#dude you literally behave like the average person on this site and you have the exact same sense of humor of a twitter user

[xninjastarfishx]

legit hope more people move to Tumblr actually this site is kinda boring tbh

[sarenhale]

a funny, shitty work experience that lasted 1 week (luckily)

(VERY LONG POST)

Oh anyway. It’s 5 am and I can’t sleep and gotta be ready for work in a hour, so... you want to hear a long, ridicolous story about the job offer in Spain I had like 10 days ago? Ready for a wild ride? HERE WE GO.

Basically. A guy that my dad knew due to business (my dad sells vintage stuff) asked about me since my dad told him I did graphic design at Uni and I do illustration/drawings etc, and he reached out to me and asked me to do some illustrations for his brand. The guy is super rich and has a company that do a lot of stuff branching from fashion, to perfumes, to wine bottles, cars and other stuff. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time to work on the job he asked me, but decided to try it anyways just to see how it was like. 

I meet the guy with my dad. We talk. In the end, he changes the work totally from illustrations to... graphic design for his website? Ok, I’m slightly confused by the sudden change of plans, but I studied graphic design for 3 years at Uni and I know my job and also like it, so decide to go with it. He says he wants to meet me in Spain at his office so we can talk freely about the work and decide the job contract together etc. With NO NOTICE he tells me that I have to fly to Spain in 3 days to meet him. Since he pays everything, plane & hotel included, I accept because I’m an extremely open to travel person and very adaptable to situations, and also I tell to myself ‘why not, this could be a good possibility for me, never turn down a job’.

We meet in Spain, everything is normal, but I realize the dude has absolutely NO IDEA what he’s doing and what he wants for his brand, also he apparently never had a graphic design for his brand despite it being kinda a big deal. I’m very concerned about the... irresponsability for his brand’s seriousness and identity, and on top of this, he keeps jumping from topic to topic like he wants illustrations, than graphic design, than posters, than photos and videos... and I’m ONE PERSON. 

Important: in september, I’m flying to America to follow my dream as a concept artist/illustrator and attend classes! Of course I tell him this THE FIRST TIME I see him, and warn him that despite being up for the job, I have little to no time due to the fact I have a part time job at the restaurant and also have to fly in America in like, 3 weeks. He plays it off like it’s all cool and gives me the ‘Don’t worry, you just work on this whenever you can, when you have time, no rush, I will follow your pace and time’. Also says he will give me a certain amount of money as payment every month to do graphic design for his site.

Important terrible fact: his WIFE, that knows absolutely nothing of graphic design/art/web design whatsoever, is apparently managing this side of the brand. So he tells me like, last minute, that I will have to keep in contact with her for this job. I’m already sweating and feeling like this is all going downhill pretty fast into ‘unprofessional’ waters. 

When I’m back home, she IMMEDIATELY writes me to do a huge amount of work despite knowing that I have work (and shifts that are 11 hours a day average!) because ofc I told her and him (and clarified my situation from the beginning). But she wants all the work done RIGHT NOW. She’s also super anxious and pressing me via messages (cause I made the mistake to let her have my cellphone number) and, through the week, keeps sending me texts at 2 AM ASKING ME ABOUT WORK. 

She continues writing me everyday multiple times, when I am home doing the work and even when I’m at the restaurant at work. Despite explaining this to her, and reminding her that the plan all along was that I would work on their blasted websites when I have the possibility (so when I’m off work from my part-time job), she... gets mad at me for not keeping in contact and answering??? And I’m just here like. BITCH. 

At this point, I’m already deep in shit and I know this is a shitshow of a job and I want to quit, despite ONLY A WEEK of effective work. During like, 2 days, I already did two WHOLE websites for them and also 2 logos for their brand, a job that normally a graphic design would require like... 2 months or so. All of this because of the huge pressure. 

In the meantime, he writes me (the dude that asked me for the job in the first place) that he can keep my pace, I have all the time I need, no pressure etc, he respects my work, etc... and I’m here like ???????????? You are doing THE POLAR OPPOSITE of respecting me and my work, by absolutely shitting on the contract we had. Because we talked about this together, about the amount of hours I would have to work and the job I would have to do, and decided TOGETHER everything. It’s not I’m making all of this up, he was the one that came to me in the first place with the proposition of working when I could off my part-time job. 

Last part of this shitshow: his wife texts me they NEED 4 DIFFERENT D I F F E R E N T WORKS done for the next week, asap. 

I’m speechless. The 4 works she talks about are not only too much and not even remotely doable in a week (lmao not even a team of graphic designer could pull off doing 4 different whole works in a week), but ARE NOT RELATED TO THE JOB THEY TOLD ME ABOUT IN THE FIRST PLACE!! They’re asking for graphic design for a restaurant menu and merchandising for the restaurant (????), logos for ALL their websites (that are 20), posters for a music festival and other not-related jobs I honestly can’t even remember due to the ridiculousness of the proposal. I am in AWE for the COMPLETELY ABSURD REQUEST. 

This is just the shit on the top of the shit cake. Also, gotta love how she texted me ‘Marina we need this done in a week’, not even apologizing for the short notice, or for giving me orders. The whole time she texted me for work, also, she was terribly rude and unprofessional, checking on me like she was my wife or something, and just being overly stressful.

Of course I know I won’t do this work and accept this proposal, because 1 It wasn’t in our contract and it’s not a job I should do since you hired me for other things, 2 It’s such short notice it’s HUMANLY IMPOSSIBLE for me to do it, 3 You’d have me working like a slave for your shitty last minute pretends, 4 Even if I wanted, I don’t have the ACTUAL TIME to work since I have another job and this week you’re giving me to work would sum up to the total of 3 days (since I work 4 days a week at the restaurant with daily shifts of 11 / 12 hours) 5 You’re not respecting our original pact, and literally are shitting on the promises you made to me, of me having time to work at my pace on your project and even saying stuff like ‘Your studies are more important!!! So focus on those this is just a job you can do when you have time on your week!!!’ So, HUGE HYPOCRITE, 6 YOU’RE FUCKING CRAZY DUDE. Period. 

So I text him asking to talk about the latest work he asked, and tell him I can’t do it in time. He DOESN’T EVEN CALL ME but just texts me shit like ‘oh ok you have 10 days’ and at this point i’m there speechless and decide to straightforward call him at the phone. 

At the phone, I tell him I can’t do the job because I would have no time to work, and also isn’t literally possible for me to fo 4 FINISHED DIFFERENT PROJECTS in three days. He responds with vague shit like ‘oh well I can give you three more days’ like that would be sufficient, and also completely changes the version from the one his wife texted me, and at this point, I just know he’s a huge liar and hypocrite and basically fucking with me. So I tell him that I just can’t do that job in time, but that I can keep working on the sites I was already working on for them, of course explaining to him WHY and HOW I can’t work on that huge amount of projects he just shoved down my throath without to previous warning or discussion. 

He agrees on me and we left on these terms. Later, I text his wife about all the final touches I made to the websites. (I already knew I was going to drop the job at one point, so I wanted to finish the content so I had no unsolved business or work that could later come back to bite me in the ass- just even for personal satisfaction, cause I like finished things.)

Despite me making a HUGE amount of work on that blasted website, she doesn’t even respond to my text. 

LATER, I GET AN EMAIL FROM THE DUDE. THE MOST RIDICOLOUS EMAIL I HAD EVER GOTTEN IN MY LIFE FROM SOMEONE. 

I swear, if it wasn’t in italian, I would really have posted the photo of the original, cause it’s just... too baffling and hilarious at the same time. 

Basically, he tells me he’s sad I talked to him at the phone with an ‘harsh tone’ and don’t want to do the job because he’s offering a huge opportunity for me. (I even asked my mother about my tone during the phone call: she told me I was absolutely neutral and polite. And I KNEW I WAS BEING super calm, so he’s just assing it up)

He then goes on how he respects me as a person and respects my work (HOW? H O W are you respecting me as an artist and even as a person after how you and your wife have treated me??) and he’s sad to see me go. (I didn’t even told him ‘I’m quitting the job’ or something, I was EVEN willing to finish the websites for him no problem!! So he’s just a fucking huge irresponsible baby for acting like I dropped him suddenly cause he totally COULD HAVE BEHAVED in another way and gotten a better deal with this!!) 

He also felt like adding how good as a person, boss and business man he is to this fucken email like this man is literally a huge egocentric baby (I had a hint when I saw his brand image consists of photos of him and his name everywhere on his wines, perfumes, cars and spaghetti lmao), and also... my favourite part. THAT I FEELS LIKE I DON’T KNOW WHO I AM YET!! :( And all because I told him the truth and didn’t like being a slave for him! Figures! Absurd! Absolute fool I am for throwing away such a proposal!!! A LIFE-DEAL!!! Oh man I’m such an hopeless fool!

And then goes on paternalizing me, and analyzing my life, telling me also things like ‘at your age I was starting business everywhere and had success’ LIKE LMFAO This man I can’t even

Also tells me that the estimated time for the job could be ‘discussed very easily’ when his wife and him were the first and ONLY people telling me with an imperative tone they needed the work done in a week  😂 😂 😂 😂 LMFAO

And... finishes the email off with... ... ... PAYING ME THE EXACT HALF OF WHAT HE PROMISED! ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. ABSOLUTELY CRAZY DISPLAY OF KINDESS AND GENEROSITY, MY DUDE, And also showing how much of a hypocrite and piece of shit you are! 

In the end: I was so enternained by the absolute absurd way this man and his wife managed their job (and in particular the final ACT) that I’m not even bitter, I’m just genuinely remembering this experience as a HUGE JOKE. Because It’s what it is. 

I know I started this post with a serious and detailed way of describing things and the end is just... me laughing my ass off, but hey, it’s now 6 am and I didn’t sleep and also remembering this experience is causing some funny flashbacks. So I’m sorry for the phrasing or whatever... hope you could even understand what I wrote. English is highkey compromised, at this hour and when talking about such absurd MEMENTOS. 

And this is all, cause I’m never writing such a long story ever in my life. But It felt important to share this shitshow with you all... even for remembering that, just because you need job, money, or experience in life... you should NEVER be someone’s slave and be treated so badly. N E V E R. 

[unixcommerce]

Jenn VandeZande of SAP: The Uncomfortable Truth is Women in Tech are Over-mentored and Under-sponsored

What’s the status of women in tech? With International Women’s Day coming up this weekend, I had the real pleasure last week of moderating a panel on inclusion and diversity during the inaugural Ambient Experience Summit held in Atlanta and organized by Constellation Research.  It was a great event and I was proud to be the local host for the conference.  But the highlight for me was the panel, which featured Jenn VandeZande, Editor-in-Chief of SAP’s thought leadership site, and Lately CEO and founder Kate Bradley Chernis who we just spoke with for the series.

The conversation with Jenn and Kate was honest, open, blunt and eye-opening.  And while quite a bit of it was sobering, we were also able to find some humor along the way.  But the bottom line is that we still have a ways to go before some of the uncomfortable truths that were touched on can be turned into meaningful actions to change where things stand today.  And I think Jenn, Kate and the Constellation team (Ray Wang, Nicole France, Liz Miller, Meghan O’Neill Ruona and Aubrey Coggins) for making this session a part of a great agenda. Thanks to Constellation also for making this video available for us to feature here in the series.

Below is and edited transcript of the session.  To see the full conversation watch the video or click on the embedded SoundCloud player below.

Small Business Trends: You went through a transformation with the site. Why don’t you talk about that, but also talk about why it was important to you to do that.

Jenn VandeZande: When I came on board about five years ago, I think some of the first conferences and things that I went to, I was like, where are the women? And then a couple of years later, heard somebody say, there aren’t women in positions of power. Because we actually don’t see women in positions of power, and I really took that to heart and I thought, I’m doing this thing that’s not just customer facing but industry facing.

And I made a really tough assessment. I went through the site and actually did an assessment of how many images of women were on there. And the images of women that were on the site were literally, all of them on retail posts about shopping and they were shopping and the images of men, were CEO, C-suite execs. So then I said no. I’m just going to go ahead and change this because I’m the one hitting the buttons. So I started going through that process a couple of years ago trying to swap out images. But actually at that point in time, even with Getty and iStock, I’d look for images of CEO and it was all white men and it was like even in the land where images are staged, you could just pretend that there’s equality.

Small Business Trends: There were no pretend women CEOs?

Jenn VandeZande: No there weren’t. And so we really made a measured effort to rebrand the site, rename it, did a new logo, changed out all the images. There was also a big business outcome. We saw our metrics going up, time on site going up. 99% of our archives are viewed every day, which is pretty incredible for a site that’s five years old, but really also started paying attention to who our contributors were and trying to level that out, putting women at the table and at the forefront pursuing them as thought leaders and making uncomfortable, continually uncomfortable assessments and speaking up.

Guess Who Talks More at Tech Conferences – Way More….

Jenn VandeZande: So there’s an app where you can actually track who’s talking in the room, men or women, and I did that today.

Small Business Trends:  Well, are you going to leave us hanging?

Jenn VandeZande: Do you want to take a guess? So do you want to take a guess at the percentage?

Small Business Trends: So I’m the first guy who’s going to take a …

Jenn VandeZande: Anyone in the audience want to take a guess at the percentages?

Small Business Trends: 80/20 Men?

Jenn VandeZande: So the first half it was 87% men. In the second half, it’s 93%.

Kate Bradley Chernis: Wow!

Small Business Trends: What?

Kate Bradley Chernis: Incredible.

Jenn VandeZande: But that’s super uncomfortable to say, right? So even before this I’m like, Oh my God, do I actually say this out loud? But that’s really the only way we’re going to drive change because I think missing from this panel is actually also, besides a panelist, a man, because right now the reality is the balance is so stark that it is men who will be promoting women and giving them the opportunities that haven’t been afforded to them over the years. So we really need men to advance women and they need to be on the stage too when we’re talking about this and helping to push forward that change so that, yes, so that’s my little spiel.

Small Business Trends: All right, so the when we open up for questions, I don’t want none of you dudes saying anything right away. [Laughter]  Going to change that right away because there’s a lot of making up to do right here. All right…. Now notorious one.

Kate Bradley Chernis: Yo.

Small Business Trends: You have a really interesting story because you’re a tech startup in AI and you’re a female entrepreneur, CEO, founder and all that.

Kate Bradley Chernis: Thank you.  It’s not easy.

Small Business Trends: Tell us how difficult is it in today’s economy and tech scene to be a CEO, female founder?

Kate Bradley Chernis: I’m sure you guys have heard this stat, but it came out about a year and a half ago, only 2% of all the female founded companies get venture funding. 2% which means, I’m pretty awesome….

Small Business Trends: And let me add to that, because you gave me another stat on top of that one.

Kate Bradley Chernis: Oh, and if you’re black, it’s like 0.001%. Black female, forget it. It’s really, it’s abysmal.

Small Business Trends:  Please somebody Tweet that out, that’s important.

Kate Bradley Chernis: It’s super bad. And the other interesting stat is, and I can’t remember the exact number, but the female led companies have a 30% chance of more successful exits than male. So the investment is actually smart, but we go up against it all the time and sure there’s sexual harassment. Sure, there’s all this stuff that’s obvious. But what’s interesting is women actually behave the same way towards women as the men do. So give you an example.

There are these questions that investors ask you all the time. They’re pretty much the same. You start to learn what they all are and they typically, men and women investors, ask female entrepreneurs the loss questions and they ask the men the growth questions. So, for example, they’d ask you, how do you plan on growing your customer base if you’re a man?

And then they’ll ask me, how do you plan on keeping your customers? How do you plan on doing churn prevention, for example, right? And it’s my job, the onus on me to learn how to answer in the male way, and to twist that around. It’s messed up…

Small Business Trends:  That’s one way of putting it.

Kate Bradley Chernis: …which is why I was doing some pushups because before I go into those meetings, I want to feel really strong, and a little pump…

Small Business Trends:  Little pump. Okay. Part of your platform is AI. And we have seen all these articles around the biases, the inherent bias that we’re seeing with AI. Particularly there was one study that talked about, every other kind of person can get recognized pretty significantly by AI, but when it comes to black women, it was like, what’s that? They see a picture of a black woman, AI couldn’t determine what… So as a woman in AI, as a tech founder, how do we fix these inherent issues? How do you look at it? Because you have AI technology? How are you approaching it from that perspective?

Kate Bradley Chernis: So first and foremost, we do exactly what Jenn does and what so many other people in this room do is we put the onus on the humans. So our AI is designed to start you at third base and then there’s the human’s job to pop in and get that content up to home plate. And the reason is is because you don’t want to remove a human from marketing because marketing is emotion based, not robot based, right?

Kate Bradley Chernis: And also humans are smarter than AI in the end, right? Because we understand those nuances. So we’re a little bit sneaky because we put it back on the user to have that responsibility. But of course our job also is to be very aware and alert. We have a lot of data that we’re paying attention to and we are very interested to see what AI is learning and what’s succeeding and then being able to use that down the road and pass those learnings onto our customers.

Small Business Trends:  So Jenn, you go to a lot of events, you speak at conferences, you’ve talked to all sorts of people, people write for the site. Are you seeing more diversity, inclusion like what we’re doing here, but at other conferences? Is it starting to get a little bit more averaged out? Seeing women on the stage from a technology… I don’t even have to finish the question!

Jenn VandeZande: There’s also a silent look between women where it’s like, yeah we know what’s coming next.

Small Business Trends:  I was like, somebody’s about to pass the question…

Jenn VandeZande: Actually there’s a ton of conversation around it, which I’m exhausted with because we’re actually, there hasn’t been growth. We are talking about it; we are spending money on it; we’re promoting it. But we’re not promoting women. There actually has not been growth since 2016 when you’re talking about women. I have an article coming out for International Women’s Day, which is titled, “There’s more CEOs named Jeff than there are female CEOs“.

Kate Bradley Chernis: Wow.

Small Business Trends: Really?

Jenn VandeZande: It’s true. Yeah, it’s true. You’re omitting half of the human race. And it’s like when we’re talking about product design, you have people designing products that are, women are using and you wonder why the product doesn’t work. It’s because you’re not actually including us, it’s half…

Small Business Trends:  It’s Butch is over there, drinking beer [designing a product for women]

Jenn VandeZande: It’s nice to talk about it. But it’s often women are over-mentored and under sponsored.

This article, “Jenn VandeZande of SAP: The Uncomfortable Truth is Women in Tech are Over-mentored and Under-sponsored” was first published on Small Business Trends

https://smallbiztrends.com/

The post Jenn VandeZande of SAP: The Uncomfortable Truth is Women in Tech are Over-mentored and Under-sponsored appeared first on Unix Commerce.

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[unixcommerce]

Jenn VandeZande of SAP: The Uncomfortable Truth is Women in Tech are Over-mentored and Under-sponsored

What’s the status of women in tech? With International Women’s Day coming up this weekend, I had the real pleasure last week of moderating a panel on inclusion and diversity during the inaugural Ambient Experience Summit held in Atlanta and organized by Constellation Research.  It was a great event and I was proud to be the local host for the conference.  But the highlight for me was the panel, which featured Jenn VandeZande, Editor-in-Chief of SAP’s thought leadership site, and Lately CEO and founder Kate Bradley Chernis who we just spoke with for the series.

The conversation with Jenn and Kate was honest, open, blunt and eye-opening.  And while quite a bit of it was sobering, we were also able to find some humor along the way.  But the bottom line is that we still have a ways to go before some of the uncomfortable truths that were touched on can be turned into meaningful actions to change where things stand today.  And I think Jenn, Kate and the Constellation team (Ray Wang, Nicole France, Liz Miller, Meghan O’Neill Ruona and Aubrey Coggins) for making this session a part of a great agenda. Thanks to Constellation also for making this video available for us to feature here in the series.

Below is and edited transcript of the session.  To see the full conversation watch the video or click on the embedded SoundCloud player below.

Small Business Trends: You went through a transformation with the site. Why don’t you talk about that, but also talk about why it was important to you to do that.

Jenn VandeZande: When I came on board about five years ago, I think some of the first conferences and things that I went to, I was like, where are the women? And then a couple of years later, heard somebody say, there aren’t women in positions of power. Because we actually don’t see women in positions of power, and I really took that to heart and I thought, I’m doing this thing that’s not just customer facing but industry facing.

And I made a really tough assessment. I went through the site and actually did an assessment of how many images of women were on there. And the images of women that were on the site were literally, all of them on retail posts about shopping and they were shopping and the images of men, were CEO, C-suite execs. So then I said no. I’m just going to go ahead and change this because I’m the one hitting the buttons. So I started going through that process a couple of years ago trying to swap out images. But actually at that point in time, even with Getty and iStock, I’d look for images of CEO and it was all white men and it was like even in the land where images are staged, you could just pretend that there’s equality.

Small Business Trends: There were no pretend women CEOs?

Jenn VandeZande: No there weren’t. And so we really made a measured effort to rebrand the site, rename it, did a new logo, changed out all the images. There was also a big business outcome. We saw our metrics going up, time on site going up. 99% of our archives are viewed every day, which is pretty incredible for a site that’s five years old, but really also started paying attention to who our contributors were and trying to level that out, putting women at the table and at the forefront pursuing them as thought leaders and making uncomfortable, continually uncomfortable assessments and speaking up.

Guess Who Talks More at Tech Conferences – Way More….

Jenn VandeZande: So there’s an app where you can actually track who’s talking in the room, men or women, and I did that today.

Small Business Trends:  Well, are you going to leave us hanging?

Jenn VandeZande: Do you want to take a guess? So do you want to take a guess at the percentage?

Small Business Trends: So I’m the first guy who’s going to take a …

Jenn VandeZande: Anyone in the audience want to take a guess at the percentages?

Small Business Trends: 80/20 Men?

Jenn VandeZande: So the first half it was 87% men. In the second half, it’s 93%.

Kate Bradley Chernis: Wow!

Small Business Trends: What?

Kate Bradley Chernis: Incredible.

Jenn VandeZande: But that’s super uncomfortable to say, right? So even before this I’m like, Oh my God, do I actually say this out loud? But that’s really the only way we’re going to drive change because I think missing from this panel is actually also, besides a panelist, a man, because right now the reality is the balance is so stark that it is men who will be promoting women and giving them the opportunities that haven’t been afforded to them over the years. So we really need men to advance women and they need to be on the stage too when we’re talking about this and helping to push forward that change so that, yes, so that’s my little spiel.

Small Business Trends: All right, so the when we open up for questions, I don’t want none of you dudes saying anything right away. [Laughter]  Going to change that right away because there’s a lot of making up to do right here. All right…. Now notorious one.

Kate Bradley Chernis: Yo.

Small Business Trends: You have a really interesting story because you’re a tech startup in AI and you’re a female entrepreneur, CEO, founder and all that.

Kate Bradley Chernis: Thank you.  It’s not easy.

Small Business Trends: Tell us how difficult is it in today’s economy and tech scene to be a CEO, female founder?

Kate Bradley Chernis: I’m sure you guys have heard this stat, but it came out about a year and a half ago, only 2% of all the female founded companies get venture funding. 2% which means, I’m pretty awesome….

Small Business Trends: And let me add to that, because you gave me another stat on top of that one.

Kate Bradley Chernis: Oh, and if you’re black, it’s like 0.001%. Black female, forget it. It’s really, it’s abysmal.

Small Business Trends:  Please somebody Tweet that out, that’s important.

Kate Bradley Chernis: It’s super bad. And the other interesting stat is, and I can’t remember the exact number, but the female led companies have a 30% chance of more successful exits than male. So the investment is actually smart, but we go up against it all the time and sure there’s sexual harassment. Sure, there’s all this stuff that’s obvious. But what’s interesting is women actually behave the same way towards women as the men do. So give you an example.

There are these questions that investors ask you all the time. They’re pretty much the same. You start to learn what they all are and they typically, men and women investors, ask female entrepreneurs the loss questions and they ask the men the growth questions. So, for example, they’d ask you, how do you plan on growing your customer base if you’re a man?

And then they’ll ask me, how do you plan on keeping your customers? How do you plan on doing churn prevention, for example, right? And it’s my job, the onus on me to learn how to answer in the male way, and to twist that around. It’s messed up…

Small Business Trends:  That’s one way of putting it.

Kate Bradley Chernis: …which is why I was doing some pushups because before I go into those meetings, I want to feel really strong, and a little pump…

Small Business Trends:  Little pump. Okay. Part of your platform is AI. And we have seen all these articles around the biases, the inherent bias that we’re seeing with AI. Particularly there was one study that talked about, every other kind of person can get recognized pretty significantly by AI, but when it comes to black women, it was like, what’s that? They see a picture of a black woman, AI couldn’t determine what… So as a woman in AI, as a tech founder, how do we fix these inherent issues? How do you look at it? Because you have AI technology? How are you approaching it from that perspective?

Kate Bradley Chernis: So first and foremost, we do exactly what Jenn does and what so many other people in this room do is we put the onus on the humans. So our AI is designed to start you at third base and then there’s the human’s job to pop in and get that content up to home plate. And the reason is is because you don’t want to remove a human from marketing because marketing is emotion based, not robot based, right?

Kate Bradley Chernis: And also humans are smarter than AI in the end, right? Because we understand those nuances. So we’re a little bit sneaky because we put it back on the user to have that responsibility. But of course our job also is to be very aware and alert. We have a lot of data that we’re paying attention to and we are very interested to see what AI is learning and what’s succeeding and then being able to use that down the road and pass those learnings onto our customers.

Small Business Trends:  So Jenn, you go to a lot of events, you speak at conferences, you’ve talked to all sorts of people, people write for the site. Are you seeing more diversity, inclusion like what we’re doing here, but at other conferences? Is it starting to get a little bit more averaged out? Seeing women on the stage from a technology… I don’t even have to finish the question!

Jenn VandeZande: There’s also a silent look between women where it’s like, yeah we know what’s coming next.

Small Business Trends:  I was like, somebody’s about to pass the question…

Jenn VandeZande: Actually there’s a ton of conversation around it, which I’m exhausted with because we’re actually, there hasn’t been growth. We are talking about it; we are spending money on it; we’re promoting it. But we’re not promoting women. There actually has not been growth since 2016 when you’re talking about women. I have an article coming out for International Women’s Day, which is titled, “There’s more CEOs named Jeff than there are female CEOs“.

Kate Bradley Chernis: Wow.

Small Business Trends: Really?

Jenn VandeZande: It’s true. Yeah, it’s true. You’re omitting half of the human race. And it’s like when we’re talking about product design, you have people designing products that are, women are using and you wonder why the product doesn’t work. It’s because you’re not actually including us, it’s half…

Small Business Trends:  It’s Butch is over there, drinking beer [designing a product for women]

Jenn VandeZande: It’s nice to talk about it. But it’s often women are over-mentored and under sponsored.

This article, “Jenn VandeZande of SAP: The Uncomfortable Truth is Women in Tech are Over-mentored and Under-sponsored” was first published on Small Business Trends

https://smallbiztrends.com/

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