besides the hardcore data analysis,
statistical analysis, computational engineering
and mathematics.
But it's skills such as communication, collaboration
collaboration was key throughout the day,
every person in academia and the industry that we talked to.
Empathy, the need to have empathy
as you're analyzing data with these diverse perspectives.
And one of the things that kind of
struck me as interesting, is that
some of the training in those other skills,
negotiation et cetera,
is not really infused yet
in a lot of the PhD Programs.
When communication is one of the key things
that makes WiDS so effective
is the communication medium,
but also the consistency.
>> I think one of the things I'm seeing out of this trend
is the humanization of data and if you look at
I don't know maybe its because its a women's conference
and they have more empathy than men
as my wife always says to me.
But in seriousness, the big trend right now
in machine learning is, is it math or is it cognition?
And so if you look at the debate that machine learning
concepts, you have two schools of thought.
You have the Berkeley School of thought where it's
all math all math, and then you have, you know kind of
another school of thought where learning machines
and unsupervised machine learning kicks in.
So, machines have to learn, so,
in order to have a humanization side
is important and people who use data the best
will apply human skills to it.
So it's not just machines that are driving it,
it's the role of the humans and the machines.
This is something we have been talking
a lot in theCUBE about and,
it's a whole new cutting edge area of science
and social science and look at it, fake news
and all these things in the mainstream press
as you see it playing out everyday,
without that contextual analysis
and humanization the behavioral data gets lost sometimes.
So, again this is all data, data science concepts
but without a human application,
it kind of falls down.
>> And we talked about that today
and one of the interesting elements
of conversation was, you know with respect to data ethics,
there's 2.5 trillion data sets generated everyday,
everything that we do as people is traceable
there's a lot of potential there.
But one of the things that we talked about today
was this idea of, almost like a Hippocratic Oath
that MDs take, for data scientists
to have that accountability,
because the human component there
is almost one that can't really be controlled yet.
And it's gaining traction this idea
of this oath for data science.
>> Yeah and what's interesting about this conference
is that they're doing two things at the same time.
If you look at the data oath, if you will,
sharing is a big part, if you look at cyber security,
we are going to be at the RSA conference this week.
You know, people who share data get the best insights
because data, contextual data, is relevant.
So, if you have data and I'm looking at data
but your data could help me figure out my data,
data blending together works well.
So that's an important concept of data sharing
and there's an oath involved, trust, obviously, privacy
and monitoring and being a steward of the data.
The second thing that's going on at this event is
because it's a global event broadcast out of Stanford,
they're activating over 50 countries,
over 125 cities, they're creating
a localization dynamic inside other cities so,
they're sharing their data from this event
which is the experts on stage, localizing it
in these markets, which feeds into the community.
So, the concept of sharing is really important
to this conference and I think that's one
of the highlights I see coming out of this
is just that, well, the people are amazing
but this concept of data sharing
it's one of those big things.
>> And something to that they're continuing to do
is not just leverage the power of the WiDS brand that
they're creating in this one time of year
in the March of the year where
they are generating so much interest.
But Margot talked about this last year,
and the idea of developing content
to have this sustained inspiration
and education and support.
They just launched a podcast a few months ago,
which is available on iTunes and GooglePlay.
And also they had their second annual datathon
this year which was looking at palm oil production,
plantations rather, because of the huge biodiversity
and social impact that these predictive analytics
can have, it's such an interesting, diverse,
set of complex challenges that they tackle
and that they bring more awareness to everyday.
>> And Padmasree Warrior talked about her keynote
around, former Cisco CTO, and she just ran,
car, she's working on a new start up.
She was talking about the future of
how the trends are, the old internet days,
as the population of internet users grew
it changed the architecture.
Now mobile phones, that's changing the architecture.
Now you have a global AI market, that's going to change
the architecture of the solutions,
and she mentioned at the end, an interesting tidbit,
she mentioned Blockchain.
And so I think that's something that's
going to be kind of interesting in this world is,
because there's, you know about data and data science,
you have Blockchain it's the data store
potentially out there.
So, interesting to see as you start
getting to these supply chains,
managing these supply chains of decentralization,
how that's going to impact the WiDS community,
I'm curious to see how the team figures that out.
>> Well I look forward to being here
at the fifth annual next year,
and watching and following the momentum that WiDS
continues to generate throughout the rest of 2019.
For John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin,
thanks so much for watching theCUBE's coverage,
of the fourth annual Women in Data Science Conference
Bye for now.
(upbeat electronic music)