Women in Music Tech and Production
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Even in 2022, women are still vastly underrepresented in the music industry - especially when it comes to music engineering and production. In fact less than 5% of music production jobs globally are filled by women. At Musixmatch, we’re passionate about breaking down industry barriers to pave a new way for the next generations of women in music tech. That’s why we teamed up with Music Innovation Hub (the innovative Milan-based initiative behind many socially responsible projects in the music industry) to organize a meet-up last month for Women in Music Tech and Production. Panelists for this event included, Francesca Ronchini, an expert on sound event detection, Giulia Silvestri, the project coordinator for Intorno Labs, and Elisa Massara (Elasi) musician, producer, & founder of POCHE.
The Mix is an industry innovation podcast powered by Musixmatch Pro.
Original Music for the Mix Podcast was written and produced by Pierfrancesco Melucci.
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Talking about
Speakers
(7)
Cari Quoyeser
Francesca Ronchini
Giulia Silvestri
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Transcript
Verified
Cari Quoyeser
00:01
Hello and welcome, you're listening to The Mix, a
Musixmatch
Pro podcast hosted by me, Cari Quoyeser, in artist community and services, Silvia Olivieri in publishing and Stella Tavella in AI
.Share
00:14
In this special live edition of
The Mix
we met up in Milan
last month in partnership with music Innovation Hub as part of their ongoing series Future Sounds Better.Share
00:27
This live podcast session focused on the topic near and dear to your presenters hearts: Women in music tech and production. Please enjoy as Silvia, Stella and I had the chance to moderate this panel with some truly extraordinary women in the fields of
sound design
, music sync and sonification
. Please enjoyShare
Anna Zò
00:46
So welcome everyone. We're gonna speak english tonight because we have some international guests and maybe also some international audience hopefully. But later we can speak Italian and keep going with a beer in Italiano.
Share
01:01
My name is Anna, I'm Operations Manager at Music Innovation Hub, which is the company that works in this space. So you see a co-working space and this sound immersive studio, maybe Giulia is gonna talk a little bit more about that afterwards.
Share
01:17
We have been hosting these meetups since a while now we started in 2019, then of course
Covid
hit. So we had to stop and we started again last year. The meetups that we call "Future Sounds Better" are these kind of moments of occasions in which we invite people, great people, to talk and to share thoughts and experiences about different ways in which we conceive innovation in music.Share
01:44
So we had a long series of talks about
NFTs
and Blockchain
and digital innovation. Today we are talking about more social innovation in some ways. And yeah this is a little bit the idea of these future sounds better meetups, we'll be doing this for long hopefully. So keep following us and see what's coming on.Share
02:05
And this meetup was organized in partnership with
Musixmatch
. So we are really happy to have Musixmatch
team today that's gonna moderate the talk and it's gonna explain more what they do. So, enjoy the conversation, feel free to talk, ask questions and exchange as much as possible. Stay until the end so that we can drink a beer together and yeah, enjoy the conversation.Share
Cari Quoyeser
02:37
Thank you so much, Anna. I think we're gonna have to hold this close Silvia. Yeah, thank you so much for being here. My name is Cari. I'm the Artist community Manager at
Musixmatch
.Share
02:48
When Anna reached out to us about this presentation, about this meet up, it was a complete no brainer for us while the Mix specifically, which the three of us co host, Stella Silvia and I, while it's music innovation podcast, given our experiences in the
music industry
as female professionals, we have a passion for uplifting and pushing forward issues that that mirror our own struggle within this industry.Share
03:13
And thank you again so much for being here. I'll start with a little bit about myself and then Silvia and Stella will introduce themselves as well as our wonderful panelists here and then we'll get started. So I'm the artist community manager as I said, which means I deal with explaining the artist's perspective to art product team at
Musixmatch
.Share
03:31
I am a musician myself. I have been in the
music industry
for 20 years, I'm not that old, so I've been doing it for for pretty big portion of my life before Musixmatch
, I was a full time singer, songwriter, a lyricist
, a session vocalist and I've been involved in many different ways in the music industry
, basically any creative way that paid me. So I'm so happy to be here. So happy to meet you all and thank you for being here. I'll pass it off to Silvia.Share
Silvia Olivieri
04:00
Thank you. Hello everyone and you can sit down if you want. Just get comfortable. It's so nice to see so many beautiful faces. Thank you for being with us tonight. My name is Silvia Olivieri and I obviously work with Cari and Stella at
Musixmatch
. I don't only do the podcast.Share
04:20
I'm actually in publishing. I'm a Publishing Program Manager, which means a lot of things, but make it easy. I am responsible to create the structure for our publishing team. So ensuring that we have all the tools we need to do the job that we are paid to do.
Share
04:37
I have been in the industry for the past six years before that I I tried to be a musician too, didn't didn't go anywhere but I do great in the shower, but no one would pay for that.
Share
04:51
So I studied music business management and then I went into publishing you know now I'm here and in my free time I also have a podcast which has recently became a radio show and it's called Opinionated Monday, it's with a friend of mine and we discuss social issues from an intersectional feminist perspective. And I'll pass it to Stella.
Share
Stella Tavella
05:13
Hi everyone, I'm Stella, I'm an
Ai
Manager at Musixmatch
. I work with Silvia and Cari and yeah my specialties is specifically on sound and music analysis but at Musixmatch
as you know we deal also with lyrics so we try to understand deeply lyrics with the use of machines and extract meta data and everything.Share
05:38
So let's say co organizer of the Mix podcast, one of the speakers in some of the episodes that mostly relate to technology and I'm also the co organizer of another event which is an online event. I hope that somehow we can manage to organize something with Anna and and the team and it is the Italian music Tech meet-up, we co founded this with three other colleagues of mine, we are all Italians most of us studying abroad but we are working in the field of music and tech and we wanted to create a community to talk about many, many topics and if you want to find us on
YouTube
you can find our, one of the latest episodes that also features Francesca as a guest.Share
06:33
Besides that, I'm also of course in love with
music
and also an Ai
dance music producer. Yeah, I try to I try to produce music and use artificial intelligence to process my sound generate sounds and so on. And also I'm a wannabe DJShare
Silvia Olivieri
06:56
We can collaborate then: wannabe singer and wannabe DJ.
Share
Stella Tavella
07:01
Exactly. And that's it. Please Cari, go on.
Share
Cari Quoyeser
07:05
Wonderful. Well, we're going to start by introducing our panelists here, having them introduce themselves rather.
Share
07:11
I think we'll start with Francesca and Elasi and Giulia and we could just explain what you do, a little bit about your company and any other organization that you're involved with that highlights either your involvement in tech or anything you do for diversity inclusion and those spaces.
Share
Francesca Ronchini
07:28
Thank you and thank you for inviting me. I'm Francesca Ronchini, and I'm a computer science engineer and I graduated in
Turin
and then during the experience in Turin
, especially during the master, I moved to Barcelona
because of the Erasmus
basically, and there I start like, get more so electronic music for was like, my passion, I really, you know, was like listening a lot of artists and Barcelona
is kind of like the place to be if you're in love with that kind of music.Share
08:00
And I start to trying to find a connection between electronic music and what I wanted to do and I was like there should be a connection with computer science and instruments and
Ai
and all this work and then I start to look around and I found this second master music and some computing and I applied I got accepted and I specialize in that world.Share
08:21
I then start to work mainly with sound and right now in research engineering working in machine listening, which is a research area where we are trying to make machines be able to listen as humans do and trying to recognize sound events and be able to detect them to be able to react to those kind of like events accordingly.
Share
Cari Quoyeser
08:41
Yes, I have a question about that because I read about that and I didn't know the uses or the potential uses of that. So you say that you are working with sound detection so you can detect what a sound is. Do you have any practical applications for that kind of?
Share
Francesca Ronchini
08:55
So there many many applications, there are many applications like related to sound events detection, for example like one of the main one, it's related to security especially like for example like in city if you're only have like video or if you have to detect like a dangerous situation.
Share
09:13
Sounds can be really useful if you have for example like a glass breaking or if you have a gun, somebody like shouting, that will be really useful to have a sound that's like super fast and you can recognize them.
Share
09:24
Other applications for example are dealing with helping people for example like hate people or when you have maybe like an older person alone in the house. That will be really useful.
Share
09:35
And somehow like some detection can also be introduced like for example in music production in
Ableton
or those kind of for example like platform and an artist can be, can use those kind of plug-ins to be able to, you know, if you have a sound that you are really interesting from how you live the algorithm will be able to detect to you know, split that sound and you can use it in your production or in your music.Share
09:60
So they're really a lot of applications that can be applied to
Share
Cari Quoyeser
10:03
Very cool. Thank you. And Elasi, so Elasi is a producer, singer songwriter. So many things. Please explain them to us.
Share
Elisa Massara (Elasi)
10:14
Yeah, because the only way to survive in this market, the music market in
Italy
is doing a lot of things. So that's why I do everything I can with music and mostly produce music for like advertisement, for fashion and fashion shows or for art installations and also for my music, because I'm also a songwriter and I have an idea with labor and Italian label here and I'm a, I'm a DJ also which is the other big job that I have because it asked me to work a lot with brands and events, private events.Share
Cari Quoyeser
10:60
So you do synching as well? Like licensing, synching music for commercials and for publishers?
Share
Elisa Massara (Elasi)
11:08
Yeah, I have a couple of synchs on
Netflix
and another Italian television. But most of the advertisement that I do is a web advertisement.Share
Cari Quoyeser
11:19
I don't know how many of your musicians, but it's incredibly difficult to break into the licensing or sinking world very hard. Especially during
Covid
, it became one of the most competitive ways to make money to monetize music was through these sort of deal. So that's not an easy feat.Share
Elisa Massara (Elasi)
11:36
It's not every month. I don't, I never know what was coming the next month. So every, every time I don't know if we're gonna sing something. I've got, I have a job in that kind of field. So the job is also connecting with people and trying to send my portfolios and keep looking for new opportunities.
Share
Giulia Silvestri
11:58
I know this sensation because it's the same for me actually.
Share
12:02
I am Giulia. I'm a sound designer and also a music composer and I'm a passionate of immersive virtual environments. I will explain you later what these things are. Well, I was born in Vicenza, which is a little city close to
Venice
and Verona
if you know, and there I had a classical music background.Share
12:25
So I was playing the piano and violin there, I was playing in an orchestra. But then I was, I was curious about other things. So I decided to move to
Milan
and to study visual arts here. By studying visual arts I got really, really interested in contemporary art and in particular in art installations and video art.Share
12:47
That's why I moved my interest towards video and doing videos, making videos, I discovered that actually there was something missing for me and that some thing was sound still. So I went back studying sound again, but in a different way, I wanted to know like the physics and the
psychoacoustics
basis of sound.Share
13:08
And that's why I applied to a sound engineering course where I had the chance to meet Intorno Labs which is this thing behind me, behind us, which is a 3D audio technology. Intorno is like the combination between installation and sound.
Share
13:26
So it was the perfect match for me at that time. And Intorno is actually multidimensional sound technology that it's used for live sound performances or immersive installations and lets you live immersive experiences.
Share
13:43
So yeah, in the end, my interest was also conveyed into immersive virtual spaces which is like a same thing of internal, more or less, but in a virtual field.
Share
13:54
I began in January, this January to work with a research lab here in
Milan
. It's a laboratory with the aim of scientific research from Politecnico Di Milano
here in Milan
of course and with them I'm working on a Metaverse
.Share
14:12
So we are creating a virtual space where we are putting sound sources to check if the avatars, which are the people navigating the virtual space, we want to check what they feel while navigating.
Share
14:28
Okay, so this method is going to be tested actually, it's it has already been tested this June and now we are analyzing the stimulus that the people head during the navigation.
Share
14:39
So the aim is to understand if the
metaverse
in the future could have an impact on us when navigating and yeah, that's it. And apart from these things, I'm also a sound designer for advertisements, fashion films and documentaries and short films, etcetera.Share
Silvia Olivieri
14:60
Sounds great. There's so much, there's so much knowledge and power here and I feel like that that could be a good collaboration also between the three of you. So yeah, we love this.
Share
Cari Quoyeser
15:13
Hey, songwriters, did you know that by transcribing and sinking your lyrics on
Musixmatch
Pro, you're not only ensuring that your lyrics pop up on all major DSPs like Spotify
and Instagram
, but you're also giving your fans a deeper way to understand and connect with your music.Share
15:30
If you haven't already get verified on
Musixmatch
Pro today and get sinking Musixmatch
Pro: one place for music creators.Share
15:41
The reason that we became so, I mean, we've always been interested in this is a topic, given our own experiences, but we're looking to do one of my own projects. I was trying for a few years actually, to find a female producer and it took years, and have only recently become connected with other with female producers, I wonder Which is here, she's great.
Share
16:02
But I came across a startling statistic and it's less than 5%, actually around 2.5% of producers in the global market are female, 2.5%. That's outrageous. I know that we said earlier that women are drastically underrepresented within the tech industry and within the music tech industry even more so. Here In
Italy
, was it 70% of people at music festivals and performing music festivals are male, something around there?Share
16:37
So all this in mind, you do three have such incredibly impressive careers within the
music industry
. Did you experience any barriers yourself, even whether it be like psychological barriers to success or anything that you felt that was standing in your way, that was just a little bit combative in addition to your own insecurities coming into, you know, your own in your passions.Share
Francesca Ronchini
17:00
I can start. Yeah, that's true. I mean, when I started studying, it was like maybe 20 girls out of like 300 guys or something. So it's kind of like, you know, like you get into these huge class at the university and you're just like 20 years and you think like, I'm doing something right? Or like, why we are so few and why are not girls or like, women interested, you know in tech.
Share
17:25
And then like, I got back to study after five years, six years. And again, we were like three girls out of like 22 guys. And so it means like nothing changed. And it was like music tech.
Share
17:37
So it was like, of course we were really few person because it's, you know, it's a small world in a sense, but I feel like we were really, really, I figured I didn't have any. So my experience was more related to sometimes you just feel, or I felt like I am am I here because I'm a woman. Like, am I lucky? Or it's because I deserved this?
Share
17:57
And it took a while to, you know, to believe in yourself and to see yourself like, no, I'm here because I deserve this, because I'm good at what I'm doing and because this is what I'm supposed to do in a way, and speaking with other girls, like in this world, I think a lot of us have the same sensation after a while, you know, when you are in front of like so many people, it's really hard to believe in what you're doing and to think like "I'm here because I'm good".
Share
18:28
Sometimes you just feel like I you know "I'm here because I've been lucky", or I'm here because they needed to have a woman.
Share
Silvia Olivieri
18:37
A little bit of imposter syndrome, it's called "sindrome dell'impostore"
Share
Cari Quoyeser
18:41
It's easy to feel like you don't belong somewhere. So if you look around and no one looks like it of course. And it's just so it's a self, you know, generating cycle again, if there are no women in a certain field and they don't see other women, it's visibility so necessary.
Share
Francesca Ronchini
18:57
Exactly. You don't have like role, you don't have like models, you don't have like you don't have like people that you can look at and say, okay, it's like I can get aspired for these people. Like a lot of men are just like most of them are just means and that's a bit tricky sometimes.
Share
Cari Quoyeser
19:11
Absolutely. As I say for you specifically Giulia, you are in such an interesting position and not only are you in a very specific tech environment, but you're also a producer. So you kind of write the line between two very like sparsely populated by women areas.
Share
19:29
Did you experience any, you know, barriers?
Share
Giulia Silvestri
19:32
Yeah. Well actually, yeah, now there's a kind of trend on focusing about women situation and women in particular in men work fields. And also this focus created other disequalities. For instance, I can bring a personal example.
Share
19:51
I was in a team where I was uncertain of being there because I was a sound designer or just because I was a female name on their credits. So this doesn't mean that the team behaved with me in a correct way as a sound designer. There were working with them.
Share
20:12
It was really something different, you know, I felt this barrier towards them. I mean then towards me just because they needed a female name because it was a trend way to say that. Yeah. Also music production has women working with us, you know? So yeah, that was one example.
Share
Stella Tavella
20:31
Can I ask you? So you you have identified the problem that has happened to any of us. I'm sure any of us has some similar example. Do you see a possible solution for that? I mean, do you have some, since you had this experience, can you tell us how did you behave in that situation? Did you speak up? Did you?
Share
21:01
I don't know, just finish the work because it's a job. So you you have to get some money or something.
Share
Giulia Silvestri
21:09
Yes. Well, at that time I just finished the project and then I, well, I didn't have that experience so I didn't want to speak up, but it was wrong. Actually. I should have done that. Thinking about that situation now. I still think I should have spoken, but I don't know if there's a solution.
Share
21:30
The solution should be just changed our behavior because it's something that is inside our education. Actually, this gap, it's not something you can change from a day to another. So we should really go deeper and change our also roots.
Share
Cari Quoyeser
21:46
Absolutely Asian at school, very early programming. I was watching a tech talk earlier today and it was someone explaining how she sometimes dresses her daughter who's very, very young and neutral clothing. She says she doesn't like that when her daughter is wearing a dress.
Share
22:03
The only things people say to her daughter is, you're so beautiful, you're so this. So it is, it is overcoming an entire lifetime's worth of prioritization towards things that we can't control and things that aren't caused by merit.
Share
22:16
So there's that whole issue in general and it's not something that I want to focus on because there's so many facets of it culturally, in society, societally. There's so many barriers. Yes, I agree. We should work on our brains and encourage each other and correct each other when we put ourselves down for things that do not matter at all.
Share
22:45
I'm really curious about very specifically, Elasi, based on my experience as a musician working a lot of late nights. Do you think that another barrier to women in the music production field is safety because this is a job for nighttime.
Share
23:02
This is like a, you know, when I was a full time performer, I was out till three in the morning, you know, in places with a lot of alcohol, a lot of crazy people and I wonder if that is a factor that bears people from this part of the industry? I know even recording studios often operate through the night because people work day times. So do you have any experience with that?
Share
Elisa Massara (Elasi)
23:25
I didn't because I always had some male people with me. So I never felt unsafe. But yes, if I was alone, maybe in some venue, some location, if I had to take a taxi on my own after in front of the door, maybe I would have felt unsafe. I don't know what are the solutions?
Share
23:49
Maybe just ask the venue to put you in the safest situation, but I don't know what's the solution because this is a problem, not just for female DJs is just a problem in general when we walk in the streets anytime of the day. So it's a very huge topic.
Share
Cari Quoyeser
24:09
Well, at least people are talking about it now, you know, instead of saying women get home earlier, it's maybe stop.
Share
24:16
But I really, I really appreciate what you have to say Giulia about that, about changing our mindset because it's something that I know all of the women I work with now, we're working really hard with each other.
Share
24:29
The women I went to school with the women I work with now to change our mind frame to each other and it's thankfully I found myself surrounded by so many women at
Musixmatch
that are brilliant and know it and whenever we fall short of our understanding of ourselves, there's always someone there to be like, no, you actually rock and you're so smart and you're killing.Share
Silvia Olivieri
24:50
I think what we're doing here and what also we do outside when we, when we talk to our friends, our family or even on social media, it's so super, super important. I think it's a, it's a big thing that we can do to change things just to create this network of people that can, you know, how do you say push each other?
Share
25:11
Yeah. To be better to go in the world and maybe inspire this conversation, this uncomfortable conversation that we need to have with with man and with the society.
Share
Cari Quoyeser
25:31
You were saying this to me earlier as well and I think this is so important that we often don't ask for help.
Share
25:36
Just women don't typically reach out to people that they don't want to bother people or inconvenience anyone, so they don't ask for that help that you know, it's it's actually such a privilege to mentor and to be mentored, both of them and now more than ever again, I feel connected to just really wonderful women in this industry and I'm very inspired by all the work that you're doing, all of you
Share
Stella Tavella
25:59
Continuing the discussion. Do you want to continue Cari with what you are saying?
Share
Cari Quoyeser
26:04
Sure. Well can you tell us a little bit about POCHE, Elasi?
Share
Elisa Massara (Elasi)
26:08
Yeah. POCHE Is my collective of Italian music producers,
female
and LGBTQ
music producers in Italy
. And this is an idea that I have that I had during lockdown
with my friend the plastic which is another producer, we realized that we were working with a lot of male producers but we didn't know female producers.Share
26:36
So we started a word of mouth, we started calling people, writing artists on
Instagram
and looking for help. Finally asking people "do you know maybe some female professional producer that we can connect with?"Share
26:55
And it was
lockdown
. So we created the, these meetings on zoom where we at the chatter with, we were 10 professional producers and we had a conference confrontation, we gave each other some suggestions, some work opportunities also, and also some contacts that is the most precious things that we have in this in this work and this is what we do.Share
27:26
And sometimes we also organize parties but mostly we support each other and I think since, as you said before, there are not a lot of female music producers in
Italy
if we get together, I think everybody will notice us.Share
27:44
The thing is to be together to be stronger and to make things together to change things. So this is why be at this idea cool, right here
Share
Cari Quoyeser
27:55
And Francesca, Women in Voice?
Share
Francesca Ronchini
27:58
Women in Voice, is more or less like the mission is quite the same. Like it's a organization, is a community like what women invest is actually an international community and then there are like chapters in different countries and we also have our Italian chapters and that was funded in 2019 and the idea is to create a community of women working in that case, especially in conversational
Ai
.Share
28:22
But the idea is to share knowledge, to share opportunities with like other women that are interested in the field because sometimes it's not easy to actually get the opportunity, to have contacts, to get involved in this in this kind of like professionals world that are really new, sometimes really like new roles and what we we're doing is sharing knowledge.
Share
28:44
We are also organizing a remote event, a free event on
YouTube
that everybody can attend to show to people interest like different aspect of this world and the idea is to create a community of women that can change like this kind of field yet.Share
Cari Quoyeser
29:00
So unionize everyone.
Share
Francesca Ronchini
29:02
Yes,
Share
Stella Tavella
29:03
Francesca you're also part of the, speaking about mentorship, of the women in
MIR
community, do you want to talk a little bit about this?Share
Francesca Ronchini
29:12
It's another community, it's "Women in
Music Information Retrieval
", which is a research field in in music and that's also an international community and that was founded in the in the States and there was more that started like related with conferences which like the main conference in music information retrieval
, which is ISMIR
.Share
29:31
And the idea is, also in that case, is to share knowledge, to do workshop too, to make contacts between people to create a community and that has a really strong mentorship program with a lot of people that want to get involved or maybe they just want to ask for help, they have like any kind of question they can go and they will be paired with a senior professional in the field or professor or somebody you know that is working in the field for sure longer than the mentee and that's really, really useful for everybody that wants to get involved in this field.
Share
30:06
Giulia before was speaking about how like we were raised in a society where so many things were just put into our brains, so we have some sort of attitude towards women's role in such an industry and I just wanted to say how positively impressed and like hopeful this discussion just make me, because I do like I'm literally on the verge of tears but I do data science and I'm I studied classical music so I've always known that I wanted to work with the two things and throughout all my life I tried to like get somewhere that could combine the two things and every single time that I had to like ask someone in a higher position for like help, It's always been men that will help me and women in like a powerful position. Like the very few ones always not rejected me, but it felt like they were the first ones that couldn't believe that I could do something,
Share
Cari Quoyeser
31:15
Perhaps you're experiencing first wave feminism?
Share
31:18
Literally like, and I just felt so sad because it felt like women were actually the first to compete against each other and as if they were the ones that had to like protect the privileged position, they had to be among the few ones in the industry
Share
31:39
And I think it's very important that we like unite and stand together and like even if we're not raised to believe in each other in first person at least like give us a chance to prove that we're actually able to do..
Share
Cari Quoyeser
31:56
WHat's your name?
Share
31:56
Valentina
Share
Cari Quoyeser
31:57
Valentina, thank you so much.
Share
31:59
I think a lot of us, I don't know if I could speak for you guys, but I certainly have dealt with what you've dealt with. Feminism has taken a turn. There was an ethos in the 1980s that was quite pervasive for a while. That was I must fight for the only role there.
Share
32:14
If there's only there's gonna be a woman in here that I don't see many, I will be that one and we'll cut down everyone till I get there. In the last 10 years, 5 years really, we've seen a totally different attitude around this, we realized that we can support each other and make each other stronger.
Share
32:29
And I've had the benefit of some incredible friendships that have helped me get to where I want to be in my career and I couldn't have done that without other women. So I thank you so much for that statement as well because it's so important. I think if there's any takeaway from this, it's ask for help and be supportive where you can, lift other people up where you can, there's room for all of us up here.
Share
Silvia Olivieri
32:53
Yeah. And also create the culture that you want to, you want to see. I think I think as women we know that, as Giulia was saying, most of design were used as a token in those spaces.
Share
33:04
So not only subconsciously but also it's quite evident that we know that we only have a few spots for their in those spaces. So I think throughout all our lives we felt like we had to compete with each other because we only have only 2 women are gonna be there. So I want to be I want to be one of them.
Share
Cari Quoyeser
33:25
Or again that our place was ornamental somehow as well, instead of functional, that we were just there for aesthetics or to fill the woman question.
Share
Silvia Olivieri
33:34
Yeah, Yeah Yeah, exactly. And there's a lot of misogynistic internalization of misogynistic thoughts. But I think we're getting better with like new generation. We understand that we we don't need to compete with each other the space for everyone and we can uplift each other. So I think it's really important, we're discussing this and I'm actually gonna pass it to the other speakers if you want to add something.
Share
33:58
But I think it's good that we are having this discussion and creating the culture that we want to live in.
Share
Stella Tavella
34:04
If I may add to Valentina's experience, I had exactly the same experience you because I was studying electronics engineering 10 years ago and also the whole thing now is that you easily find a female mentor and this was what brought me to continue doing what I'm doing.
Share
34:26
I also studied data science for music and stuff, but 10 years ago I had kind of the same experience and at that point I decided I almost wanted to leave that track because I was, I was wondering "okay electronic engineering is not for me, maybe I need to change", and I started thinking about doing something that was connecting music and computer science no? So I I found my path somehow.
Share
34:58
But yeah, it took a while also to get more confident. But I think that the key here that I mean the key message here is not to give up just because one person let you down sometimes, one person that you don't even though they don't know you. So I mean just believe more in yourself and find your niche of people and your community where you are appreciated and you are, you are treated well.
Share
Cari Quoyeser
35:29
Also peer mentorship. I think that in some of these situations, some of these technical positions, there isn't an older generation of women who are prepared. They're still in defense mode.
Share
35:39
But I've learned so much again from my peers and friends and they've all mentored me in different ways and their strengths just like we all have strengths that we can share with each other.
Share
Stella Tavella
35:49
By the way, if I might suggest the Women in
MIR
community is where I found this female mentor some years ago and she totally changed the perspective I had on my career. So I suggest you to have a look and maybe join them.Share
Cari Quoyeser
36:07
We'll publish all of these resources that we mentioned on the Mix. So if you look on the last page when we post that there's a QR code and then we'll post something on the Mix website with all these resources. If you're looking for resources to get connected all of Francesca's and also sees all everything they're working.
Share
Silvia Olivieri
36:27
Have you experienced anything like this with other with other women, maybe throughout your career.
Share
Elisa Massara (Elasi)
36:33
I don't know if I have experienced that or if I was so so afraid of asking then I never experienced that. So as I told there as to Cari before, I was super afraid of asking help to anyone. So I made a lot of mistakes and when at the beginning of my career and now I realize that a lot of people is super happy to help you and to put you in front of the mistakes that they did and I would do the same for anyone.
Share
37:09
Even if I'm not, I don't have a a centenary career. But in these years that I'm doing this job, I would like to share my experience with anyone that wants to start and want wants to help and any suggestion.
Share
Francesca Ronchini
37:27
I never I mean I don't know but I don't think so. I found out you know, I was kind of like this collaboration within women, like the university were like building team, like working together, so that was cool.
Share
37:38
But for example, like I was a mentee before being a mentor like in this program and for example like I had the same mentor for a couple of years and I realized you know when you know you and also like I knew the mentor before you know this kind of person that you do you, how can I say like that inspire you somehow.
Share
37:57
And when I start asking all the questions that I had or the doubt like you realize there are people like you heard like there are humans that everybody is and they are the same.
Share
38:06
They have been through all the different places that you've been through so they for sure they will suggest you something right and they have the same fears, they have just care in the same way, even if they are older than you, if they are more experienced, they've been all through that, sometimes they still do.
Share
38:23
So it's really nice to to share your fear, to share your question to like anything, nothing is too big. Just ask and you discover like there is a community really that is really happy to help and sometimes like we don't have this feeling when we ask for help.
Share
Giulia Silvestri
38:41
Well yeah, I I've never experienced nothing like this actually, but because I only worked with men. So but yeah, when I was talking about education was meaning exactly these things is inside both men and women. It's not just men of course. So the example you reported was yeah, it was perfect because it's something also inside women. This absolutely yeah. Bad way of behave towards these kind of situations. That's it.
Share
Stella Tavella
39:11
Thank you. I wanted to talk a bit about technology but in a female perspective
Share
Cari Quoyeser
39:20
A very accomplished in their own technological right. Not just not just women but very accomplished. And we'd like to hear about that.
Share
Stella Tavella
39:28
Yeah. So I do like a genetic question then if any of you wants to intervene. So how do you think we could eliminate the bias towards women in
machine learning
, which is your field. I don't know if we are doing enough for this in constructing the new Web 3
and the metaverse
and everything.Share
39:52
The research you're doing is really interesting. Is there something specific that you think must be done to build those systems and machines to be more sensitive towards humans? But also to not remember that the biases and the past culture, we know towards the this difference between male and female.
Share
Giulia Silvestri
40:17
Well, it's super difficult question. But yeah, for example, what about the
metaverse
? Well, I think that metaverse
will be the future social networks. So as social networks now still have this kind of problems. It's difficult to think about different way to a way to avoid this kind of things as we were discussing before the talk.Share
40:47
Maybe a solution could be for avatars not to have the
gender
. I don't know, it's just I don't know just a basic solution. But in any case I think that the real solution should be again from us and maybe from the people who structure these virtual spaces.Share
41:10
Maybe there's also, I don't know, a way to avoid these things by changing some things from the beginning. I mean from the beginning of the creation of these virtual spaces. Of course it's a super abstract concept but in the end it's just a matter of opportunity. I mean the opportunity to find the right people to work with and so it's difficult to change it.
Share
Stella Tavella
41:38
So yeah, I feel we have the chance to build a better web for for women, for minorities. Any type of minority. For example, the research you were you were talking about before, will you evaluate, for example the response of men and women, how they feel in relation to the
metaverse
.Share
Giulia Silvestri
42:04
Yeah. Well, the project was about taking brain stimula and analyze them to see actually how do you feel inside of your virtual space? Do you feel comfortable while listening to a real sound sources? You feel a disturbance maybe? Do you feel more concentrate, less concentrated etcetera.
Share
42:27
So yeah, we tested both girls and boys and yeah, but of course we are analyzing everything now. But yeah, we will have differences of course between the two things.
Share
42:40
So yeah actually I don't really have an answer for,
Share
Stella Tavella
42:44
Let's do the second episode once the research is out maybe.
Share
Giulia Silvestri
42:49
So yeah. In 2 months you will see that.
Share
Cari Quoyeser
42:54
I'd like to weigh in a little bit on this. Not that I know anything about the
metaverse
that I haven't learned from you, shortly before this talk.Share
43:03
I have heard a lot about
AI
and again from you and I've read a few articles about it and if you think about the way AI
is portrayed in film and you know any other media, there tends to be this common theme of a robot that we control that eventually wants to kill us. Which is..Share
Stella Tavella
43:25
And it's always it's always a female
Share
Cari Quoyeser
43:28
It's always a female, and it's a psychological effect of this need to control. Here's here's the thing: I think that the only thing that's needed in this area of
AI
is just add women to the equation because if a woman is designing an AI
it's going to have the beneficial parts of a woman which is you know statistically higher levels of empathy and it's going to be a more holistic view, you know of everything.Share
43:55
So I just I personally I don't understand the bias because my whole world of
AI
is just you because Stella is the boss at work when it comes to AI
. She has tons of people that look up to her and work under her and she she is my vision of AI
for the future.Share
44:14
So does that answer itself that is representation just as well as adding women to the conversation and now that we're having the conversation there's going to be visibility out there in the
metaverse
because that's my understanding of how that works.Share
44:28
It'll be on the internet forever. Okay.
Share
44:31
So I would like to say that as we discuss right now about how we should think about women and
LGBTQ
community. I mean for anyone that is considered a minority or faces the problem of society that could be patriarchy
, that could be racism
, sexism and everything. These things didn't come up today.Share
44:59
These are ancient social problems and we will carry them into the
metaverse
or into AI
. Or whatever we're gonna build in the future. So we are not waiting for the technology to become our, how to say, that solves all the problems. It's the discussion that we do now.Share
45:24
That should be also, let's say: we use the data from a bank to decide if someone takes a loan. So far let's say we had a racist banking system that doesn't allow black people to get a loan with the same probability that a white male will have. And we say okay the model is trained with this data and the
AI
said you cannot get this loan.Share
45:54
So now it's not up to the director of the bank but it's up to the model which is always true but this bias this this
racism
exists into the data, trains the model and the model also is racist replicates.Share
Stella Tavella
46:12
Yeah. Same issue. Yeah. The thing is that when I speak about technology
AI
and my reasoning was about what can we do to not to bring those biases into the the new technology we create. The human creates the technology. So the technology reflects what the humans have.Share
46:38
For example you discover some biases in the machine and you realize you have some..
Share
46:44
It's an adversarial game because you take a new technology, you create something new and that's it.
Share
Stella Tavella
46:50
For example you discover some biases in the machine and you realize you have some weird stuff in your like your data and then in your community in your society you know? So yeah as you say it's more more complicated than that. For sure.
Share
47:07
I really enjoyed this conversation because we discuss about what's happening now and how we could say this make the world better in the future with new tools, new
AI
and metaverse.
But I think it's now that how we think that will be affecting how the metaverse
will be not just the tool will be the saviorShare
Stella Tavella
47:33
So we need to save ourselves. So my so my reasoning was: what can we do to fix us and then fix this new thing. That is the
metaverse
which is gonna be the new web. No so yeah it's my stuff was more like metaphysical maybe no yours is more yeah on point. But yeah I agree with you.Share
Francesca Ronchini
47:58
Can I add something like I agree with you and it's like in front of everybody like we know those much learning all of them are biased because like they're doing with data coming from internet there is a lot of bias there but it's also like in a way I see like somehow like people are trying we are trying to fix this kind of bias.
Share
48:16
But it's also like thanks to those algorithms we're really seeing how biased society we are and that's like that's a huge bias you know that the system are reflecting us and it's you know when we are building this machine those machines are they're doing what they're trained to do and they're good at that, if their output is coming out this bias we should wonder why because we built that.
Share
48:40
So I think that there was like there was a starting point for this kind of conversation and be aware that we are so, you know, biased in so many things.
Share
48:50
I was looking yesterday like a video of a google algorithm that it was just recognizing shoes and the algorithm was not able to recognize high heels as shoes, you know, because like a lot of because the interaction you have with this algorithm maybe it's like mostly men and then you will you know paint like a different kind of shoes, it's but you know that was like okay that's the output and then you start wondering why and then you're like okay we're such a like biased society.
Share
Silvia Olivieri
49:16
But that's why we need a diverse team as well ah? Because how are we gonna recognize the bias if the team is only made by white,
cisgender
male, they're not gonna be able to recognize this bias. That's why we need people from all types of background.Share
49:34
We need women, we need
non binary
, we need people from the LGBTQ
. We need black people BIPOC people so we can put those new rules together and build the metaverse
technology that it's not replicate the bad society that we have right now.Share
Cari Quoyeser
49:49
So I think I think we need to wrap up here.
Share
Silvia Olivieri
49:52
Thank you so much because you came here tonight. Thank you to Anna, to Bruno, Music Innovation Hub and BASE who gave us the chance to be to be here and thank you to our amazing speakers. I'm sure we're gonna speak again together. Maybe you can come to the podcast.
Share
50:12
But thank you especially I wanna thank you especially because I think it's it's really important that you took the time to be here, to listen to us. To engage with us and ask us all these amazing questions. And we are aware there are so many more battles that we have to fight in terms of equality.
Share
50:31
So tonight we talk about women, but it's not only about women, we know we know that and we hope we're gonna maybe we're gonna have more panels that are gonna be more and more inclusive and as an individual and as a community, we have to demand change and not because we are talking you have the right to be in that space and and last thing, let's let's also remember that if we are in a privileged situation, which like I personally am because like, yes, I'm a woman, but I'm a white woman.
Share
51:02
I'm a
cisgender
woman. I'm an etero sexual woman. So I have a lot of privilege. So if we do have a privilege, let's let's recognize it. Let's start from that. It's it's our responsibility to address it and use it to leverage this change. So.Share
Cari Quoyeser
51:19
Well said, thank you so much everybody!
Share
51:24
Hi there. Thanks again for tuning into the Mix. For more on Women In music Tech and Production head on over to themix.musixmatch.com
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51:33
Don't forget to subscribe to the Mix on your favorite streaming platforms.
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51:37
And while you're at it, give us a follow on
Instagram
so that you never miss another live panel.Share
Anna Zò
51:43
The
Mix
is powered by Musixmatch
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51:45
Ntil next time.
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🇮🇹 Made with love & passion in Italy. 🌎 Enjoyed everywhere
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Cari Quoyeser
Anna Zò
Silvia Olivieri
Stella Tavella
Francesca Ronchini
Elisa Massara (Elasi)
Giulia Silvestri