Tegan Valeny, Author at neuco

Reflections from NAB Show 2025 – Industry Optimism, Tariff Wobbles & Talent Trends

Posted on April 16, 2025 by Tegan Valeny

After our annual trip to NAB in Las Vegas, we’re back with full notebooks, sore feet, and plenty of thoughts about where the industry’s headed.

First off, the general vibe this year? Really positive. Compared to last year, there was a noticeable lift in energy. Almost everyone we met seemed genuinely pleased with the volume—and more importantly, the quality—of their customer meetings. Always a good sign, though of course the real test is what happens in the weeks and months after the show.

That said, visitor numbers were definitely lighter—Sunday in particular felt pretty quiet. Still, there was a decent geographic spread. We saw strong representation from EMEA and APAC, but overall, it felt like a more North American-focused event than in previous years. Perhaps a reflection of tighter travel budgets or evolving post-pandemic strategies, and likely a trend that will continue.

A recurring topic of conversation was tariffs—and how they might impact the broadcast and media tech space. Views varied wildly. Some were unfazed—“we’re a software business, we’ll be fine”—while others were genuinely concerned. Our view? The direct impact may be minimal for most, but it’s the hit to confidence and decision-making that could have the biggest effect. When investment slows, the whole industry feels it.

Encouragingly, there was still a lot of talk about growth. Despite the macroeconomic backdrop, companies are revising strategies, exploring new markets, and broadening their video capabilities. That’s not just good news—it’s essential for keeping momentum going. A clear direction of travel for many is moving into new areas of video beyond the traditional broadcasters, operators, and content owners. The Enterprise space came up repeatedly, and we fully expect more companies to expand their reach into that world.

Naturally, consolidation was a topic too. The vendor landscape continues to shift, and while that’s nothing new, it always brings both opportunity and uncertainty. In times like this, agility is key—for businesses and individuals alike.

And of course, there are the people. Everyone says it, but this industry really is full of brilliant individuals. Our meetings were full of insight, energy, and laughs. It’s one of the things we love most about what we do—because behind every innovation, every partnership, every deal, there’s a great team making it happen.

So, what does all this mean for hiring?

In times of change, growth, or uncertainty (and let’s face it, that’s most of the time!), having the right people in place is more important than ever. Whether you’re breaking into new markets, adapting product strategy, or preparing for shifts in customer behaviour, success hinges on your team.

Two of the biggest hiring trends we’re seeing right now:

1. People from outside the industry making an impact – Sometimes a fresh approach is exactly what’s needed. Just look at the CEO panel at the Devoncroft Summit (held the day before the show opened), where 3 of the 4 panellists—Avid, Vizrt, and Dalet—had recently hired CEOs from outside the broadcast world.

2. Enterprise experience unlocking new markets – As vendors look beyond their traditional customer base, the Enterprise space is full of opportunity. But it’s a different beast. The buyer behaviour, expectations, and sales cycles can be completely different—so bringing in people who understand that world will be key to success.

The good news? We’re here to help. Whether you’re growing your team, reviewing your hiring strategy post-NAB, or just want to chat about how the market’s evolving, let’s talk.

We’re already looking forward to next year, but for now, it’s back to doing what we do best: helping amazing companies connect with amazing people.

Improving Adaptability in Content & Media

Posted on February 18, 2025January 28, 2025 by Tegan Valeny

Change is a fundamental part of the content and media industry. But how can people and companies adapt to those changes without losing touch with where they started? On Episode 37 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, we spoke with Mitch Askenas, the Executive Director, Video Platform – Head of Commercial, Americas at Comcast Technology Solutions, about how he has been handling changes in his company recently, and his advice for anyone who is going through something similar. Read on for his insights.

How has the industry changed over the years since you joined?

The industry has evolved tremendously overall, but fundamentally, viewers still want to watch content. Back in the day, content was provided to you on a traditional television channel, and you watched what was delivered to you. Over time, there have been inventions that have allowed us to watch content on demand, first on VHS tapes and DVDs, and then on streaming platforms. The industry has thoroughly evolved from a push media to a medium where viewers can watch what they want, when they want, where they want, and how they want to watch it.

How have you adapted to those changes over your time in the industry as well?

Well, adapting is fun. You adapt by trying to invent new processes, and that’s both on the engineering side and on the selling side. In my career, I’ve evolved from being an engineer and inventing and running engineering teams to moving into the sales world and managing sales teams, but in both roles, I’ve still had to adapt to change.

Adapting to change is the key to success across everyone’s career and everyone’s business, but many things don’t change at all. Things like selling your ideas will always stay the same. Whether you’re an engineer or a salesperson, your job is to get your ideas sold to your audience, which can be your management team or your customers. The fact that we have to sell our ideas hasn’t changed, even though the things that we sell have. Some things always stay the same, even while things change. It’s been fun learning that, but I had to learn it mostly on my own.

From an industry perspective, it has been great to see where new technologies were going to take us, but I never knew if the industry was ready to embrace them. I think circumstances change, and everybody’s embracing the change of allowing viewers and subscribers to access content wherever, whenever. The key to all this is, how do you make money doing that with your content? The challenge of the industry today is ‘How do you monetise the huge amount of content in your library?’

How do you stay motivated throughout those challenges?

Times of change are actually times of opportunity. The question is, how do you embrace that opportunity? For me, change is exciting. It means things are moving forward. Typically, they’re opportunities to do new things and to be part of that change. To me, that’s a huge motivation. If you can muster that mindset and bring those change opportunities forward, especially to your customers, you can help them see that they can be part of the change and be successful as a result.

Yes, it’s hard, there’s no question about it, but if you’re always thinking about your customers rather than what the thing you’re selling is, you’ll help them make their business better. Especially in times of change, keeping their business moving forward, and helping them figure out how to weather those storms, creates an opportunity to find synergy between your two companies. That’s how it’s an opportunity.

What tips would you now pass on that have worked for you and your team?

Everybody, no matter what position they’re in, has great ideas. The real question is, how do you get those ideas promoted? Early in my career, when I came up with those great ideas, they were all about me. When I would go and talk about them, they never really resonated because it was all about me. Thankfully, a wise person in my past told me, ‘Don’t make it about yourself. Make it about them.’ That was the seminal moment of learning how to sell. It didn’t matter that it was my idea, it was all about them. When I changed my mindset to figure out how what I was selling could provide value and success to the people I was talking to, everything changed.

Selling is about three things. Number one is showing the potential customer that the risk of change is much lower than the risk of staying the same. The second is to demonstrate to the buyer why they’re going to be personally successful if they invest in you. The last one is don’t tell them what it is and don’t tell them what it does. Instead, focus on what it means to their business. If you can accomplish those three things, you will be more successful.

To hear more about keeping up with the changes in the industry, tune into Episode 37 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here.

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.

IBC 2024’s Key Take-Aways

Posted on January 21, 2025January 2, 2025 by Tegan Valeny

IBC conferences and trade shows are the content and media industry’s biggest events of the year. On Episode 35 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, we were joined by Till Sudworth, the CMO and Head of BU Video at NPAW, to discuss his experience of attending the event. He also shared his predictions for the future of the industry based on what he saw at the event. Read on for Till’s insights.

IBC 2024 was obviously a really big show for you guys. What were some of the key takeaways from this year’s show?

It was a super good trade show. It was almost the most successful IBC we’ve ever had in terms of leads, people stopping by our booth, and in terms of willingness to do business. So it was a very positive IBC, which kind of surprised us a little bit, because we know in the industry there have been a lot of cost cuttings and layoffs among our customers and prospects. I was surprised by the positive atmosphere and mentality that we saw at the IBC.

On the other side, it was an important trade show for us. IBC is always one of the most important trade shows for us in the world. But this year was specifically important as we launched a lot of new products, and we made an important step in the transformation from being a one-product company to a multi-product company. That was very interesting, and actually, a lot of fun, because we can now serve a lot of different requirements from our customers and prospects.

Were there any new solutions or products that you wanted to highlight from the show?

It was our first step into the European market. Although the IBC is not a European show, it was held in Europe, which was important for us to launch a lot of new products on the other side. One of the products was an AI product, which was all over the place at the IBC. We were working with data, which is an obvious use case, but we had worked on our supportive AI pretty hard for the last few years, and we finally have a great product which enables and supports our customers to engage with data more easily than before. Our tool not only proactively shows you any anomalies in your system but also helps our users access the data more easily. Our customers that we showed it to really loved it.

Based on your experience this year, how would you say the industry’s moving forward, and what are some key opportunities?

Honestly, I didn’t have a single moment at the IBC to walk around and see anything. So, unfortunately, I cannot say how the industry is moving in terms of other vendors, but what I see from our customers that I spoke to at the event is that there’s light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the industry becoming more stable. There were a lot of layoffs and cost-cutting that were necessary for companies to become profitable in the past two years or three years. A lot of them did their homework already, while some are still in the middle of a transformation, but at least from our perspective, we see the atmosphere becoming better. Ultimately, platforms need to understand the end users and the quality of their experience to remain compatible or competitive in the industry.

To hear more from Till, tune into Episode 35 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here.

Evolving Challenges Within Sports Broadcasting

Posted on December 13, 2024October 21, 2024 by Tegan Valeny

Sports broadcasting is an evolving space, with viewers demanding an increasingly wide range of options and additional content. On Episode 34 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast, we spoke with Anna Lockwood, the Head of Media & Sport at Telstra International, about the challenges she faces when creating innovative solutions to these challenges. Read on for her insights.

How do you manage such a diverse range of sports broadcasting requirements across different markets and regions?

We have a very international team at Telstra, and we’ve got people who are across all of our different projects in support roles. We also have people who are dedicated to a specific project, who will just work on that event or that project. We scale and grow depending on what we’re doing at any one time, with new staff members, freelancers, and consultants. There’s a lot of bounce in our talent pool, but we’ve got a core set of on-staff team members who do a lot of work across the globe and across projects. We augment that core team depending on what we need for a particular project or event.

When I started at Telstra, there were 10 people in our little media business unit, and now we have over 200. I think that underlying growth will continue, but at any given time, especially a summer like this one in 2024, when there have been so many amazing sporting events happening, we’ll bounce and grow our talent pool to accommodate the projects that we’re delivering.

What are some challenges associated with streaming and broadcasting such live events?

We try to prepare everything that we can control, but the real magic is in reacting to things that we can’t control and completely unexpected things. There are plenty of surprises in the live sports environment. It could be technology, infrastructure, or it could be a change in programming, but being very agile is always important.

It’s always about putting the customer first. We know that whatever happens, we will be the best partner we can be at any time, no matter what region or time zone they’re in or what event they’re doing. Having that DNA in our business to support customers during these very high-profile events has helped our services wrap around their requirements. Having the experience and razor-sharp focus helps us respond as quickly and as effectively as possible when things do go wrong. That’s what gives our customers trust in our services and is the reason they keep on coming back and working with us again and again.

How do you see the world of sports broadcasting evolving over the next five years?

I think there’ll be a lot of continuation of the trends that we’re seeing today, like remote production. Being able to produce from anywhere, no matter where the event is, is moving workflows and capabilities onto cloud platforms and distributed working models. Those are all trends which accelerated during COVID-19, and we don’t see any slowdown at the moment.

How people experience and view sports is also always evolving. So how, as a services provider, can we use our infrastructure and technology to create the immersive and collaborative viewer experiences that our customers are exploring at the moment? That’s where I see a lot of growth and development happening.

To hear more from Anna, tune into the rest of her episode of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here.

Transformation in Content & Media

Posted on October 25, 2024October 21, 2024 by Tegan Valeny

With so many social and technological changes happening around the world, transformation is a key skill for any content and media company that wants to stay relevant. On Episode 32 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast we spoke with Chris Pulis, the Chief Technology Officer at Globecast, who has a huge amount of experience when it comes to leading transformation projects. Read on for his insights into the process.

How do you know when to kick off a transformation project?

You have to be in tune with the business. I came into those early projects as someone who saw it as ‘this is something that management has made a decision about’, and I just became part of the overall plan. Later in life, as I ran businesses, I could see that there were changes happening in the business and identify which of those are different areas of the business needed to be addressed.

I realised that if we want to stay relevant, we have to move off of antennas, because satellites are moving into terrestrial networks like the cloud. We need to start making investments and changes so that we’re not behind. To me, one of the worst things in the world is hearing about changes for the first time from a customer. Our goal is to make sure that we’re ready for that and that we’re bringing these solutions to the customers before they even know what they are.

But, transformation efforts are difficult. Change drives anxiety, and everybody reacts a little differently to it. Some people have an easier time with it, but it bothers some people a lot. You need to be understanding of that and have a plan that keeps empathy in mind and that also includes education or training. Your plan has to enable everybody to be successful at doing this new thing. As a management team, you will be a support group for this change that’s coming. At the end of the day, it’s about people, and enabling an environment or culture that understands that it’s not going to be easy for everybody.

How do you make sure that teams and individuals are engaged in these transformation projects?

I think it’s important to be very transparent with people. In the entertainment industry, some people have a philosophy of ‘Knowledge is power, and I’m going to keep this knowledge, and I’m not going to share any of it’. I actually subscribe to the opposite philosophy, which says that the importance of power is to share it. By that I mean making sure that everybody understands what the plan is, what the goals are, and if for some reason something’s not clear, then creating an opportunity to come together and clearly define what that is. If everybody knows how things are going to evolve, there will be less anxiety.

I use town hall meetings on a frequent basis to make sure everybody understands the plan. I take pictures of everything and I share them all the time. I want everybody to feel like they have an understanding of the process. There shouldn’t be any surprises about an ongoing transformation.

How do you measure success within transformations?

It is a challenge. When you go into a transformation project, you need to put together a plan that says what we are supporting for the business, what we are enabling from an addressable market standpoint, and what new revenue streams we are enabling as a result of this transformation. Sometimes it’s strictly an efficiency play, because you’re moving from a technology that doesn’t scale to a technology that’s significantly scalable with a low incremental cost. You’ve got to sit down and look at the business plan. You can’t just say, ‘We have a new technology and we’re going to adopt it’, you have to think, ‘How is this AI going to enhance our customer experience?’ Figure out the business plan first before you implement the transformational exercise to make that change.

To hear more about leading transformations, tune into Episode 32 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here.

Generative AI’s Impact on the Content & Media Industry

Posted on October 11, 2024 by Tegan Valeny

As AI continues to develop, so does its impact on the content and media industry. To help us understand the impact this phenomenon will have on the future of work in our industry, we invited Micky Edwards, the VP of Business Development EMEA & APAC at TAG Video Systems, to speak to us on The Content & Media Matters Podcast. Read on for his insights on AI.

What is generative AI, and how does it differ from other types of AI?

Generative AI is an artificial intelligence that can react to things in real time as they are going on. Artificial intelligence has been around for quite some time, but it’s all been pre-programmed, so it was looking at and understanding things that were already known. Generative AI is the next step up, and it’s looking at how it can bring that information together to start making different things. The fact that it can start to do contextual things like understand the context of what’s going on, and then produce some text is incredible.

What is the impact of AI on jobs and the future of work?

A lot of people are worried that generative AI will take jobs away, but I think it’ll allow people to go and do something different. I think it will positively impact the future of work, because it may allow people to have a better sort of work-home balance as well as do some of these more repetitive tasks that you have within the industry. These tasks that would take somebody many hours to do can now be handled by generative AI while they go and do something else, giving them more free time as well.

The whole process that we’re going through at the moment is learning about AI’s limits and how it will help us to look at our work-life balance. It may be that you’ll end up doing more job sharing, where you’re doing part of a job, but the other part of the job is being done by a machine, which means that somebody else can come in and do something else, while that’s going on. I’m not totally convinced that it’s a bad thing.

AI is also expanding the knowledge of what’s achievable with programming and operations, across not just our industry, but multiple industries. There’s always going to be a requirement for some things, like having a person stand behind a camera, and they have robotics and AI controlling it, but actually, a skilled operator can still get those shots that a computer system just can’t process. So yes, AI will come in and make things different, but I’m not sure it’ll be a bad difference. There will definitely be some upsides to not having humans do the repetitive jobs within the industry.

How do you see generative AI being used in the industry as a whole?

I think where we’ll see AI really coming to the forefront is in a new generation of FAST channels. So these are free to air, without subscription, ad-supported television. Broadcasters want to reach out to produce these as cheaply as possible because the only revenue they’re getting is through ad insertion. So, we can see a point where generative AI will have access to the content, and there’ll be some rules that it has to follow, but it’ll be able to take that content and be able to produce these FAST channels, and then self-manage them. It’s already doing ad selections and things like that, depending on the content type and by looking at the people that are watching it and being able to select the correct ads for them. That will help some of the broadcasters who are perhaps struggling a little bit to make any money out of FAST channels. I see that it as definitely a positive for them to be able to use generative AI to help do that.

To hear more from Micky, tune into Episode 31 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here.

Reflections from IBC Part 1: Reasons for Optimism

Posted on September 20, 2024 by Tegan Valeny

A Look at Market Sentiment and Future Trends

The general sentiment at this year’s IBC was markedly different from 2023—what a difference a year makes!

I think we can all agree that last year’s edition was probably one to forget. The buy side wasn’t buying, the sell side wasn’t selling, and everyone seemed to be on the hunt for a new job! Fast forward to this year, and the mood was noticeably more positive.

While it’s hard to say whether people have simply adjusted to a new normal where the industry isn’t quite as buoyant, or whether we’ve hit the bottom and are slowly beginning to climb back up, there was a noticeable sense of optimism across most areas of the market.

In conversations with those on the Operator and Platform owner side, it’s clear that while new projects and initiatives are in the works, there isn’t a distinct direction of travel just yet. Efficiency drives remain front and centre for many, and it feels like that chapter isn’t quite closed. This will inevitably impact their external investment in products, platforms, and services for the foreseeable future.

Broadly speaking, there’s also a feeling that there’s simply too much choice in the market, and many expect to see further vendor consolidation over the coming years.

For the vendors, the last 12 to 18 months have been challenging, but once again, optimism seemed to be the order of the day. Many are hard at work exploring new business cases, identifying new markets, and figuring out when they can truly say they have a bulletproof AI solution!

Speaking of AI, it wasn’t the hot topic some might have expected. In a market where cloud has been the buzzword for years but the majority still maintain on-prem solutions, I can’t help but wonder if the mass adoption of AI might be further off than many anticipate. But honestly, I don’t think anyone really knows for sure, which is both exciting and a little unnerving! For someone who’s been in this space for years, it feels like we’re all bracing for something big, but what exactly? Time will tell.

On the talent front, there’s some good news. Hiring is back on the agenda for more companies compared to 12 months ago. It’s been an incredibly tough period for a lot of people seeking new roles, and I genuinely hope the tide is beginning to turn.

All in all, IBC was a great show, and as always, it was fantastic to catch up with so many familiar faces. This industry really does have a love affair with IBC, even the cynics come around once they’re there!

Here’s to brighter times ahead—let’s keep the momentum going.

Inside Dalet’s Changing Product Offering

Posted on June 14, 2024 by Tegan Valeny

On Episode 28 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast we were joined by Robin Kirchhoffer, the Chief Marketing Officer at Dalet. Robin gave us an inside look at the company’s evolving product offering, going from when he first joined the company to what we can expect to see from them in the future. Read on to find out more about the evolution of Dalet’s media management platforms.

“The product has evolved a lot. When I first joined, we were much smaller, and we were just about to relaunch the OLED Galaxy, which is still being used today. When it was first launched, it was already a groundbreaking product, with a centralised media asset management and workflow solution for the media industry. That product has been growing a lot for the past six to eight years, and we have been adding a lot of functionalities.

We’re focused on the ecosystem around the product. As the product has evolved to become a cloud product, everything around it has too. Adding other functionalities, such as transcoding media processing features, as well as more orchestration and automation capabilities for the workflow, has freed up creatives’ time.

For news operations, we didn’t own a graphic solution back then. Now we’ve got an integrated studio automation. In 2019 we made the strategic decision to purchase a cloud-native asset management and workflow orchestration platform developed by VRLab. It’s the next generation of very light, fast and cloud-native solutions – with an analytical core as well. That has given us a new approach and accelerated our roadmap in going to larger media organisations, sports leagues and Federation teams, who are also trying to become a media organisation. They have so much amazing content around the players, and they’re creating experiences for their fans that extend what goes on in the stadium or at the games.

There’s been big growth for us in that segment, and the Dalet Flex – the new platform – has accelerated that segment. Larger corporations or big brands are looking at breaking a business unit, and today we also have developed a next-generation user room ecosystem, which is compatible with Galaxy and Flex. That’s an ecosystem of apps to trade the news, write your scripts, and organise the work between journalists, editors and producers in your browser tab, in a very collaborative way. News stories break very fast, so we need to enable our customers to work just as quickly.

For the past 30 years, we have always been about embracing and combining broadcast broadcast-first technologies with digital-first technology. We started our journey into cloud-first quite early by connecting little pieces of satellite products on the cloud to standard on-prem tools. Today we have taken a much broader step to the cloud. Our cloud-native media asset management and workflow orchestration solution, which is today at the core of all the solutions we provide, is the heart of our product.

We also took the very big step of going private in 2020. That was the best way to free ourselves from the financial restrictions of being a public company and accelerate our innovation on the news side. Cloud-native applications facilitate collaboration beyond borders, and that really makes us newsroom-centric, because it used to be that you had to be on-site to be able to pick up the news to write it, but now you can do everything wherever you are. Everybody is connected. You can extend the power of the newsroom and major operations in general.

Many of our customers have their own privacy systems in place and rely on that, and some don’t want to go fully onto the cloud because they want to have a more balanced approach. Including on-premises storage for the more valuable assets, for example, and being flexible, is extremely important. You have to be a giant in this transition, adapt, and take the steps that make everything we develop compatible for our existing customers – because that’s how we approach business. That’s why we have had customers with us for the past 10, 15, 20 or even 25 years, because we have been evolving with them.

We’re offering practical value, not just a little standalone app on one side of the disconnected from everything else. We’ve always been about connecting things and ensuring an integrated solution for our customers. The transition is key. We want to make sure that our customers can always go at this at the pace that they want. We don’t want to force them onto a new technology, we want to make sure that they are happy with what they have from us, they can carry on with it, they can enrich it. The day they say they want to replace their asset management or workflow orchestration with a cloud-native solution, we’ll have two solutions for that at the core of our offering today.”

To hear more from Robin, tune into Episode 28 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here.

Improving EDI in Telco

Posted on May 3, 2024 by Tegan Valeny

The telco industry is making progress towards positive diversity and inclusion, particularly in improving gender equality. On Episode 18 of The Connectivity Matters Podcast we spoke with Anna Deppi, the Senior Manager and Co-Chair of the Italian Women’s Leadership Community at Red Hat, about her experiences as a woman in the field. She also shared her advice for companies and other women who are navigating the changing landscape of EDI in the industry.

Have there been any challenges that you’ve encountered as a woman in telco, and how did you overcome them?

I have found myself being the only female at the table or in the room at times. Sometimes you have to decide which battles to pick because you can’t win everything. You need to have your strategies in place. There were situations where I had to speak up, but you can do it in a gentle way. Understanding why things are said that way or what makes you uncomfortable is important. I’d advise everyone to ask ‘why?’. Sometimes you hear it wrong because we live in a very globalised world and we all use English in different ways, so sometimes things are not clear. Step up and speak up as well.

Also, educate yourself. I noticed that by educating myself and listening to other points of view that I didn’t agree with, I opened up my world. I also think the person on the other side is often feeling the same way. Be yourself. I talk a lot about authenticity because you need to learn how you want to do things. Picking some of those strategies and battles was a bit of a shift, but it made me feel at ease around these tables most of the time.

Have you got any advice for how organisations can make their company cultures more inclusive to improve retention?

What I’ve seen around me is that mentoring and sponsorship are very important. You might have a tendency to keep your thoughts to yourself, but you need to talk to others from time to time, particularly with someone who’s been there before. Mentoring also helped me see things and do things in a different way. I do suggest building a very strong mentorship programme because it’s such a good support for people who are very shy and who don’t know how to approach people. Having a schedule and regular meetings does help build a rapport, and people get more out of it.

You also really need to start talking about equal pay. In some countries it’s mandatory, but you have to have this conversation because it’s very important to maintain people’s motivation and work-life balance, because the problem the telco industry already has is a lack of skills, so we can’t afford to lose talented people. Sometimes people need to step away to recharge their batteries and be more creative. Creativity is super important in everything that we do, and breaking out of your routine can really help with that.

What one piece of advice would you give to someone who’s entered the industry and is struggling with diversity and inclusion?

Go and talk to schools because there’s so much that this industry can give to young people and vice versa. Like I said, education is so important because it helps you understand yourself and other people better while raising awareness of why things are happening. That’s very important in an industry that is changing so fast because we need to change fast as well to be part of that change.

To hear more from Anna, tune into Episode 18 of The Connectivity Matters Podcast here.

Elevating Women in the Telco Industry

Posted on February 9, 2024 by Tegan Valeny

The telco industry is full of opportunity, but is it full of diversity? On Episode 3 of the Women In Telco miniseries on The Connectivity Matters Podcast we were joined by Maria Lema, one of the Co-Founders at Weaver Labs, to talk about her experiences of working and leading in the connectivity industry. Read on for her perspectives.

What have you experienced as a woman in the telco industry?

I think the telco industry is male dominated, but it’s not sexist. I’ve never experienced the issues some women have with being a successful professional in this industry or getting my voice heard or people not taking me seriously. This industry values knowledge and skills. So, if you know your stuff, people are gonna listen to you, regardless of your gender, age or other characteristics. There are a lot of imbalances in terms of age in the telco industry, which is something I would like to highlight. I think that telecoms is an industry that is very eager to have more diversity and more women and more young people.

I have met loads of inspirational women in this industry in leadership positions from early on. I’ve always seen myself growing into a leadership role in the industry, because I have always seen female leaders in the industry. I’ve also had extremely good male mentors who have put me in positions that allowed me to grow, develop and challenge myself, and I’m thankful for that because it’s taken me to the place where I am now. If you don’t have anyone that really challenges you and takes you out of your comfort zone, it’s impossible to grow. Nothing good happens in your comfort zone.

Telco is still male-dominated. What needs to happen for that to change?

There are a few things that need to change. The first is that telecoms needs to become attractive to the younger generations. For that to happen, we need to start doing things that are attractive. We’ll attract more young people with startups and innovation and actually breaking the status quo. That rebel approach was brought into the software industry 20 years ago, and we can certainly leverage some of those learnings.

We also need to show that there is a diversity of skills needed in this industry. Why do we only talk about engineers? We can attract marketing professionals, designers, and all sorts of people from different disciplines into the telecoms industry. We don’t need to focus on the techies. The other element is to incentivise women to get into engineering, because it’s actually quite rewarding. That goes back to school and younger education.

I think the telecoms industry is taking a great approach by putting more women in leadership. BT just announced that they’re going to have a female CEO, which I think is another great step in the right direction, because it’s bringing diversity into the leadership teams. That trickles down to everyone everywhere in your organisation. However, we need to stop tagging people as ‘female CEO’, ‘female founder’ – it’s a job, and they need to be treated exactly the same as any other person would be treated.

The other thing that I think it’s quite important to tackle if we actually want to evolve as an industry, is the fact that female-founded startups only attract 2% of the funding in our industry. I was saying that the telecoms industry is male dominated but it’s not a sexist industry, but the finance industry is male dominated and it’s very sexist. If we want to incentivize women in leadership and innovation, we obviously need to fund them. Without money, there’s no nowhere we can go.

Do you think there are any tech advancements or trends that will empower women to get into the industry?

Software is a catalyst of innovation for telecoms, and it is going to continue to impact this space, because it isolates complexity of the network. With AI there’s so much going on now. We can bring developers from the AI community to do something with all the data that we gather in our networks. They can help us organise our data and enable intelligence.

DevOps professionals could come and help us organise better infrastructures too. Opening up to the developer community would bring more skills and diversity to the industry, and it would bring monetization opportunities. Every industry that has engaged with the developer community through API’s has created a business model out of it. So we could expand our innovation landscape through them.

To learn more about women in the tech industry, tune into the Women In Tech miniseries on The Connectivity Matters Podcast here.