Crowdsourced Tips from Conference Day

When you have a crowd, you may as well crowdsource.

This year, we decided a fun and useful way to pick raffle winners would be to ask attendees to submit recommendations on a few subjects we always want more ideas:

food, books, and skills.

Thanks again to the businesses that donated to our raffle:
Thriftbooks, We Rise Wines, Super Jock & Jill, the Ladies Room, and HIIT LAB.

Enjoy the results, courtesy of your fellow conference attendees.

Disclaimer: this is not an endorsement from WiDS Puget Sound; we have not curated this list.


What is your favorite restaurant in the greater Seattle area?

  • Mamnoon Street

  • TOASTED bagels & coffee!

  • Farsi cafe

  • Harry’s fine foods

  • The Pink Door

  • San Fermo (Ballard)

  • El Gran Taco

  • Rain City Burgers

  • Von's 1000 spirits

  • Portage Bay

  • Bai Tong

  • Pie Bar (Ballard)

  • Joule

  • The Cheese Room

  • Dosa House

  • Cedars Indian

  • Yes Siam Thai

  • Bongos

  • Kati Vegan Thai

  • Communion

  • Dan Gui

  • Momiji

  • Kin Len Thai (Fremont)

  • Pilgrim Coffeehouse in Nora

  • Bombay Express

What books do you recommend for personal or professional growth?

  • Atomic Habits

  • "Thanks for the feedback"

  • Polysecure

  • Gifts of Imperfection

  • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

  • Dare to Lead by Brene Brown

  • The Secret

  • The Body Keeps the Score

  • Beyond Religion: ethics for a new millennium by the Dali Lama

  • Radical Candor

  • A Field Guide to Grad School: uncovering the hidden curriculum

What is the next skill you plan to Master?

  • PySpark

  • Project Management

  • Uplift modeling

  • SQL

  • Agentic AI

  • SAS

  • Negotiation

  • Data visualization

  • Github

  • Agentic protocol like MCP or A2A

  • Story telling

  • GIS

  • Dashboards

  • Building a portfolio website

  • Data quality analysis

Kelly Stroh