Dear WTF Fam,
2020 has been a doozy...all 67 months of it.
To say that this year didn’t go as planned is an understatement. This year has been one of change on many fronts—from the way we approach work, to the way we interact with colleagues, friends, and family, as well as opening our eyes to larger societal reckonings that go well beyond affecting just our industry. Even with our world being turned upside down and despite not being able to get together in-person, you all still “showed up” for us and for each other. For that, we are so grateful.
This year has brought a major shift in how we interact with all of you.
With in-person events becoming obsolete to ensure the health and safety of all, a new model was born with our virtual masterclass series. Turns out that the very digital infrastructure that we’re all working on building in our respective professions only fortified our ability to connect to our global community in a new and refreshing way. This alone reaffirms that the subsea cables, servers and physical infrastructure we all support goes well beyond connection and enables growth, progress, and innovation.
Through these masterclasses, we explored many pertinent topics hosted by experts. Through the steadfast support of our team, our community and our sponsors, we were able to bring you 8 insightful masterclasses on a range of topics including: Resiliency, Negotiation Skills, Knowing Your Edge, Diversity & Inclusion, Empowering the Female Investor, the Power of Belonging and Inclusive Leadership. We even got our sweat on together with a a group shadowboxing class to get us all out of that sedentary work-from-home funk we like to call October (aka 7 months into the pandemic; no man’s land). We simply could not have done this without all of your support, showing up in numbers that surpassed our expectations and helped grow our community to over 1,300 women and allies. An extra special and big shout-out to our 2020 sponsors who not only provided us with funds, but with operational support and access to incredible speakers and resources. Thank you, thank you, thank you to AECOM, CloudScene, Coresite, Digital Realty, Equinix, Facebook, Google, Netflix, and Rogers.
So, what’s next?
2021 is still a big question mark for a lot of us. How much will go back to normal? Is ‘normal’ even a possibility or is there no going back? What we do know is that we plan to continue delivering more masterclasses. We recognize that even if we are able to get back together in-person for events (fingers crossed!) there is still value in keeping up with virtual content to engage with those of you who can’t travel and attend events. It’s time for us to move towards and embrace a hybrid model. Our first event will be in January, stay tuned around the new year for more information. We also recognize that we still have some gaps in our global presence, and we’d like to change that. For instance, we plan to have more live (virtual) event options for our WTF family in APAC, so expect more updates on that in the coming months. We fully intend to resume our in-person events when it is safe to do so. We miss seeing all of your faces.
With that, we would like to ask for your feedback and input.
It is of vital importance that we take your needs and opinions into account when planning for the coming year. Afterall, WTF is a grassroots organization so all of your voices are crucial to our mission. We invite you to please take this brief survey. We are asking you to give us feedback on what you have seen and what you would like to see in the future. There is also opportunity for you to influence what topics we cover in our masterclasses and blogs, plus any other ideas outside of that scope you’d like to suggest. We’re all ears!
Lastly, we are working on our 2021 sponsorship plans. If there is interest to sponsor, please let us know.
We are very excited to keep this journey going with all of you by our side. We wish you all a very warm, safe, and happy holiday season and a very happy new year. We will see you in 2021!
Cheers,
Sarah, Elena, Suzie, Jess & Nads