Looking back on WTM Berlin IWD 2018

On March 22 Women Techmakers Berlin as part of the Women Techmakers Global Event Series celebrated not only International Women’s Day 2018 but also our birthday! A thousand thanks to Digital:Lab Volkswagen who gave us a delicious birthday cake and hosted us in their beautiful loft-like venue. Celebrating the event under your wings undoubtedly made attendees feel at home straight away.

A diverse crowd counted 150+ familiar and also many new faces who stopped by to learn a thing or two this evening. With child care being offered throughout the event, parents and their little ones were well accommodated. To keep everyone nourished, we made sure to offer a wide variety of delicious foods, such as souffles, brownies, wraps, and burgers. For educational purposes we displayed posters showing successful women in STEM from our history. The entire venue was filled with awesome swag provided by generous partners, such as Udacity with stocked up bags filled up to the notch, Muji with a beautiful planner and pen, our own bags and themed motivational stickers, Marley Spoon fridge magnets, and even books!

We kicked off the event with an introduction by Natalie, the founder of our Women Techmakers chapter, including a recap of how Women Techmakers Berlin has grown over the years, events which took place in the past, everything we’re organising now, and what we have planned for you for the upcoming months!

A special extra to share: together with AMSAT-UK we’re broadcasting a greeting from space to women around the world, which we’ve received during the event. The precise text of the greeting is: “Greetings from the Women Techmakers in Berlin. Have a great International Women’s Day!”

Five amazing speakers from various backgrounds then took the stage to give us new insights on how they built and kept building new horizons for themselves. Lilli Baaske started off by sharing with us how she kept pushing herself forward towards getting her first developer job with the help of Women Techmakers Berlin. Edlira Kasaj and Rita Butman shared their experiences and learnings about the ReDI School of Digital Integration from a Program Director, and from a graduate’s point of view. Eti Vidavsky spoke about her entrepreneurial enterprises around the world and the good and bad learnings from all these adventures. Inbal Cohen talked about how trying out different career paths helped her find out what truly motivates her in her personal and professional life. Each of these women left us inspired with new ideas to think about.

After the talks, the stage was opened to job seekers and hiring companies. There was plenty of time left to network, say goodbye to newly made friends and to have a last drink together.

We want to send out a big thank you to everyone involved in the organisation, and to all participants for coming to the event and for sharing this wonderful evening with us. Keep being as open, motivating, inclusive and awesome as you are. We will keep pushing diversity in the tech community of Berlin forward. Together we will be successful in doing so.

Here is our website. You can find us across social media: Facebook, Twitter, Slack and Meetup (our past events are available here). Have a look at our Twitter account for some first impressions of the event!

Thank you and see you next year. In the meantime, we hope to welcome you to one of our many upcoming events!

All the best,

Gracia and the WTMB organizers!

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