WE Local Bellevue in Review, Part 1

Guest Contributor: Shari Wang

WE Local Bellevue, April 5 – 6, 2019

Although I’ve attended annual conferences and regional conferences, WE Local Bellevue was my first conference since the format change to local conferences.

On the Sunday prior to WE Local, SWE PNW held a small session at Hot Cakes in Capitol Hill to provide some general guidance on the conference.  Dana Day, the WE Local Bellevue Chair, led the event and answered questions about navigating the conference, tips for preparation, etc.  The biggest difference between the local conferences and regional conferences was the level of standardization and the involvement of SWE Headquarters.  It was a casual event that helped me to prepare myself for volunteering and attending the conference.

I started my Friday morning by checking attendees (including myself) into the conference.  Beautifully prepared badges, lanyards, and pins awaited every attendee.

Source: Theresa Krack

The keynote speaker, Judy Twedt, started off the conference with a powerful perspective shift by demonstrating climate science through music.  She shared the musical interpretation of surface temperature rising and falling through the years as well as the sonification of the Arctic sea ice.  She posed a powerful question to start off the conference: How do you make the data speak to you and others? (For more information: https://www.judytwedt.com/)

Successful Transitions: Make the Most of Your Move (Anna Mary Mathew)

Anna Mary moved from Intel in Portland, OR to Microsoft in Redmond, WA.  She and her husband debated and discussed whether it was time to change, where to move to, and the logistics of making this transition before, during, and after.

• Conduct a career retrospection (goal, experiences, good/bad)
• Understand the landscape of your career field, future company
• Discuss your options with mentors for feedback and suggestions, including ones who have made a similar transition
• How do you pursue impact-driven positions and add value?

Creating Mid-Career Momentum: How to Accelerate Your Move into Senior Leadership (JeanAnn Nichols)

JeanAnn Nichols used to be Vice President and General Manager at Intel, before pursuing a career in exexcutive coaching.  Her session focused on tools and practical advice to assess your personal brand and compare that with expectations for senior leadership roles. (For more information: http://www.jeanannnichols.com/)

• Sketch out your career arc as a way to look at the bigger picture of your life and career
• Do you want to step back from higher-impact roles to travel, start a family, continue education, etc.?
• What type of impact do you want to make?
• What’s the value of the next promotion to you?  Cost and benefit?  Why? Desire?  Passion?

Source: www.jeanannnichols.com

• Personal brand: The way others perceive you
• Ask others: How am I known?  What do you come to me for?  (Adverbs & adjectives)
• Fill out the following table with tasks / characteristics and communicate to influencers

		ENJOY
		NO	YES
GOOD AT	NO / NOT YET
	YES

• To move into senior leadership, you need
• Vision: Articulate something unknown or fuzzy
• Advocate: Speak for something that’s not your expertise
• Systems thinking: Upstream, downstream, left, right
• Authenticity: Have an opinion and own it
• Executive presence: How do you show up?
• Emotional intelligence: How are my actions affecting your performance?
• Allies: Deeper relations
• Sponsor: Help your sisters, sponsor others from where you are
• Patient persistence (we know this all too well, ladies)

How to Thrive in a Competitive Environment (Priyanka Dobriyal, Jill Murfin)

Two women professionals speak to balancing and re-thinking life after children, redefining it as a collaborative rather than competitive environment.  Who knew a WE Local session could start in childcare?

• Find mutually beneficial relationships.  We are all working through the same issues and challenges.  Find friends at work, in childcare, etc.  Collaborate, don’t do it alone. 
• How do you re-see your interests to fit your current life?
• How to turn interests into benefit for the company? (ex. Love for volunteering with children + advertising maker kits for Intel)
• What does success really look like?  Happiness?

How to Build a Chatbot (Amara Graham)

Sprinkled among the professional development sessions were opportunities for me to learn something completely new.  Amara Graham, an IBM Developer Advocate, shared a great introductory and demo-filled session about using Watson Assistant to create chatbots.

High-level framework:

Source: Amara Graham

Guts of a chatbot

• #Intents: Goal of the user’s input (ex. order pizza)
• @Entities: Portion of user’s input that can provide a different response (ex. pizza toppings)
• Dialog: Return response to user’s input
• $Context: Keeps Watson aware of what has taken place in the conversation (ex. pizza size, pizza type)

How to be a Catalyst for Change in any Environment (Shawnlee Brown)

There are many types of change, some better than others.  There is ecstatic change, desired change, required change, and traumatic change.  Before asking others to “change,” we must evaluate our own perspectives and utilize innovative strategies to approach stressful and challenging situations.

• Say first what you fear most
• Next best action (don’t compound the mistake)
• Leave the baggage (active choice to leave the regret, guilt, etc.)
• “KonMari”: Learn from it, say thank you, and leave it
• Traumatic events can change your perspective, can being wrong also change it?
• When actuals deviate from the plan, don’t ask about how to get back on plan, ask what changed since the plan was created
• Leadership: Be the last to speak

A common theme throughout the entire conference, including this session, was asking for and offering help.  The people who become Navy Seals are not the ones who are the strongest or largest, they are the ones who ask for and help each other.  We are not alone.

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Shari Wang is a team member of the SWE PNW Virtual Brand Team. She is an Industrial Engineering Manager at Boeing, supporting Everett Site Operations through daily management, continuous improvement, and data analytics. Shari enjoys singing with the Seattle Women’s Chorus and volunteering for the Industrial Engineering University Relations Team at Boeing.