Gracehopper - Blog Posts

Grace Hopper Wrap Up: More Than Tech Swag

Hypocritically I have been posting pictures of all the neat swag collected at Grace Hopper Computing Conference (GHC) with just as much gusto as posting all that I have learned at the conference. GHC is so much more than swag - a unique conglomeration of ideas, tech unicorns and what is considered a rare commodity in industry, women. Here I share the coolest thing I learned about, how to make work welcoming to everyone, and final thoughts on GHC.

Robot Human Collaboration

Autonomous paints a picture of a robot working on its own driving, building products or even fetching coffee. Why should a robot be expected to complete a task on its own when we ask others for help all the time? With similar thinking Carnegie Mellon University has developed collaborative robots called CoBot complete tasks be asking humans and other robots for assistance. CoBot rolls around the halls of the computer science department, with the offices layout memorized. COBOT can escort a human to a professor's office pressing buttons on the elevator and letting COBOT know when its on the correct floor. A CoBot that is instructed to go to a professors' office upstairs can be alerted by another CoBot that the professor is currently out of office. Watch the CoBot's artificial intelligence work in action.

Make Work Welcoming

You may expect the nailing of 95 thesis by women of the tech industry explaining how work can be welcoming. Honestly making the work environment welcoming to everyone is pretty simple. There are probably more but here are the top three most focused on.  

1) Celebrate Results And Not Hours - America is prideful of long hours and drinking lots of Starbucks. However, long hours doesn't necessarily efficient. Reward your employees and team mates for successes. be mindful that their hours fluctuate dues to personal matters and simply having a life outside of work.

2) Paid Parent Leave - Who doesn't want to spend time with their kid? This improvement is a no-brainer.

3) Mentorship - Talent can be retained in a company by providing mentorship all throughout your career. People oriented and extroverted individuals may seek mentors naturally as well as seek to mentor others. As team and project leaders encourage those who may not

Final Thoughts on Grace Hopper Conference

Visually I could not imagine the support and number of women in technology at this conference. There were 12,000 women including a collection of engineers, software designers, project managers, CEOs, CTOs, start up leaders, programmers, and much more. GHC's majority is easily the minority and industry so solutions to solve this disparity were found. One solution discussed at GHC that show immediate impact includes showing others how fun technology can be through mentorship, hosting coding camps, visiting past schools to talk to current students, and holding maker challenges. Physically sitting down with someone and spending time to share a piece of the world of technology with them means so much more than any tweet, post and plea of advocacy. GET ACTIVE!

Well that solves the pipeline problem but retaining those interested in tech in tech roles can be achieved by making the work environments welcoming as shown above. When receiving my swag bag day one at GHC I pulled out a smart phone accessory with the Go Daddy logo on it thinking, "What on Earth is that company doing in my Grace Hopper bag?". A question backed by series of not so appealing ads. This question answered after Go Daddy CEO apologized for the companies actions and showed data on how they are improving company culture, Maybe this demonstration was a little clunky but still an attempt to right wrong, expose companies short comings, and move forward. Having conversations, coming up with solutions and following through is what it is all about.

Conference content wise I personally wish I attended more technical related talks as opposed to soft skill and leadership related talks. I found myself getting my tech fix by visiting the career fair booths with coding challenges. Yes, I am an Amazon Code ninja who now understands the magic of a static variable, inheritance rules and function following. Also fellow coders and I solved Best Buy's parsing challenge as well as finding all of the wrong answers. I consider attending GHC again in the future and bringing some more Minnesotans along with me.

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED

Host an hour of code party

Join a FIRST Robotics Team

Host a made with code party

Attend Square coding camp

Build Rube Goldberg machines

Join NCWIT (National Center for Women in Information Technology) Aspirations in Computing Community

Tech Opportunities: Grace Hopper Day 2

An overwhelming aspect of the Grace Hopper Conference is the career fair and hosted lunches. During which you get to exposed to many career, learning and conference opportunities. I couldn't possibly take advantage of all these opportunities so I will share them with you.

Hour of Code: Everyone

Learn a bit of programming for an hour or longer if you like! Simply projects to get you jump started with programming.

Bank of America Internships: Current Students

Hiring and looking for interns in cyber security, user interface design, software, IT and more.

NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Community: Women in College

Attend conferences, access to exclusive scholarships, exposure to internship opportunities, join a support group of over 2500 like minded women who share a similar passion for computing. A support network where you can connect with others 24/7. There is always someone posting or responding on the Facebook page!

Google & Microsoft Internships: Everyone

At the Grace Hopper Conference Google & Microsoft heavily stressed that they are hiring and recruiting more interns and full time hires. They both offer parental leave meaning both parents get paid leave for many weeks for a child!

Best Buy: Everyone

During the career fair Best Buy was hosting a coding challenge which caught my attention. They displayed medium level code in various languages and you had to determine what it outputs. After completign the challenge they described various engineering, analyst and IT.

Code Camp | Square: College & High School Women

Five day to week long tech immersive camp where you code, practice leadership and complete group engineering projects.  

NASA Co-Op and Internship: Current Students

Of course I am going to list NASA opportunities I Co-Op at NASA! Everybody in every discipline can contribute to NASA's mission and humanities goals to advance space exploration. There are current education, fashion design, art, engineering, computer science, and biology majors and more!

These are the first nine opportunities that popped into my head and I will share more as the conference progresses.

Lights flashed on the stage.These are real life rock stars. 12,000 women computer scientists and engineers gathered for the Grace Hopper Women in Celebration. Women or not already during day one I learned valuable career advice anyone can benefit from. What's Your Niche? Take a moment to think about what other people think about you. No, not what they think about your clothing or how you shoved that piece of pizza in your face. What they think about you as a whole. Like it or not, everyone has a niche or brand that people identify you with. Are you a trail blazer? Approachable? Efficient? Ally? Approachable? Ask someone how they see you, however, you may not like the results... but there is a solution. There was a women in the workplace who was described to have career ADD, meaning she would purposely take on projects in disarray, fix them and move on to the next crumbling project. Transforming her weakness into a strength she used her talent to reorganize lost causes becoming a strategist. Co-workers could go to her for help with theor projects adding value to the team. Crucial Conversations In Your Career Unavoidably there will be times in your career when you have to practice conflict resolution, stick up for yourself and simply communicate with others what you are working on. Various social norms can debilitate folks from communicating effectively. Here are charactierstics that ensure effective communication: Be Direct, Be Specific, Be Proactive & Be Confident Advice From a CEO As an NCWIT (National Center for Women & Information Technology) collegiate member peers and I had the opportunity to have lunch with the CEO and engineers from Qualcomm. The CEO happened to sit at my lunch table and we got to ask him career advice. One of my favorite questions was, "What are characteristics that got you to the position of CEO?" His answer... 1) Communicate: speak confidently, convince others of your idea, be a good public speaker. 2) Trust: know your employee's are competent, they are the technical experts. 3) Motivate: Be a cat herder, convey the importance of the task effectively.

Looking Forward to Grace Hopper 2015

Unsure of whether to call it the Grace Hopper Conference or Celebration I’m going to postulate that it is both. Grace Hopper Celebration of  Women in Computing (GHC) is a collection of conferences where computer scientists can learn about the latest technology, participate in tech workshops, network and build soft skills. The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and the Association for Computing Machinery initiated GHC named after the computer scientist Grace Hopper. Hopper coined the term debugging, after picking bugs out of her computer and invented the first compiler, allowing programming languages to be more human-like.

Aspiring or seasoned computer scientist GHC sounds like the place to be, described by my peers in NCWIT (National Center for Women and Information Technology). In high school I became one of NCWIT’s MN State Affiliate Aspiration in Computing Award winners and since then have heard of networking stories, tales of learning experience and good times from GHC goers.

As a current Co-Op at NASA’s Johnson Space Center I have been sent on a mission to learn as much as I can and share with my department how these acquired skills will help them. As an NCWITer I will be able to connect with other like-minded women and attend their networking events. I have been browsing through the conference schedule and crafted a comprehensive itinerary filled with keynote presentations, professional development, and hands on tech projects.

Sessions on my itinerary I am most excited for include “Communicating for Impact and Influence”, “Design and Development Considerations in Serious Games”, “Bank of America Technical Women Luncheon”, “Speed Mentoring Breakfast with Microsoft”, and “Data Science: NASA”.

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED

I will be live tweeting and live blogging the event

Check out this year’s sessions and think about joining in next year

Watch keynotes from past events