Tiny Tweet Heard by Many!
When Isis Wegner, a full-stack engineer at OneLogin, published a blog on 1st August 2015 on her experience as a woman working in the technology industry with the #ILookLikeAnEngineer, little did she know that it would make a day for someone sitting in Bangalore, India. This hashtag, #ILookLikeAnEngineer, got lot of attention and thousands of women engineers joined the Twitter campaign to break down the gender stereotypes in the tech industry.
I had read about this campaign and saw it in the twitter trends too. But I was double-minded whether I should post a tweet supporting the campaign. Nevertheless, I got busy and forgot about it. On 5th August, a friend of mine, George, shared this link. I told him that I knew about it and how I was planning on posting one tweet myself but didn’t really do it. To that he replied that I should post a tweet and encouraged me to do it. In 10 minutes, I posted one.
This happened in the evening at around 6:30PM. In about 5–10 minutes after that, I received a reply to my tweet by a person named Jon Wilshire with this request.
As any initial response, I thought this was fake and didn’t bother to reply to this. After reaching back home, I opened his profile to look if he was legit and after doing some background check, I confirmed he was legit. Following this I sent him a direct message and after some talks I sent him my number. He called me and asked about me and what I was doing. He then asked for my mail ID and said that I might have to talk for the BBC radio London the next day (which was on 6th August) and this would be a Live Chat! He would send more details on the mail.
I was definitely excited (only if I could express how excited I was that night). Within an hour, I received an email from Jon saying that the interview would be sometime between 0900–0930 for 10 minutes. Also that the interview would be better at Skype and requesting for my Skype ID. He also wrote that I would be on air with 2 other women engineers from Shanghai and Brazil. This sounded great to me and I shared my Skype ID. Following this I got bit worried on how I should talk and what I should say.
Next day I woke up at 7AM and after my morning chores, I saw that I had 3 missed calls from a foreign number. I knew it was from the BBC. In a minute the phone rang again. This time a woman’s voice. She said that she was from the BBC and that I would have to be ready online in half hour. I literally freaked out!
I stay about 5 minutes away from workplace and I had left my laptop in my workplace the previous day. I hurried to the office to see that the office was not yet open. In 2 minutes I lost patience and with no money balance in my phone for a call (this was before Jio came ;)), I went to ESPN office (which was right beside TiE Bangalore’s office) to call Naveen (he opens the office and takes care of facilities at TiE Bangalore). When I left the ESPN office and walked to TiE office, I saw Naveen there standing. I was so relieved to see him. Quickly I ran in, took my laptop out and logged onto Skype. I saw that I had received a request from BBC and the moment I accepted the request, I got an audio call from them.
The reporter there talked to me for 5 minutes and gave me instructions for the interview. He told me that I was the first one to get connected and that I should be live on air in 15 minutes. He put me on hold then. I could hear the radio jockey talking and in between the advertisement saying, “And in sometime we will have women engineers talk about the twitter campaign #ILookLikeAnEngineer”. I heard this a couple of times and each time I heard this my heart would jump with excitement. Then I heard the 1 minute news and finally after 15 minutes I heard the radio jockey call out my name and the other woman engineer who joined in from Shanghai. The RJ asked us about the twitter trend and what we thought as women engineers. He also asked us how difficult was it for us to be engineers in our respective countries. The interview went on for 10 minutes. After the interview, the RJ thanked us and bid goodbye.
After the line was disconnected, I jumped from my seat and walked across the empty office with pride and happiness. I just couldn’t stop smiling.
Sometime a small encouragement from a friend can change your life forever!
I had to thank my friend (though I am pretty sure he didn’t see the BBC thing coming either) and yes, I am grateful for the 10 minutes of fame!
