How Women in Analytics turned a Columbus conference into a global destination

2023 DataConnect

In just eight years, Women in Analytics has gone from an Ohio State University student’s idea to a national organization supporting a community of about 8,000 data enthusiasts. And its flagship DataConnect conference, held annually in Columbus, is now drawing attendees from around the world to Ohio.

Ahead of this year’s DataConnect conference in July, OhioTechNews.com spoke with Women in Analytics founder Rehgan Avon and CEO Kelsey Dingelstedt about the organization’s mission and impact.

OhioTechNews.com: How did the Data Connect conference get started? 

Dingelstedt: The first event Rehgan led (eight years ago) wasn’t supposed to be anything large, but it ended up being about 150 to 200 people, standing-room only. And that clearly indicated to her a need; that she wasn’t the only one who was feeling underrepresented in the industry. We have grown from this 200-person event to our 2024 event, where we're expecting 1,500 in-person and 500 virtual attendees.

OTN: What makes the conference unique and how has it evolved?

Avon: We’re very mission focused and that mission's never changed; it continues to feed through each of the events. It's very important for us to be one of the most premier data, AI, and analytics events globally. And so we want to be seen that way first and we want to provide visibility to the women in the ecosystem. Because of that, we're very, very intentional about content quality by vetting and closely curating topics. So we spend a lot of time just focused on that, and that's our number one priority and always has been.

We’ve gotten a lot more intentional about networking opportunities and connecting people. Initially, we were just hoping that a lot of that would happen organically. We've gotten a lot more structured about it and I think people really appreciate that. We also designed a speaker bureau, in which every single speaker gets free access to professional training and coaching from a top tier TEDx-like speaker coach. And they do a lot of group sessions together, so they get to know the other speakers throughout the process. It helps us because it ensures they have really good content; and it helps them because it ensures their talk is really well received, and that they can apply to other conferences as well. Because of that, we get a lot of first time speakers, which a lot of conferences don't do. We are very confident in doing that because our whole goal is to get more women into the visibility mode of what they're working on. We’re helping more women get paid to speak, which is also a huge problem. A lot of women are just speaking for free for exposure when they could be getting paid to speak.

Dingelstadt: We've also launched a community platform, which houses about 8,000 global members now as well. And we're really using that as a platform to kind of carry that similar messaging of amplifying diverse folks in the space year round versus just at this one annual event.

Women in Analytics founder Rehgan Avon (L) and CEO Kelsey Dingelstedt (R)

OTN: Tell us about the rebrand of the event.

Dingelstadt: It was the Women in Analytics conference until 2022. We rebranded the event to the DataConnect conference for a couple of reasons, one of which was to hold true to the core value of amplifying diverse individuals in this space. We would be doing these women a disservice if other people, including men, didn't have the opportunity to actually hear them speak and hear them share their experiences and insights that they have to offer.

Avon: We kept getting feedback that men specifically weren't sure if they were allowed to attend because it was called a Women in Analytics conference. We wanted to try to avoid that altogether, and so we rebranded to make sure that everyone felt welcome to attend.

Q: What does it mean for Columbus and Ohio to be hosting this? 

Dingelstedt: I feel like for us it's been important and exciting to be able to host it in the same city every year because the community in Columbus is so receptive and helpful, and we've curated an excellent group of organizations and people who help put this event on that are crucial to the outcome of that. 

Avon: I just think it's absolutely phenomenal that we could get 450 people to show up to a data and AI event in 2018. Six years ago it wouldn't have been a very common thing. When you look at the different hubs where this is a very popular topic, we're talking San Francisco and Austin and maybe Miami and New York, but you don't really see events at this scale, and especially at this quality, in a Midwest city. So I just think it's really, really unique from that perspective, especially with our diversity lens on top of it. There's one other event like ours in the United States and Stanford hosts it, so I think that's also pretty incredible.

Obviously lots of AI conferences are popping up this year, so there's a lot more now. But I think the fact that we've gotten such a huge head start has been extraordinarily helpful. We've brought talent to Ohio every single year. JobsOhio sponsors us because one of our big strategic initiatives is to bring more talent into Ohio and expose them to our sponsors that want to hire them. We do something every year called the Fly-In Scholarship, in which we select 10 participants to fly in for free and give them a free ticket. And we have people from all over the world that participate in that. So I think in terms of us being seen as a prominent state when it comes to tech and AI, we get really good feedback from our speakers especially. Many who have never been to Ohio get to see how vibrant the community is, and I think it makes people second guess the appeal of Ohio.

OTN: How do you measure the impact of this in Ohio?

Avon: One of the ways that we look at it is our percentage of participants that are local versus outside of Ohio. We track that every year and it continues to get more diversified. We get more and more people from outside of Ohio. A lot of companies use it as a re-skilling opportunity too. I want to say about 40% of our tickets are purchased by companies who are sending their employees, who are trying to get them re-skilled or up-skilled as a part of participating.

Q: What other programming and initiatives does Women in Analytics do throughout the year? 

Avon: We have a pretty extensive jobs board and a jobs newsletter that people can subscribe to and see job openings in this space, which is targeted toward our diverse demographics. Companies love it. Our membership includes the mentorship program, which has been really great. A couple of women have gotten job placements because of that. We also do workshops and tutorials with hands-on technical tutorials on things like Python and GitHub and whatever helps people get a little bit more comfortable with the technical side of this field. And then we are launching two really big cohorts of workshops that are kind of like a bootcamp. One of them is to help women be prepared for a Chief Data Officer role. So these are actual coaching and training opportunities for women who want to excel in the field. 

Learn more about 2024 DataConnect by visiting Data Connect Conference.