Women in Tech: Past, Present and Building the Future – Tech.Strong.Women. EP45

Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Techstrong Women, where we feature amazing women doing amazing things in tech. I'm Jody Ashley, executive producer here at Techstrong, and I'm here with my co-host Tracy Reagan, creator, and CEO of Deploy Hub.

And in her spare time, she bounces around with the Linux Foundation and works on a lot of projects there. Before I introduce today's guest, I wanna give you a quick update about what's happening here at techron. com, so be sure to check it out and check out the accompanying series on Textron tv.

And we'll have a webinar coming up in a couple weeks. So go to our site and register for that webinar. I think you'll love, you'll really enjoy attending that.

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And, uh, be sure and stop by and say hello. Alan Shimel will be there doing interviews, our CEO, so you wanna check that out. And last but not least, RSAC, it's coming up.

We will have our, um, our annual Dev Ssec event on Monday, April 28th. It's AI and security transforming modern app dev. We have an Allstar lineup.

com and check that out. And be sure and grab a spot to attend on Monday of RSAC. And be sure to tune in every day to Textron TV for great shows and interviews.

All right, Tracy, what's on your mind today? Well, I'm not gonna be in London. My, I would love to.

That would be amazing. I'm not going either. Bummer, But really, you know, um, I subscribed to Ink Magazine I have for years, and there's always a startup kind of column that they do.

And they published this, just this last week, um, indicated that holy owned, holy women-led companies, uh, got just 1% of VC funding in 2024, which is horrible. I think it was, did your Head explode when you read that? It's just my heart.

Just like, it, it's so sad. It really is. But at the same time, there are, there are some, you know, there are companies with, at least one female founder has raised about $38 billion in venture in venture funding.

Wow. Um, that is an increase from last year. Um, but it's not as high as it used to be in 2021.

Uh, and, you know, I don't know if it matters for those, you know, where there's at least one woman in the company if it matters, uh, or not. Um, I kind of think it doesn't matter, to be quite honest. Uh, I think that if there's men running it, they have a better, they just have a better opportunity.

It's not that they're, they're investing because there's, there's one woman there. The other thing that it talked about, which is very sad, is that even in second rounds, it's less likely for women to get a second round, even though they outperform men when it comes to the burn rate of the money that they get. So women are better business managers.

Um, you know, you knew that. Yes. But at the same time, we are not being seen.

Um, we're just, we're invisible still within the VC community. It, it's, we're just, you know, women in general have become more and more invisible over the years, I believe, especially in today's climate. But this kind of puts an ex exclamation point on the fact that 1% went to women this, uh, from VCs, uh, in 2024, which is horrible.

Yeah, it's horrible. Absolutely. All right.

Well, maybe we'll talk about that some today. But I'm excited to introduce our guest. Um, as I told her today, Tracy and I have been really excited to have her.

We've been, we've, she's been on our we our list for a bit. So we are very excited that we got to have her here today. I'd like to introduce Angie Jones.

Angie, tell us about yourself. Hi everyone. So glad to be here.

I'm Angie Jones. I'm the Global Vice President of Developer Relations at Block. Block is, um, formerly known as Square, so I'm sure you've heard of like Square Cash App, title, Afterpay, these sorts of brands.

Um, block is our umbrella company. So yeah, working on, uh, developer relations there, uh, right now as pretty much everyone kind of focused on AI and what that, what that means for us. So exciting times.

Absolutely. Angie, I have looked forward to having this, this call for quite some time. I know it's really silly, but I am such a fan of, uh, what you do and your presentations and your work with, uh, black girls who code everything that you do is really, really quite fascinating.

Thank you. I wanna tell Absolutely. I met, I, I met, uh, Angie.

Um, I was sitting in a, at a conference, a star conference in Florida talking about testing. And there was a, uh, a, a topic on, you know, women in technology and, you know, and Angie was presenting, and I wish it was recorded someplace 'cause I would blast it everywhere. It talked about how women lost ground in technology and because I loved it so much.

I want you to start there. How did you come up with that thesis? What were, you know, what, what drove you to put that together?

Which should be a documentary, a film documentary, to be quite honest. Yeah. Um, I would hear about people like, uh, ADA Lovelace and folks like this.

And, you know, um, I didn't grow up in the tech world, so I didn't know a lot of the historical elements of it. And in researching these folks, I started to see like, wait a minute. We we're the ones who kind of kicked this whole tech revolution off, like women were at the forefront of, of tech and, and specifically in programming and things like that.

And it was very much so considered a girl's job, you know? Um, and at some point that, that changed. And so in that talk, I kind of take people back.

We go on a journey back to, um, that era of computing and like, what was it like, um, specifically in the eighties is when the shift occurred, and we look at commercials of that time. We look at, uh, news articles and things, and we could see how when, uh, the personal computer came to be, and it was something that was affordable for everyday families, is when we started seeing it targeted towards boys for games, um, and men for business. And that's when we started seeing like, and we looked at the com, the commercials with a critical eye, and we started seeing how women were positioned as either accessories, uh, you know, or onlookers and not the people actually using the computers.

And I think that's how we got ourselves in the situation that we're in now, where, you know, girls grew up thinking that, that that's for boys, that's not for me. Yeah. One commercial in particular that you showed was, um, it seems like there was a probably a teenage boy sitting at a computer, his sister's behind watching, and the father comes in and he says, Hey, you know, you wanna go play some basketball, or you wanna go play some baseball?

And you, you know, he shakes his head, Hey, you know this, you wanna go out to dinner or something? He shakes his head, Hey, you wanna go drive a car? He shakes his head.

So, you know, he, the, the, the little boy is completely focused on that, on being on that computer and the little just sitting behind watching. Yeah. And it broke my heart when I saw that.

It really did. It was like, you know, this is so true, you know, because dads were more willing and more interested in buying a computer for their son than they were their daughter. Yeah, yeah.

That's exactly right. And that, and that's his, that's changed everything, right? It changed how we perceive computers.

And then the whole thing around weird, the movie Weird Science, I didn't, I never even put that together, right? Weird science where two, two guys build a woman, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, these are, you know, I Didn't even think about that either. No, I'm telling you The culture, you know, oh, wow.

You could take one offs, but I think it was really compelling to see it all together so we could really like, look back at what happened here. You know, and you see like, okay, if I'm flooded with this on a daily basis, like marketing really matters and it really works too. Um, and you start seeing like, wow, these were the images that I was flooded with.

No wonder I grew up, you know, thinking that this was a, a man's sport. And a lot of women, a lot of young girls are still growing up thinking it's a man's sport, and we, you know, how do we, how do we change that? I don't know.

It's gotta be something deep in our culture, uh, that women are as capable and as interested in playing on a computer and should have one bot for them than any boy. And I think that has changed to somewhat, you know, the computers are cheaper. It pretty much every, you know, every kid in the household has to have one for school, but are they programming on it?

I don't know. You know, they're may, may be doing homework and they use it as a tool, but they may not be doing, uh, any kind of programming and God knows what else. Exactly.

You know, um, The, the generation that's growing up now, you know, they're native to technology, and so they, they can't even imagine a world without it. And therefore they're a lot more capable than we are. But still, um, we're finding that they, while they know how to use it very well, they're not thinking I can actually, like, build stuff or like, I can be the creator of, of new technology.

I can innovate new things. Right? They're still not thinking in that capacity.

So that's why I try to volunteer with, um, young girl organizations to help them use the skills that they already have, maybe apply it in a different way, and you say like, oh, you, you can actually build it. When I was growing up, I didn't know, like, not only did I not play around and tinker on computers, I didn't even know, like this whole field existed. You know, I didn't know computer programming was a thing.

It just was not something that was in my sphere. And so, um, you know, I try to do what I can now to give back to like students and young folks so that they can see themselves in these types of roles, you know? And, you know, I think it's important at this point, especially with March being Women's History Month, um, that the movie Hidden Figures, ugh, one of my favorite Movies Ever.

I know. Really, it, it, um, it's astonished me, actually, and I, I don't know why it did, because, you know, my mother who died 10 years ago at 92, she's born in 1922, she worked for a hospital and went in, in the chart room, right. Organizing all the medical charts.

And when IBM came in to reorganize they, and to, uh, to put create a per their electronic records, they brought her in as the analyst mm-hmm. Because she understood the system, right? Mm-hmm.

Um, so I don't know why Hidden Figures were so shocking to me to learn that story, but to imagine that three black women were that important to space flight, and they are buried in our history, absolutely. Buried in our history. Not as, I mean, it's so important just to women, but to, to black women in particular, that those women were that critical to space flight.

Right? My goodness. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it, it to the, the, the, the day, the history that is buried when it comes to women in tech is just, I, I don't even have a word for it. And it continues to this day, and I really wish we could figure out how to change the culture.

Um, but maybe, you know, programs like this and us being frustrated helps that, but I don't know, especially with, you know, DEI initiatives being squashed and, you know, everything else that's going on, but maybe that's what will make us rise up. Yeah. Um, that it's really something.

Um, there's a saying, you know, you, you can't be what you can't see, and it makes you wonder if there's a reason why these women are hidden the way they are. And as we're going through like, today's times, um, with like, as you mentioned, the DEI initiatives kind of being squandered, and I see, I see some of what's happening where it's trying to remove like, some of the work of, of underrepresented people, and you have to ask yourself like, why would you want to do that? And there has to be some, some bigger reason, right?

It's, it makes me think of that saying like, you can't be what you can't see. And if we remove what people see, then maybe, you know, well keep them from aspiring to be these great things. Um, I don't know.

It's really unfortunate. There's people that work right now on cutting edge, like brilliant women that are working in these various spaces in tech, and you rarely see them like applauded or highlighted. Right.

You know, and you would, one would believe that they're not here, um, when in actuality they are, you know, And the ones that are out there working to show, like you said, you can't be what you don't see. You know, they, they suffer on the other extreme, right? They're too, they're just being an influencer.

They're just a woman who wants to be an influencer. They don't really Know anything. They're just an influencer.

Uh, the number of times that I hear that it just, it, you know, I wanna throttle someone. It's like, come on. And, you know, I, that's what frustrates me and you guys, and Tracy knows this bugs me, but, you know, you say women were like, just accessories.

And then we saw what happened last year at Black Hat, and I'm still p****d about what happened at Black Hat. Oh my God. I'm like, talk about making us accessories.

Every, you know, they say clothing stuff comes around in cycles, and we wear the same thing 25 years later. This is it. This is the Lampshades.

We've never wore lampshades before. Oohs brilliant. I, yeah, we did never wear Lampshades, but you got the gist.

It's still the same. And Oh, Yeah. So, you know, the, um, there's a new song out that I absolutely love by this brilliant artist by the name of Lola Young, and it's called Messy.

And in that song, she says, um, you know, a thousand people, I could be, but you'll hate the whole effing lot, but my hand just went up. Right. You'll you'll hate that whole effing lot.

So it feels like to that, you know, when I hear that, I think that is where women are a thousand people. We could be, but it doesn't matter what we, we are, there is a general, um, pushback against women and STEM women in business, regardless of, I mean, that VC number is all businesses. Um, because right now, you know, a thousand people, we could be, but you'll hate the whole effing loss.

Right. So it's gonna be a challenge. It's gonna be a hard road here in, I think in the next five years.

It's gonna be hard. I think we've lost a lot of ground. So, Angie, on that note, tell us the work you've done with, uh, black Girls Who Code.

Tell us where you're at with that, and are you still involved and what's happening? Yeah. Um, and so Black Girls Code, uh, was created by a phenomenal woman named Kimberly Bryant.

And, uh, it started out as one chapter in San Francisco and has expanded to multiple chapters, um, not just across the US but in a couple of other countries as well. Um, and I started volunteering with, actually, I'm gonna take a step back, um, upon entering the workforce, you know, I went to college not knowing what I wanted to be, and I told you all, I had no idea the, like, the computer stuff was even a thing. My father, um, bless his soul, uh, he saw he was an accountant and he saw that people were beginning to use computers more and more.

And so he encouraged me to at least take a computer course, like, take one course so that you know how to use them. 'cause you know, this is about to take off. He knew, um, and this is when the internet like kind of first came out and stuff like that.

And so, uh, I took a course. I, I had no idea what to even choose. I just picked the first one that says something about computers in it.

And so I picked this, uh, c plus plus computer programming course. Uh, was probably the hardest course I could have picked, but I actually loved it. Like, I loved, um, it was just like the problem solving nature of computer programming.

I grew up playing games with my families, and it felt very much so like that, like putting puzzle pieces together and solving problems. And so I, I really loved it. And I ended up majoring in computer science.

So anyway, after I graduate, I go on to work at IBM and I wanted to give back, you know, I'm like, if that was me, I'm sure there's many other girls out here who could be in the same boat where they just don't even know this is an option. Right. And so, um, I, I, I wanted, I was, I was searching for an organization that might be able to serve that need, and I couldn't find one in my local town.

But also, y'all know how it is, like, oh, I don't have time to be the person that starts it. Right? Um, so I just kind of kept checking back, hoping somebody else would be bold enough to start something.

Um, and then Black Girls Code came to Raleigh to, I was so happy. So I was like, okay, perfect. And I started volunteering with them and eventually became, um, a chair of that chapter.

And so we would put programs on for girls, um, ranging from like ages eight to like 17. And, you know, we would break them up into different age groups, but it would always, we would like teach them how to do cool stuff, how to build like mobile apps or, uh, you know, code and JavaScript or, or whatever the case may be. Um, right now, of course, we're focusing on AI type of programming and stuff like that.

Um, and then, and more and more groups started forming. Uh, tech Girls is another group that was formed there. And, uh, and I volunteered with that one.

If, if I see it, I'm gonna, I'm gonna volunteer. And so, um, these were wonderful ways to not only give back, but, you know, I always find like you can learn from anyone. So I would even learn from these students, like creative things, um, and they would catch on so quick and they would like run with it and, and make really cool stuff.

And so, um, very rewarding, very rewarding experience. I'm not in that area anymore, now I'm in New Orleans. Um, it's, which my hometown, it's like moved back here during the pandemic.

And, uh, there's a couple of programs around, but not nearly as much as in those other areas. And so I am thinking of ways that I can get more involved, and maybe this time around I'm gonna have to start some things. So Get it done.

I would think that you're in a place where they, they need you to start some things. Uh, yeah. New Orleans, Louisiana has its own issues, right?

Yeah. It really, really does. So in your experience then, what's the right, right age to capture them?

You know, you said you work from like eight to 17, eight to 18. Where is it important to start injecting kind of, Hey, this is something you can do? You know, what, uh, the earlier, the better.

Um, I would say like when we give the kids tablets and things like that, that they can watch their shows on, put a couple of, like coding programs. There's things on there for all age levels where they don't necessarily even even need to type anything out. But there's, um, applications like Scratch and stuff like that where they can just kind of drag and drop these blocks that are actually logic blocks, but it helps them to think logically.

Like, okay, if I put this piece with this piece, what happens? Does that achieve the goal? Um, and that's pretty powerful as well.

What we've learned is when they get to about the middle school age, they start caring what the boys think about them, you know? Um, and by then it's like, oh, they, they're gonna think I'm a nerd if I like computers, you know, or, or maybe a tomboy, because computers are for, for boys. Um, so the earlier the better, you know?

I'm so surprised that's still a thing with kids that age. It just seems like they're all using them, right? They're using computers.

It just seems, I just would've hoped we would've evolved a little more than that by now. It, it bothers me to hear that. I have, um, my husband has, has older kids and, and we have two grandkids that are teenagers, and they're both in high school now.

And we, we engaged the younger one when she was in middle school, and she really enjoyed the coding more than her brother did. Wow. But, you know, we just couldn't keep it rolling.

We tried, and she, she liked it. She thought it was fun, but she must a, a toy wall. She might have hit the boy wall.

Mm-hmm. Wall. There's a weird too, um, cultural belief that if a woman is in technology, she should be ugly.

Yeah. It's, it's weird. Uh, my, I have a niece who's in tech, and she's beautiful, and she has had people, you know, shocked when she says she's a programmer.

Like, you are a programmer. It's like, WW why, why wouldn't I be a programmer? Right.

No, you're right. Well, She doesn't see herself that way. She just, that's what she does.

But because she's attractive, people are surprised. Mm-hmm. Well, that rolled from men too, though.

In the early days, they always portrayed guys that liked to do computers as super nerdy with the white tape on their glasses. And, you know, they depicted boys like that early on. So I guess it carried over now, but it definitely, I think it started as a stereotype for men.

I remember seeing it. Yeah. And It's stuck for women.

I mean, I think it's a harder one for women to understand. Right. And yeah.

The problem becomes is women are, I think women in general are more conscious about the way they look. So if you're at that, I'm interested in boys age, that could completely cut you off from wanting to be seen as somebody who is nerdy because it's not attractive. Yeah.

Yeah. That's, that's exactly it. That's exactly it.

But you wanna just like the cool kid, you know, everybody wants to middle school, you wanna be the cool kid. You don't wanna be the nerd. You know, That's where these programs that you volunteer are so important because it gives girls an opportunity to do it outside of school.

So if they don't want everyone else to know what they're up to, they can still participate in a, in a great environment surrounded by like-minded kids, you know? Yeah. You know, um, well, we, We need Vogue and Cosmo to put those ads back in that shows a woman with these awesome pumps sitting at her computer.

Right. You know, people, uh, they don't really understand. Like a lot of people, I, I hear pushback on things like safe spaces, right?

So when you have like a women's meetup or something like that, like why, why, why do you need that? It is, you know, the pushback you kind of get, and I guess it's hard for them to understand like all of the dynamics that come into play when, you know, it's a mixed group and how people might kind of retreat and become shy and maybe not even ask questions that they have, you know, for fear of how it will be perceived. And so that's why you need like these safe spaces, like you said, like this girl, black girls code.

It's just all, all girls, you know, they don't have to worry about a boy thinking that they're gonna be a nerd or, you know, or anything like that. You just kind of remove all of those barriers out of the way, and you're just free to explore in a nonjudgmental setting. Yeah.

And it's not just that they think they're a nerd. Men can be very intimidated by women who are smarter than them. And not only that, so I talk, Okay, 10 are not Ken r let's not Sugar coat it.

I taught, I taught, uh, as an adjunct professor for, uh, a, a programming course. And this would usually be like, you know, juniors, uh, not junior, I'm sorry, freshmen who are just coming in like an intro level. And it never fails.

Uh, the class hosts 24 students probably would be four to six girls, and the rest were guys. And, um, you know, the, the initial class, everyone, uh, introduces themselves, right? And so, you know, girl, hi, I am Katie or whatever, you know, I'm from whatever.

And then the GA guy, uh, and it wasn't all of 'em, but, you know, a few would get up and say, oh, yeah, you know, I, I'm bra I've been coding since I was two. Uh, I don't even know why I'm in this class. They made me take it.

I could probably test out of this today. You know what I mean? And, and that's super intimidating to people.

It's probably intimidating to everybody, but especially if you look around the room and there's only like two other people in there like you, right? And as we go through the semester, one of them drops, maybe, you know, another one might, and you start having this sense of not belonging, like, I don't belong here, and don't let you struggle a little bit. You know, it's like, oh, I knew I didn't belong.

Like this is, this is not for me. Mm-hmm. Well, you're working, you're fighting the good fight, girl.

You really are. And I'm, I'm really impressed with everything you've done in this space. But tell us what's going on in the field of Dere?

I have seen a decrease. A decrease in the need and job openings and, and developer relations. Mm.

A particular around open source. Like, you know, I think one, a good example is Jfr. They had a massive open, uh, derel, uh, group within Jfr.

And I think most of 'em are gone now, um, because they're not pushing, you know, adoption of their, their open source, uh, platform. So what's going on in, in Devereux? Yeah.

Um, so there's been a decrease in pretty much everything. And when people start thinking about, what do I need to cut? Unfortunately, this is one of the areas that feels easier to cut, you know what I mean?

And so it's Dere, uh, is developer relations, and it's, uh, developers who essentially work externally for the most part, to tell other developers like how to use your product and things that they can build and stuff like that. And so, um, you can think of them as like maybe developer influencers or something of that nature. And so if you had to make cuts, right, um, you would likely keep the developers who are actually working on the product over the developers who are promoting the product.

So we are seeing cuts just because there's cuts, um, across the board. Um, also like developer tools. That's where you usually see these sorts of, uh, roles at.

If you're a customer base, our developers, so for example, if you're making a code editing tool or something like that, you know, your, who you're trying to reach, um, are developers. And so, um, we are seeing like probably even a scale back and those, and, you know, those are kind of shifting a bit. The market gets saturated with a button.

Like there's only so many code editors you need, for example, you know, so although somebody might come out with a new one, they hire a whole Dere team, it might not last. And, um, they have to shut the whole thing down or pivot to a different direction and go B2B or something like that. There's also not like, hmm, depending on your business model, I would say it's not like a, there's not as much money in, in like marketing to developers as like a B2B solution, right?

So developers, um, they're usually looking for open source stuff, which is free to use. Um, and you hope like you'll be able to upsell them at some point, which maybe you will, maybe you won't. Or, um, you know, it's a tool that, that you're asking like developers to go ask budget for, and they don't really wanna do all that sort of stuff.

And so, um, that's YU key, that's why you see, I Would think it, it, it's gotta be critical to block though, right? Developer relations has to be key. Yeah.

Yeah. So developer relations, um, at Block, so Block, block is very much so like a business focused, uh, company. But developers are important to us, um, as, as is open source.

And so, um, block does invest in, uh, developer relations. We love developers. We have, even for our, uh, business tools like our square sellers and stuff like that, we have, you know, APIs and things that they need to know how to use, or at least the, the technical departments at these companies need to be able to build their solutions using the APIs.

And so that's where a developer relation comes in at Block. And What's your secret To what? To de developer relations?

What makes, what makes a good program? Authenticity. That's the secret.

So, um, being like developers, they really don't, uh, take a lot of the marketing bait. And Tracy, you've seen my talk where that, that talk we talked about with the women, and I talk about marketing a lot there. Um, so developers don't like your traditional marketing.

So a lot of it is kind of cringey to a developer, like all the words that, like a typical marketer use that says, we're gonna solve all your problems with this one tool. Like, we don't buy that sort of thing. You know, like, that, that sounds like lies to us.

And so, um, having a authentic developer who's their peer, who's just saying like, this is how it works. Um, and is very honest. Like, I'm very honest if someone says like, well, can it do this?

And I'll say, no, not really. Not that. Well, you should probably try this competitive tool.

Like, I'm that honest, you know what I mean? And so, um, that, that, that's the key to building trust with developers. And then they wanna hear, I've jumped to like multiple products.

I, I've done Devra for multiple products, and any product I go to the developer community knows who I am. They trust me and they wanna hear what I'm working on. They want me to tell them about the products that I'm using and, um, promoting.

You know what I mean? And so that's the, that's the difference. That's the key.

You, when you know, when you can boil an answer down to one word, you know, it's Right. Truly it's true. I'm going to remember that.

I try to be my authentic self too. And I think that's part of, you know, my, uh, success in terms of developer outreach. Um, but I never really thought about it that way.

Mm-hmm. I really, you know, that, and I have told people, no, no, no, if you, if you wanna do that, you should go look at these other products. We're not gonna help you in that area, or don't use our tool to do that.

And my previous company That They do, they do, we had another company that had a build tool and people started using it as a deployment tool. And I'd say, don't do that. Well do that.

It's a hurt. It might hurt if you do that, But I've never heard, I've never heard it distilled down to that. And I think that that exposes quite a bit right now when you talked about, you know, dev derail seems to be the first, could be the first that gets cut, but that means their marketing budget still, it continues with, with these, you know, the positioning, which isn't always authentic.

So I think that they're making a mistake not having those authentic developers out there actually teaching about how to, how to implement, even if they say this, this is kind of a, you know, this is a difficult part of the implementation. We'll, but we'll get through it. I, you know, I always listen to those kinds of videos and I prefer them, but I never thought about it that way.

So thank you. Yeah. And where do you think, do you think that we're gonna see, um, AI impacting dere?

Do you think that there'll be a different way to approach developers using ai? Um, I do. I I think that for everyone actually, it's gonna impact all all fields.

So right now we just release a, uh, a open source AI agent. Um, lemme take a moment just to say what an agent is for those unfamiliar. So, uh, I think, I think at this point we're all familiar with, uh, something like a chat GPT or some sort of chat interface.

Yes. Mm-hmm. Okay.

So where you're like, you're asking AI a question and it gives you a response. And you can even ask it, how do I do X, Y, and Z? For example, let's say I wanted to install a new piece of software, or I wanted to use, uh, a feature in the software, but I cannot figure out where this feature is 'cause it's buried through like some workflow.

Um, so I might ask something like a chat GPT, like, how do I do X, Y, and Z? And it'll give me a series of steps, right? And I will go and I will manually say, okay, step two and I do it.

An AI agent would allow you to still ask your question. And what it does is then does the thing for you. And so, uh, I might say, instead of saying, how do I, uh, toggle on the such, such and such feature, right?

I would then just say, toggle on the such and such feature, and then the agent can figure out whatever steps they would would've told me anyway. They just do the steps for me. So that's an agent.

And we've released, uh, an open source one. And funny story, we actually made this tool internally for our engineers so that they can move faster. So I can now do things like, say, set up my environment, uh, for such and such project, and it already knows is gonna go get all of the dependencies.

It's gonna download it, install it for me, and have it all set up and ready for me to go. And that'll happen in seconds where that might have taken me a half a day, you know? Um, so we made this internally, it was so, uh, popular and helped our engineers save time that we open sourced it.

So the, the everybody else in the company is like, wait, why are the engineers having all the fun? We wanna like automate some stuff too. And so we were like, you know what?

It might be able to, let's, let's see. And they started using it. So folks and product and design and marketing and HR and all of these, the finance, all of these different areas, they started using the tool as well.

And uh, and it works pretty well for them as well. And so, uh, AI is like helping everybody is, is my point. You asked about the Derel piece.

So yes, we use AI to help us do things. For example, let's say we make, uh, we do a live stream, something like this, our podcast, I might want some clips from here. I can just get ai, like go find like the, the hot takes in in that video, um, and clip it up for me so that I have like a nice little clip I wanna put on social media, right?

That's a small example of how, how we are using it in DeVere. Um, but like, it's, it's across the board. Everybody's finding ways to be more productive with, with Each Yeah.

We absolutely use that at Textron in our, in our editing. Yeah. The guys are like, we can make clips just so easy now we just do this and do that.

And you just tell it to grab stuff and Yeah. And it's such a time saver. That's right.

But it doesn't eliminate someone's job. You still, it sure does person to do it. You're just making us more productive.

And it's like me, I I, I sometimes struggle to write descriptions and abstracts and stuff, and my husband's like an AI maniac. Tracy knows he's written me all these great prompts and now I'm like, I can take what's there. And I, I watched it, I recorded it, I participated in it, whatever.

And I can, you know, fractionalize what it time it takes me to do a task and get on with the next thing. So yeah. Yeah.

I, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. So I'm going on the road, uh, starting in like a couple of weeks and I'll be making stops at conferences and, and talking about ai.

But that's basically the message, Jody, that you just shared. That's my talk. Um, you know, it's not, it's, it's not gonna replace you, but I look at people internally.

I'm not gonna say that everybody's using it. There's still skeptics, there's still people that are afraid it's gonna take their jobs and stuff like that. There's one guy, he's on the engineering team, he uses AI to do his work and he has like all of this extra time.

'cause he knocked his stuff out with ai. And so now he gets to play and explore on other things that he wants to do. And everybody's looking at him like, how does he do so much?

It's like, because he frees himself up to be able to work on the stuff that he wants to work on. And so, um, I definitely think that everyone should at least, you know, explore it. I feel like the people that will be replaced are the ones that are refusing to try it out.

Um, and so you're moving at a snail pace when every Yeah, Maybe the opposite problem. It's interesting 'cause I have, I have 20, late 20, early 30 somethings and my kids tend to be a little skeptical of it, which I'm surprised about. You know, my son has a PhD in material science engineering and, um, hurt his ankle and he came and stayed with us for a couple weeks.

He's coming back for five weeks 'cause he is gotta have surgery. And, and I was looking things up and he's like, you know, mom, you can't really trust that stuff. I'm like, exactly, what are you talking about?

You know? So we got into this whole conversation, but I was like so surprised that someone as highly educated as my child, he works in, um, he works for the Public Utilities commission. He, you know, helps with, he's trying to save the world and, um, yeah.

And you know, that he's in that generation where he is using is to create a, to energy and conservation and all that good stuff. So to me I'm like, this seems like a great tool for you. But it's funny, it's funny to have the conversation and not just have him buying in.

'cause for me, I'm like, you know, slogging away I am like anything that helps me speed up so I can accomplish this list of stuff that I wouldn't normally even be able to get to as quickly without working extra hours or Saturday here and there. Um, it's just funny. I just didn't expect that response.

Yeah. We, in our open source community did a job seekers webinar and we had, um, an brilliant man by the name of, um, Darren Scharf, I think is his last name, who taught us how to, to I improve our, our, um, profile on LinkedIn. And one of 'em was, make sure you have recommendations.

So one of the open source contributors at one of our calls said, Hey, could we all just, you know, there's like 20 people on the call, can we all just recommend each other? And so I said, okay, everybody, we're gonna go make this effort to recommend everybody, you know, so you have 20 people on your list, and I'll send the email out with everybody's LinkedIn profile. So it'll be easy.

I never ask anybody to do something before I, unless I'm gonna do it first. Yeah. And so I just got on Chatt BT and I passed the LinkedIn profile and said, please write a recommendation.

And I, I crank through, put 20 people in, I don't know, about maybe an hour. And I got it all done done. And they're all now calling me the overachiever.

That's hysterical. Well, I couldn't have done that. I couldn't have done, you know, done all those recommendations that quickly and each one, I, I, you know, didn't take it just like it gave it to me.

I, you know, I customize it a little, but it sure helps. Right. It is a huge time saver and I'm not a writer.

Yes. Gives you a starting point, you Know? Yeah.

And probably get Rid In a world where I hate that. I always, in a world where It's a whole new vocabulary chat, GPT speak me up. You know, when you, sometimes I ask, I tell, don't start with that.

Send you something. And you're like, okay, okay. Just make an effort to make it not sound like you use chat.

I, I literally tell cha Not that hard. It, there's like this whole section of things and you can even write a prompt to tell it. Not to sound like Ai, I always say when I used dos, I always say don't start with in a World war, You know?

And I'm gonna tell people that I got one of Those today actually. Yeah. I review, uh, conference abstracts and, and it's a deck giveaway when that first sentence is Oh, in the world where it's like, no, I don't wanna read anymore.

That's True. And I need to say, I get a lot of abstracts and I look at 'em and I'm like, come on, can you just try? And then I just Delete that part out.

Say It. Yeah. You just, but that's the thing.

It's not that hard. You have to at least take a moment to That's Right. Don't let It, that's what I love about it is I have trouble getting started.

My brain locks up and I'm like, where do I start? And that gets me started and I may completely turn it around and upside down and back and forth Something different by time. And I, I'm classic for saying Try again, try again.

I don't like that. I do that All the time. Okay.

Try again. And it'll like tr do something. I'll be like, okay.

And I'll take bits and pieces from things, but it's still much quicker than me trying to sit here and have my head explode. 'cause I'm not an editor and a writer Yeah. By what I've become Over the Last five years.

Yeah. Things that I don't really wanna do. Like it's like, just get me started or else I'm gonna procrastinate.

You know Exactly what I mean. That's what happens. Just give me an outline and then maybe I I can take it from there.

You know? Absolutely. Or I, so Before we run out, Started and I can make it bigger and better.

Yeah. We're, we're gonna come to the top of the hour really quick. And it's sad because I've enjoyed this conversation.

I know. Um, I always ask for book recommendations and you know, I'm gonna give one. Um, there is, and Angie, I would love to hear your book recommendations.

It's not a book on technology, but it is a book about women. Oh, nice. Um, it's a author, but I think her first name is Kristin Hanna.

And she's written a book called Nightingale that I'm currently reading about women in World War ii. She has a new one that just came out called The Women and it's about women in the Vietnam War. Um, you know, it's part of those, that Hidden History that we talked about.

We never hear about women in war. Yeah. So, and she's a faab.

It's a, it's a ta Paige Turner, you know, you're just like, okay, I gotta read one more page. One more page. And then you look up kinda it's like, God, it's one in the morning, I gotta go to bed.

There's a movie on my to-do list that is about the group of women that got all the male distributed. It's a brand new one and I'm trying to remember the name of it. It um, and it's about an entire platoon of African American women during one of the wars and all, I think it was World War ii.

And they put 'em together 'cause all this mail got piled up everywhere and they needed to get it distributed and they set them up to fail. Kerry Washington's in it. Kerry Washington starts Oh Yeah, yeah, Yeah.

Min and I have it on our top 10 list of movies we wanna get to. And it just looks, I Think it's called the six, the six Triple eight. Yes.

The six eight. Yeah. I Wanna, that was their, They just set them up to fail.

They dumped a task on this group of women thinking, well we'll just give it to them. They'll never get it done. And they kicked ass and took names and I'm, and Carrie Washington is brilliant in it.

I've seen some clips and I wanna, um, that's on my, and I wonder if it's a book. It might, it's probably based on a book. 'cause it's a true story.

So what's your book recommendation Right now? I'm reading, um, the Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Tracy's In Yep. That sounds like a good one, right?

Um, I'm not, it does, but I'm reading about it and it's about like, working in public, which is very relevant to me. I've been doing it for a while. Um, but you always learn something new and especially like assumptions that you might have.

One of the key ones that I liked was about, you know, uh, so the, the project that we just released, that AI agent, it's called Goose. So Goose was like number one trending. I see.

Uh, for, for a little bit. And with that, so you think, oh, we have all of this interest and like, maybe people are contributing, but you know, you start thinking like, oh, these, this, all of these people are gonna contribute all the time. And they're not like the, you know, they may do a one off drive by contribution, but most projects, most open source projects are maintained by a handful of people.

And so finding other ways to kind of, um, you know, interact with your communities and stuff like that. So, Uh, and what it was the book again, I gotta, Yeah. It's called the Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Egg.

I see it. I'm ordering it right now. Okay.

I knew I It's true. Hired open source and I knew Tracy would be all over it. I mean, what, what she said is true, we, you know, we have badging programs and awards and we do things that, you know, help engage the community so that they're working towards a goal that they can brand themselves.

You know, everybody in our community wants to be a gold legend and only three people have achieved it so far. Oh, wow. But how do you, do, you know, how do you get more people in the funnel who wanna, who wanna work on an open source project?

Yeah. And you definitely have to create a community that loves each other, and you have fun and you do things like job seeking webinars. It's, it goes beyond just, Hey, can you code?

Right? Yeah. Can you come code?

Can you do, do do me a favor? You have to build a real, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get that. Great.

We got our book recommendations in, and I'm gonna have to call a timeout for us today. Ladies, this was amazing, Angie. Thank you so much for joining us.

I know this is just a great way to have, we needed this for this Women's History month. I'm stocking up on stuff. Um, so I'm so, so excited that you were here, Tracy.

Thank you. Me too. Angie.

It's been a long time. I've been waiting for this, so thank you so much. I can't even tell you, I got up and did a little dance when Jody said, Hey, I got Angie.

I'm like, how did, Did do that? I'm like, I just asked. It was amazing.

So you'll, Angie, you'll have to look in your LinkedIn messages. I've been, I've contacted you many times. Oh, I'm so didn't.

It's okay. It's okay. Please, please connect with me.

That's lovely. Okay. I'll, I'll send you another one right now.

All right. I will. There you go.

Alright ladies, thank you so much everyone. Thank you for watching another amazing episode. If I do say so myself and I do of Techstrong Women, keep watching Text Strong TV today.

There's lots more great chosen content for you to check out. We'll see you next time on Techstrong Women. Thanks.