Women in Data Science - Puget Sound Conference 2020, Part 1

Every day, there are many data science events competing for our attention.  These range from small and casual meetups to professional, multiple-day conferences with large budgets. Data Circles (formerly SeaWiDS), is a supportive organization that helps individuals find their community. We focus on inspiring and empowering women in data science, and we can help individuals find the professional development, knowledge sharing, and mentorship opportunities that they are looking for. Data Circles regularly organizes data science related activities in the Puget Sound area to promote women in all levels of their data science journey. We strive to host a diverse group of speakers, including women of color, immigrants, veterans, LGBTQ women, and women with disabilities.

One of our inaugural events, The Women in Data Science - Puget Sound Conference 2020, which is a regional spin-off of the Stanford Women in Data Science (WiDS) initiative that began in November 2015 at Stanford University, will be held in April this year. This conference provides a platform for data scientists to present their work as speakers, network through the job fair, and hone their skills through the workshops. The 2019 WiDS-PS was highly successful with 10 speakers, over 130 attendees, a 4-person discussion panel, and support from the Seattle tech community, including SAP Concur and AirBnB.

WiDS Puget Sound Conference - 2019 Speaker: Kate Farris, Ph.D. - Microsoft

WiDS Puget Sound Conference - 2019 Q&A Session

With planning for the Women in Data Science - Puget Sound 2020 conference gearing up, the call for proposals is now open! The proposal submission will stay open from 1/15/2020 to 2/15/2020 (10pm PST), and we encourage anyone who identifies as a woman to submit a proposal on any aspect of data science. The conference will cover various topics including analytics, machine learning, data visualization, learnings from past projects and stories of career journey. First time speakers, who are highly encouraged and welcomed to submit a proposal, can find multiple online resources on how to write a successful tech talk proposal. Here is one entitled, The Ultimate Guide To Memorable Tech Talks — Part 3: Writing a Conference Proposal (or CFP) and another great example on Medium entitled, How to write a successful conference proposal . We are also hosting an in-person proposal preparation meetup on February 4th at Galvanize- Seattle. We will be summarizing this workshop in Part II of this series.

You can check out the conference here, register here to purchase tickets to the Conference, and submit your proposal here.

Happy writing!

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Written by: Tugce Ozturk, Ph. D.