Oracle Women’s Leadership TechFest
Oracle Women’s Leadership (OWL) hosted its flagship Tech Fest on October 30th, 2019.
Since the fest was so close to Halloween, the theme made its way to many parts of the fest.
The “Tech and Treat” demo’s stole the show at the “OWL TechFest”. My favorite demo was the “Superhero Escape”. Using Arduino, C++ and electromagnets, the creator challenged attendees with the question — “Are you worthy of picking up Thor’s hammer?”
“The IoT and AR Enabled Smart Manufacturing” demo booth was printing out wooden luggage tags with lasers. No Oracle show can be complete these days without the “Autonomous Database”. “Hey Siri, I need a Database” showcased a cool interface into the world of autonomous databases. The booth right next to it was a great transition for attendees to understand how this data can be leveraged on OCI in the “Innovating with Big Data & Data Science on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure”. “See Your Future with Oracle Analytics Cloud” was another demo in the same space.
DesignTech CommuniTree was a visual and technically stunning experience. The Student at DTech High School had built a Redwood tree to show their support towards the environment. Their demo featured motion activated LED’s, an OWL with a rotating head, a flower that was activated with odor and many Redwood trees. The dedication of the students was visible when the students told me they had changed their design since the SF Design Week demo as they noticed that some parts of their exhibits had a fire hazard.
The Lego Smart City held its own room in the Oracle Convention Center. Their demo featured impressive smart city use cases such as Garbage truck alert systems and systems that found parking for you. They showed us how well potholes could be identified and how this data could be used by city officials. They had a safety detection mechanism where the train would automatically stop when it sensed a block in its route. The creators also told us how these features can be used to improve tourism.
My next favorite part of the evening was the keynote by Oracle CEO Safra Catz. Some of her words really stuck with me.
“Anything is possible with education”
“Education is a lifelong experience”
“Safra does the job no one else wants to do”
The other speakers at the event were Leor Chechik, who also lead the organizing of the entire event, Maria Kaval, Tia Williams, Shruti Banda, Krithika Bhat, Mollie Spilman and Emily Takagi.
I had a great evening with amazing food. I absolutely enjoyed the deserts and loved talking to the so many women who attended the event. I was surprised by the swag the event had. From the small black bag (which is perfect for hiking, by the way), to the beach mat to the various goodies in the Oracle career booth like socks, badge tags, small notebooks, pens, phone card holders, laptop camera covers and laptop stickers, I walked out with a heavy bag.
