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Carmen Valencia

I'm passionate about marketing, data-driven projects, and teamwork. I am currently exploring programming and data analysis, and how they can be applied in communication to make better decisions. In my spare time, I jump from training to training, write poetry, and do crafts. My favorite ally, Excel!

Telefónica Tech

#WomenWithTech: Inspiring voices in a digital world

Today is like many other days. We get up, get dressed, heat up the coffee... It seems like an ordinary day, but deep down there really lies a silent essence that changes everything. A day to stop and think. To celebrate meetings in a different way, to look into each other's eyes and remind ourselves that behind every coworker, boss, director, manager... there is a mother, niece, sister or granddaughter. We dedicate today's post to that half of the population that deserves and wants to raise their voice. Today we are celebrating Women's Day. ______ Women have been present in the technological field since the very beginning, but their participation, at times, has been minimized or overlooked. We want to talk about women with talent, passion and, why not, technology. At Telefónica Tech, we believe that gender diversity is not only a matter of equity, but also a crucial driver of innovation. Women bring a unique perspective that enriches the creative process and leads to more complete solutions by offering a varied prism of perspectives. Although we are making progress, gender discrimination in some respects such as the famous glass ceiling or unconscious biases continue to hinder the advancement of women in technology, but we are determined to overcome these obstacles together. #WomenWithTech: an event for “more of a team” On the eve of this anniversary, we held a very special meeting in different places where Telefónica Tech is present. Men and women from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Spain, United Kingdom, and Ireland gathered to listen to the experience of some of our colleagues. Women like Ana, Paula, Elena, Beatriz or Pilar, whose motivation to enter the world of technology was the result of an inspiration, a reference or simply let themselves go where intuition and effort guided them. All of them are a sample of our #WomenWithTech movement, in which any woman working in technology, regardless of department, field or category, we want her to be represented and her voice to be shared. María Jesús Almazor at WomenWithTech, 2024. Regarding the meeting in Spain, our COO for Brazil, Hispam, USA and Spain, María Jesús Almazor, gave a warm welcome to the attendees. Happy to celebrate this global initiative for the first time, she stressed that “diversity is not just about gender, but also about ways of thinking”, and that giving us these moments to get to know each other better, share interests and hopes, contributes to creating a more diverse company and, with it, “a more diverse team”. The value of equity in a life story Our colleague Pilar Cantarero, Program Manager IA & Big Data Platforms, studied Telecommunications after watching the movie Contact (Robert Zemeckis, 1997). She shared with the audience the story of her own life. She does not hesitate to admit that initially her mother wanted to have a son, instead of a daughter, to prevent her from facing obstacles and suffering as she had had because she was a woman. She considers her mother to be a great example for her to follow, as a woman fighter who got ahead despite the adversities she had to face: “My mother, like Grace Hopper, who hacked the status-quo of her time, challenged what she had around her and got ahead. She has been a great inspiration to me”. Pilar Cantarero at WomenWithTech, 2024. She also tells us about the importance of equity, which goes beyond equality, and should contribute to each person with their circumstances and needs. “So that they don't have it so hard, this is my small tribute to those who came before us. Without them we would not be here,” she concludes. The road is not always easy Beatriz de Oñate, Manager of International Business Development and New Markets for the USA, discovered science when she was eleven years old after watching a documentary on astronomy. A few years later, she began a career in physics and during these decades she has always tried to combine her great passions: mathematics, astronomy, music and reading about science. Beatriz de Oñate at WomenWithTech, 2024. She shares Leonardo Da Vinci's vision that “the most useful science is that which has the most communicable fruit”. She therefore seeks to share her experience and knowledge with others. However, the path is not always straight and, therefore, she encouraged the attendees to collaborate among peers, not to set limits for themselves. Saying goodbye to the imposter syndrome “I wasn't sure why I liked many things, but I was very aware of what I didn't like”, says our Asturian colleague Paula Valles, IA Sales, and Big Data consultant. She tells us about her key pieces along the way, starting with her references and, like Pilar, she pays tribute to her mother as a great inspirational figure. She also stresses the importance of proactivity, of having it internalized and having it in your veins: “I believe that proactivity is a key aspect that characterizes many of us”. Paula Valles at WomenWithTech, 2024. Not to mention the dreaded impostor syndrome that, at least in her case, is a daily challenge. As advice to the attendees and to herself every day, Paula shares that to gain confidence we must not forget that “no one knows better than ourselves about our work. As engineer, physician and former astronaut Mae Jemison says, never feel limited by the imagination of others”. Today's Agile women 3.0 We also had the opportunity to learn about agile from Ana Flores, Senior Manager for Business Support and Processes at GSL IoT. Ana has spent many years dedicating her working hours to managing teams and agile methodology is for her an inseparable ally: “The key point of agile is to deliver frequently and bring value to the business, building in an iterative and incremental way”. It is good practice to check if the progress of the work is adequate, while repeatedly in the workplace we wait to have the perfect deliverable, ready to the end point. That is agile. Ana Flores at WomenWithTech, 2024. And women become agile women 3.0 when we seek and become leaders, both with greater visibility and “in the shadows” supporting others: “We women, as leaders, show more empathy when managing our teams. We lead them wrapped in cotton wool, with authority, but also with gentleness”. Letting yourself go on the way Last but not least, we had the pleasure of having Elena Gil, AI and Big Data business director. “I arrived at Telefónica by chance, but there is something about this company that traps you and I have been with here for 24 years, where I continue to learn every day”, confesses Elena. Elena Gil at WomenWithTech, 2024. With a very extensive experience working in Spain, Brazil and the UK, different areas and business segments, our speaker considers that her career is an example that “technology comes from many sides, including late vocations”. She emphasized the figure of mixed profiles, and the possibility of applying technology from other angles. She has felt how she has been able to move within her career. She reminds us that time flies, and that it is important to be prepared for our next professional phase, for “the important thing is to know where to go, but, above all, where you don't want to go”. She also encourages us to enjoy the achievements after hard work, to give ourselves that time afterwards, and to build and maintain a network of supporters, such as #WomenWithTech. In the case of technology, and it affects the way we perceive women, there are many biases that we cannot avoid when building new products, so “we must be aware of these biases and try to mitigate them. It is not easy for biases to be corrected,” she points out. Elena Gil's tips at the #WomenWithTech event And that is how we closed a very special evening in which we put faces and voices, where we gave each other time to listen to our experiences, hopes and life stories. Telefónica Tech along with colleagues from other countries where united by the same motivation: to be the best team, diverse and full of talent. The future of women is today Women are not only the future of technology, but also the present. Our voice, vision and passion are essential to drive progress and innovation in the digital world. Let's all acknowledge the importance of equity, challenge stereotypes, pave paths by building support networks, and work to create a future where all women can thrive and lead in technology. Together, we can build a brighter and more equitable tomorrow for all. Long live #WomenWithTech!

March 8, 2024

Telefónica Tech

AI & Data

Python for everyone: create your own Halloween edition Hangman game

Learning to program is learning a new language. Among the programming languages, one of the most used is Python, as we have already told you in some previous posts. On this occasion, we propose the popular game of Hangman Halloween edition, with words related to this celebration. And why a game? Because learning in a playful way helps us to understand and retain complex concepts, as well as to develop problem-solving, critical thinking and decision-making skills. They also foster our creativity and imagination, as users can experiment with different ideas and solutions to the same challenge. And, in the case of programming, especially with languages such as Python (one of the most widely used for the development of Artificial Intelligence applications), learning to program by playing is a great excuse to lose the fear of coding. Get to work and create your own Halloween edition Hangman game! 1. Initial arrangements Very simple! To create your game just log in with your Gmail account to Google Colab, Google's online platform for writing, accessing libraries and running Python code in a Cloud environment, for free and with collaboration between users on Jupyter notebooks. 2. Fundamental concepts of Python To create our Hangman, we must understand the operation of some Python language structures that will serve as a basis: if and else, for and while. If, elif and else structures We are going to use this selection control structure to execute a block of code based on conditions. In our Hangman, we will use it to determine whether or not the letter entered by the user is in our hidden word, or if it has already been used. In if (the first condition) and elif (the following added conditions) we will include the cases in which we want our Hangman game to give a specific answer, considering that the entered letter is not valid (false). In else, which serves for all those cases not mentioned in if and elif we will give the letter as valid (true). For loop The control structure in Python will be another of the bases of our game, and will allow us to iterate over a sequence of elements. In our Hangman game, the elements will be the letters that make up the hidden word, and the dashes that we show to the user, corresponding to the word to guess. As every time the user enters a letter we must verify that it is in the word, the for loop will serve us to go through these elements one by one and to execute the instructions that we indicate to it. While Loop Finally, we need the while loop to control the main logic of the game. It allows the game to continue as long as the player has attempts remaining and as long as there are letters left to guess in the hidden word. Once the condition becomes false, the loop stops and a win or loss message is displayed. 3. Hangman game design We will start by creating the game structure from a series of variables, which will allow us to make the code more efficient. First, the visual representation of the Hangman: The hidden word will have exactly the same length (underscores) as the word elements. For this, we use the len function. The number of game attempts. Later, we will indicate to the program that, for each failure, an attempt will be subtracted (attempts -1) . We determine the alphabet in a list. Later, we will indicate that only the letters included in the said list are valid. Finally, the discarded letters variable, since during the game we will show the user the incorrect words already used: hangman_drawing = [ ''' +---+ | | | | | | ========= ''', ''' +---+ | | O | | | | ========= ''', ''' +---+ | | O | | | | | ========= ''', ''' +---+ | | O | /| | | | ========= ''', ''' +---+ | | O | /|\ | | | ========= ''', ''' +---+ | | O | /|\ | / | | ========= ''', ] word = list('skull') hidden_word =['_']*len(word) attempts = 6 alphabet_list = list('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz') discarded_letters = [] 4. Programming user interaction Let's dive into the 'guts' of the Hangman game to translate into code how we allow the user to guess letters, and how to keep track of the correct and incorrect letters. First of all, we'll show the current state of the game: the number of remaining attempts, discarded letters, and how the corresponding letters are guessed for the dashes of the hidden word. Game state We will use the join method to combine elements in a list so that the visual representation is more readable. It helps us format the output of the discarded letters and the hidden word: def show_state(): print(f'Left attemps: {attemps}') print(f'Discarded letters: {", ".join(discarded_letters)}\n') print(f'Word: {" ".join(hidden_word)}\n') print(hangman_drawing[6 - attemps]) Valid Letter Verification When the user plays, there are different scenarios that we must reflect in the code, as the entered letter may have already been used, the user might enter a symbol that is not a letter, or they might enter more than one character. To develop the code to verify if the entered letter is valid or not, we will create conditional structures (if, elif, else). We will define the valid letter function based on the 'letter' parameter. def valid_letter(letter): if len(letter) != 1 : print('You have entered more than one letter, please try again.') return False elif letra not in alphabet_list: print('You have not entered a letter from the alphabet.') return False elif letra in hidden_word: print('You have already guessed the letter you entered, please try again.') return False elif letra in discarded_letters: print('You have already used that letter, please try again.') return False else: return True Handle Letter Now we will define the letter management function with the for loop, which will update the representation of the hidden word when the user guesses a letter. We will combine the for loop with range(len(word)), which will traverse each position in the 'word' list, assigning a sequence of indices for each element of the list. When the game finds a match, it will update both hidden_word and word. In each iteration of the loop, i takes the value of one of those indices. In the case of the word, it will identify the position of the guessed letter, which it will take and replace the underscore in its same position in hidden_word: def handle_letter(letter): for i in range(len(word)): if word[i] == word: hidden_word[i] = word word[i] = '_' Now we will print what the user will see on the screen at the beginning of our Hangman game, as well as the conditions that must be met in our while loop for them to continue playing. We will use lower to ensure the program always takes lowercase letters, regardless of how the user enters them. On the other hand, we will use the .append method to add the value of invalid letters to the discarded letters list. And finally, the if statement and the join method to determine whether the user wins or loses. print('WELCOME TO THE HANGMAN GAME 🎃 HALLOWEEN EDITION 🎃\n') print('Game rules: Enter letters to guess the hidden word.') print(f'You have {attempts} attempts. Good luck!') while attempts > 0 and '_' in hidden_word: show_state() print('-'*50) letra = input('ENTER LETTER: ').lower() while not valid_letter(letter): letra = input('ENTER ANOTHER LETTER: ').lower() if letter in word: handle_letter(letter) print('-'*50) print('You guessed the letter! Keep it up.') else: print('-'*50) print('You missed the letter!') discarded_letters.append(letter) attempts -= 1 if '_' not in hidden_word: print('\n\n🏆🎃Congratulations! You've won the game!🎃🏆') else: print(f'\nOh!😞 Sorry, you've lost!' '''\n +---+ | | 💀 | /|\ | / \ | | ========= ''') And there you have it! By running all the code in Google Colab, you will have your Hangman game. You can also view the complete code in this notebook. Now it's your turn to practice Python with spooky Halloween words. We challenge you to improve the code that will enhance the experience. For example, the random module, commonly used in Python to generate pseudo-random numbers, will allow each game to be different by randomly selecting a word from a list of predefined words. Remember that you can customize the code to your liking by adding more words, graphics, sounds, or whatever you can think of. Additionally, giving it a Halloween twist can make it more fun and thematic. Don't limit yourself and explore Python's possibilities!

October 27, 2023

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