Avanade recently sponsored the Women of Silicon Roundabout, a two-day event in London focused on enhancing professional development and celebrating gender diversity in tech. With over 4,500 delegates in attendance, we met lots of great people at the Avanade booth throughout the event with attendees keen to learn more about our company, queueing to try out the HoloLens and competing to win prizes. We were also joined at the booth by over 20 Avanade employees who gave their time to chat with attendees, they were engaged, friendly, and open and really showed the true culture of Avanade.

In addition to our booth, we had a speaker session in the main auditorium where Laura Malcolm, UKI Digital Lead & Market Units Executive, Annette Giardina, UKI Business Applications Lead, and Maria Muller, UKI Digital Analytics Director, gave a keynote entitled “Hearts, minds and machines”. With more than 1500 people in attendance, they discussed how technology will augment our human capabilities and amplify our potential in the future. Our speakers highlighted the critical role that humans - using our hearts and minds - will play in harnessing technology to address the greatest challenges and opportunities the world faces. Laura, Annette and Maria were also joined on stage by Devon Young, Head of Avanade’s London Digital Studio, and our newest recruit, Ava (the robot). Ava was extremely popular and had crowds of people waiting to take photos with her when the session finished! Laura also participated in a press panel, discussing AI and Diversity, which was a fantastic forum for Avanade to be part of.

Seeing all these people coming to an event to promote and support women working in technology was really inspiring, there was a real buzz and I felt proud that Avanade was part of this mission to continually increase the number of women working in tech. Avanade hosts many of our own programs focused on women’s development at all ages including the Avanade Leadership Program for Women, the 15 for 15 Scholarship, and hosting yearly events surrounding International Women’s Day in March. We will be sponsoring this event again next year, and I hope to be able to share even more of the successes in the future!