Women in Kaggle celebrated it’s first birthday last month, and this host of Kaggle Aunties also welcomed our first WIK baby when Kim’s gorgeous little boy said “Hello World”. It’s been a memorable year of learning, but more memorable are the friendships we’ve all made. It’s so inspiring to meet a group of like minds that are keen to spur one another on. Kim played a huge part in steering us to our success at the WiDS Datathon, which was the venue for our February meetup, so massive congratulations to us and to her! See our short-lived moment at the top here…before the ‘Women in Kaggle’ team (Kim, Suzanne, Lucija and Julia) finally stole fourth place…
The Datathon was sponsored by the WiDS conference – we received an invite and met at the fancy Deloitte London offices, where we spent a gruelling day poring over the data in teams. OK, so it was fun too…
All the WIK teams did fantastically well, boasting final 12th and 4th places amongst others! Very excitingly, they chose our photo for their publicity for the live screening which was originally broadcast on March 5, at a great event attended by WIK members amidst an audience of keen lady coders. If you missed it, you can catch it here…
We were proud to support such a great incentive
to help the world’s poorest people take advantage of widely available mobile phones and other digital technology to access financial tools and participate more fully in their local economies. Women in these communities, in particular, are often largely excluded from the formal financial system. By predicting gender, the datathon teams will explore the key differences in behavior patterns of men and women, and how that may impact their use of new financial services. Ideally, these findings will influence plans to reach women in developing economies and encourage them to adopt new financial tools that will help to lift them and their families out of poverty.
As if all that wasn’t excitement enough, we were then approached for an interview with Observe magazine to feature in their article on women and technology. Here’s a sneak preview where both WIK member Gemma Milne and I get a mention!
And so to the next meetup…for our April venue we’re going to Poland! We were invited by the organsiers of Kaggledays to register for their event on 18-19 May in Warsaw.
check out the website and be sure to come and join us!
Keep Kaggling till the next time,
Founder of
