Ed & Ashley's 5 Minute Show, The Other Episodes

Here is Episode 12 of Ed & Ashley's 5 Minute Show! In this episode, we interview BJ Wishinsky from the Anita Borg Institute, whom we all know and love as the GHC online community leader and ABI Community Coordinator!

Ed & Ashley's 5 Minute Show, Episode 11

Today will be wildly productive day for the Ed & Ashley since we've finally gotten all of the footage together and we plan on publishing lots of episodes today!  Keep your eyes open for them!

For Episode 11, we got the opportunity to talk with Fran Allen about her Turing Award and Women in Technology.

Ed & Ashley's 5 Minute Show, The Missing Episode!

Ashley and I have finally gotten our act together and found episode number 6! If you've ever had any questions about the Systers Community, check out this episode of Ed & Ashley's 5 Minute Show!

Staying in touch

I’m excited to see that folks are still here writing about GHC (I took vacation right after GHC and just got back). I’m excited to be back and I need to get busy following up from the conference. I hope many of you are ahead of me on this, but in case you aren’t and need some inspiration, I’m telling you my game plan.

I’m starting to look through my CONNECT contacts, and managing to page back in the context of my conversations from more than a week ago.

My first priority will be to send e-mails to the new women I met that are the closest match professionally. As well the women that have sent me mail as a result of the conference.

Then I will send to the women I re-connected with. It is always important to strengthen connections. Besides these women have become my friends and cheerleaders over the years! I want to thank them for that and let them know it is always a delight to re-connect.

I plan to finish these 2 sets by the end of the weekend.

There are two other general groups on my CONNECT list: Students and those I met briefly (and maybe don’t quite remember). I will send these folks mail as well.

The students I will encourage to work on their connections, and feel free to e-mail if they need some encouragement.
The rest, I will just say hello, and hope to see them at future GHC conferences. Sometimes it takes more time to make a genuine connection. For all I know an interaction with one of these women will be a life changing experience at some point.

Since I really enjoyed talking with everyone I connected with at GHC, I’m really looking forward to developing these connections.

I'd love to hear your plans for building on your confernce connections!

GHC 2008: Reflections

The conference is over and all of us are eagerly looking forward to the one next year at Tucson. In the meantime, I am sure you must have reflected back on your experience of GHC08 and noted down the goals you achieved or even the ones who could not achieve this year, but hope to do so next year. Would you like to share some of your experiences with us?

Let me offer another choice too! What did you particularly like about this year's GHC? What were the key points you took away from this conference? Contribute and help others learn from you!

Ready for Next Year?

So is everyone excited for Tuscon? I'm curious to know what kind of sessions you'd like to see next year. Did you like the format this year, and if you'd prefer some changes, what would they be?

Confessions of a Woman Developer: Microsoft, IBM, and Intel - The Experience of One

After being inspired by the stories of so many women at Grace Hopper, I created a post to share my industry experiences at Microsoft, IBM, and Intel.
http://blogs.msdn.com/springboard/archive/2008/10/13/confessions-of-a-woman-developer-microsoft-ibm-and-intel-the-experience-of-one.aspx

Don't consider it, just do it!

While we were on our way to the Denver Airport, my friend Vetria was trying to do a video interview of mine (like I did with other people), probably to tease me, and asked me a question:

"So what would you like to say to the other women students who are considering attending the Grace Hopper Conference (GHC) in 2009?"

My instantaneous response was, "Don't consider it, just do it!", and Vetria was impressed :)

Dr. Bryant, our department’s associate chair and who was in the minority group at the conference had a similar question:

“When do you think is the best time for a female Ph.D. student to attend the Grace Hopper Conference during the program?”

I said, “The very first year!”

How helpful it would have been had I been to the conference in my very first year in the Ph.D. program! I feel that I have missed a lot by not being a part of the conference in previous years.

I feel that the top reasons to attend the conference are the keynote speeches and the opportunity to meet the leaders in computing. Every speaker had a motivational story to tell. Not only one would feel motivated to do well in their field but would also be convinced to think creatively to solve the problems that the community is facing in general.

The networking workshop with Jo Miller was aptly scheduled for the 1st of October. The tips that I got during the workshop (the 30 second commercial or the elevator pitch) came handy when I had to interact with other attendees throughout the conference. Thanks Jo :)

The CTO forum was interesting. I thought about doing some data mining to analyze the characteristics of the top leaders in the industry. Due to lack of data (we got to talk to 4 or 5 CTOs), the mining didn’t work. However, I plan to Google stalk the CTOs and find out if there are any commonalities. The short meeting with Justin Rattner from Intel was awesome. He came across as a very smart, modest, and a truthful gentleman. I asked him how helpful his degree from an Ivy League school was in taking him where he was today. He laughed and said that it did help a lot at the beginning.

From the technical topics to general non-technical ones, like “ACM Membership Gender Study” and “The ABC’s for ABD’s: Tips for Working Your Way through Dissertation to PhD”, most of the issues that a technical woman should be aware of were covered. Apart from information sharing and networking, there were booths set up by various sponsors who were on the recruitment drive. If not for the jobs or internship, the booths were worth a visit to pick cool freebies :).

Information sharing, networking, job opportunities, technically enriching talks, motivational speeches, improving soft skills….what else…hmmm… C E L E B R A T I O N … yes, celebration of women in computing! Every moment at the conference was a celebration in itself. However, the jam session on 2nd October and the sponsor party on 3rd October were rocking.

Now I have plans to talk to the other female peers in my department to share my conference experience and to motivate them to attend the conference next year. I don’t see a reason why a woman techie should not attend the conference at least once in her career.

Quality is never an accident

I know the sessions are over, but I didn't have time to post about this one over at the conference, and I think it might be of interest to many of you out there.

If you think all testers (particularly Software Engineers in Test) do is sit in an office “playing” with programs to make them fail, and not development at all; if you think that Software Engineer in Test is an inferior position for those who did not make it as Software Engineer, you are in fact in sync with most people, but you are wrong. It is not an inferior or a superior position, it is just different. And it does involve development -and many more challenging, rewarding, and fun tasks.

I once heard (can't recall the source, sorry) that even if you are sure you want to be a Software Engineer -or you are already, you should give Software Engineer in Test a try because it gives you a broader perspective and makes you a much better Software Engineer, and who knows, you might find it more satisfying. There have been people switching from Software Engineer to Software Engineer in Test and vice versa. It is all about finding where your likes are. But it is worth exploring or at least learning more about it.

There are many opportunities for those interested in starting a career as a Software Engineer in Test. You can read my post about the panel discussion “Exciting Career They Don’t Tell You about at School: Software Engineer in Test “, by technical women leaders in Test from leading software companies. They talked about career paths, challenges and opportunities as Software Engineer in Test. You can also read the ghc wiki entry, or check the resources recommended by the panelists: The art of Software testing, and Sticky Minds.

A Fish Out of Water: Being a Man at Grace Hopper 2008

Randy Guthrie blogs about being one of a few men at Grace Hopper:

http://blogs.msdn.com/mis_laboratory/archive/2008/10/03/a-fish-out-of-water-1-300-women-technologists-5-men-at-the-2008-grace-hopper-conference.aspx

Hoppin' GHC

This post was written Friday night, but I wasn't able to get net access until now (Satyrday night). 
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I had a kind of rocky start to my GHC08 - had to spend Thursday morning fixing an emergency situation for a deadline back home. I missed breakfast and lunch (I really was looking forward to the Systers lunch - darn!) and my spa appointment, so by the time I got to the event, I was totally stressed. I apologize to anyone to whom I was shrill or strident. By the time I got there, I was close to tears from exhaustion, frustration, altitude, and low bloodsugar. Several women were very generous with their time and let me vent, which helped. And I got trailmix, to hold me until dinnertime, which also helped.

I did manage to attend some great sessions Thursday afternoon. Then I went back to the hotel to change for dinner, and ended up staying and watching the VP debate in the hotel bar with a bunch of rowdy women (I admit I was one of the rowdiest), eating cheezburgers and drinking cosmos. (There was a guy there too but he wasn't terribly rowdy. ;-)

Today, I made it to the morning sessions and lunch. The sessions I attended were mostly on "Do you want to go to grad school? " I ended up have a great conversation with one of the panelists who gave me some great advice. Had lunch and chatted with Anna Koop (with the fantastic dreadlocks) - the turkey sandwich was pretty vile (soggy bread!?) but it was food. Attended a couple more sessions and then went back to the hotel to nap and change. Dinner was decent - although I was a little confused about how to get to a table - ended up getting stuck in a tshirt line (I've already got far too many tshirts!) but finally found a place to sit. Met a wonderful woman faculty member who had some more great advice on navigating academic politics. Then I danced way too much -- had a *wonderful* time dancing, but my hip is definitely feeling it. (They say you're only as old as you feel - right now, I feel about 80.)


Some highlights:

The session Thursday on outreach to girls was great - it had actual hands-on, specific, here's activities you can do. It was so nice to attend a session on outreach that didn't just preach but actually gave us *tools* on what to do!

The women in FLOSS session was fun although a little too focused on industry for my taste - I got to put in a plug for the Python community (www.python.org) which encourages participation at many levels (bug-reports, documentation, conference organizing, unit tests, answering questions on our newbies email list, submitting patches, etc.) and PyCon 2009 (http://pycon.blogspot.com/) where we *want* lots of proposals for presentations from women. If you're a fellow pythonista - please submit a proposal. If you're not into Python, OSCON is the big Open Source Conference by O'Reilly and they'll be taking proposals in January. Start thinking now about what you could propose. It'll be in San Jose in 2009. (If you present at OSCON, you get in for *free*. What a deal!) The session brought up a good point about why the low participation of women in FLOSS - in the past (up until a couple years ago), participation was almost entirely amateur/volunteer work. With women being the primary caregivers in their families (whether of kids, elders, or spouses) and having other interests, our spare time tends to be pretty limited for volunteer efforts of any sort. Add to that the sometimes rough and tumble nature of some online communities and many women find other uses for their time.

There was a presentation on gender equity in engineering from the Denice Denton (?) award winner. She did a good job of presenting reasons why women aren't well-represented in the engineering and science fields - and showed how she had worked to reverse that.

The sessions on grad school (getting in and doing research) were really useful to me - it was nice to hear from women who hadn't known all along what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it. And also, helped me think about whether I want to go to grad school, and what the benefits of it might be for me.

I had a lovely chat with a woman at morning break who showed me her poster - it was really interesting to see how she had solved the problem she was working on. It made so much sense - and was "obvious in retrospect" but her approach and her solution was fun to hear about.
I met a woman who lives just down the street from me and we're in contact now.
I met a woman who's the first woman in the US I've met who knew who Anastacia is.
I had lots of lovely hall conversations with random people - including the very nice young women who showed me their kitty photos.

Unlike many folks, I didn't join Connect. I would have liked having a sticker for Undergrad, but didn't like having to limit my "who I want to meet" on their registration website. It felt, for me, overly restrictive. I've found that when I drop expectations and constraints on who I'll meet and how that person might affect my life (or how I might affect theirs) - I meet all sorts of folks from all different affiliations and education and work levels and various industries and interests. And I've found that the most unexpected connections can be some of the most rewarding. So - while I'm sure their service will be very useful to many folks, it just didn't fit the way I network. I do wish them well and hope that they thrive. Anything that helps women find each other for support and mentoring and networking is great.

Speaking of women - an observation:
I chatted with several women this conference who expressed that they'd been really nervous or unsure about attending Grace Hopper. Some of them were the "always the only woman" and "just one of the guys" kind of women (like I was) who'd either never really interacted much with other women, or who'd had bad experiences with women living down to stereotypes (gossip, backstabbing, malebashing, etc). Their questions boiled down to:
1. what would I get out of a conference with all women?
2. am I going to fit in/feel comfortable/feel safe?

While I'm glad that I wasn't the only one who'd felt that way their first time -- it was really nice to hear them say it out loud so I could reassure them that they're not the only one who felt that way either. I also was happy to hear all of them say "I'll be back!"

A big part of what I find valuable at Grace Hopper is hearing lifestories of other women - particularly those who, like me, followed a circuitous, non-traditional route to CS. Another plus is meeting people who don't look at you funny for being a girl and talking about geeky stuff. And it's great to meet the women who can mentor - the ones who've been there done that -- and the young women who are just starting out and so enthusiastic. And it's just fun to see and hear about all the different ways women are "in computing". It gives me hope for the future.

I look forward to tomorrow.
And to next year.

Anita Borg Social Impact Award Winner

Elisa Camahort Page from BlogHer.com (winner of the Anita Borg Social Impact Award Winner) spoke about how women are using technology to change their lives.

She told that 53% of the U.S. online women are reading and contributing to blogs. Blogging is addictive and people are doing that on daily basis. Regardless of age, once engaged, blogging is a daily part of life. 20% of the people are spending more time on blogging and moving away from television. People trust blogs and rely on them for advice or recommendation. They get help about making purchase decisions.

She also told about what women are getting from blogosphere. They are experiencing unique transformational power. For example, women undergoing postpartum depression or diabetes are raising awareness, generating support and bringing about change through blogging. Blogs are helping people to share grief- loss of a child or loss of a husband. People find support groups online and find it easy to share their feelings online. Women are getting book deals and offers for writing for magazines. It’s also changing how we age. A woman in her 80’s is engaging herself in blogging to keep her brain active, to stay engaged and to avoid isolation.

Elisa added that blogging is a cultural record about our day to day lives and is a gift for the future generations. There are businesses starting out of blogs, people are getting jobs and companies are looking into blogging capabilities of the people.

Some success stories:
1) Elise Bauer was very stressed out when she quit her job and went to stay with her parents. She started learning to cook from her parents and then posted those recipes online with pictures. She now makes a lot of money out of it.

2) Corvida from Atlanta is a 23 years old just out of college and “SheGeeks”. Now she is a highly ranked techblogger. She has created a career for herself out of blogging.

Elisa told that having a focused topic for the blog and having a clear voice is very important. You have to be a great story teller. That’s how you get audience. Blogging is a way we participate in just everything and take actions. Blogging is become popular amongst politicians and people who want to raise support. For example, blogs to raise support for Katrina relief involved a lot of people and attracted donors from far and wide.

Blogging raises awareness and helps in getting the mass action going. The customers are getting empowered by the power to be heard, the power to build your own playing field, the power to participate, the power to change the world through blogging. In the world where we don’t trust media, government, big businesses, the health care industry, we do trust each other!

GHC08: Final Night

What a fantastic conference this has been. Unlike many other conferences I've attended, I seem to have no downtime. I'm constantly networking, attending sessions, blogging... and this year, fighting an uncooperative dying laptop. The energy here is fantastic, the balance of technical talks with "soft skills" is perfect. I only wish we all had more time together, that the sessions were longer, and the breaks were longer (for more networking). Of course, that would only be possible if the conference itself were longer... but a woman can dream, can't she?

I staffed the Sun booth yesterday morning, fielding all sorts of questions on OpenSolaris, Solaris Security, types of jobs we do at Sun, opportunities for students and just general questions about what Sun does. I enjoy what I do here, so getting an opportunity to talk about it was a true pleasure. If I missed any of you at the booth, please send me an email or drop me a comment here.

While here, I got to meet so many students, I think I even met all of the students and faculty from Purdue as well. I really enjoy hearing about the new research and areas of focus. The conference is only 50% students, though, so I also met so many inspiring career women.

Tonight Sun hosted a small private reception for the Sun employees and some outstanding women we all met throughout the conference. It was great to talk more in depth with these women, but again it seemed we just did not have enough time as we all rushed off for dinner provided by Google and Microsoft. Yum!

In addition to healthy, delicious food and cute t-shirts (Microsoft's t-shirts being made from bamboo and organic cotton - yay, Microsoft!) we again had DANCING! Imagine hundreds of women (and about 5 men) line dancing. Truly a site to behold. Unfortunately, I didn't bring the cable for my camera, but hopefully photos will be uploaded soon. It was quite a site to see!

Now I'm tired and need to start sorting through my stuff to see what I can fit in my suitcase. All the giveaways in the bag this year were really good, and anything folks didn't want someone has been collecting to give to charity.

Until next year :-)

Valerie Fenwick

Engaging Students in the Free Open Source Movement through Civic Engagement

Laura Zavala blogs about a panel session on involving students in the use of open source to develop humanitarian software. The expectations are that this will revitalize computing education and attract women:

http://blog.laurazavala.com/?p=252

The Synergistic Evolution of Software & Hardware Technologies

We live in a time of exciting changes in technology, where computing is becoming pervasive. The dividing lines between hardware and software technologies become indistinct in today applications.

Laura Zavala blogs about the panel discussion by technical leaders from industry and academia about the synergistic evolution of software and hardware technologies in today systems (e.g. high availability systems, mobile devices and services, biomedical appliances) and the challenges and opportunities presented by this evolution:

http://blog.laurazavala.com/?p=246

The Imposter Panel: Another Post

Panelists: Kori Inkpen (Microsoft Research), Maria Klawe (Harvey Mudd College), Mary Czerwinski (Microsoft Research), Tiffani Williams (Texas A&M University), Tessa Lau (IBM Almaden Research Center)

I've heard about the Imposter Syndrome before, but was intrigued by this panel consisting of especially successful computer scientists. As it turned out, that was their point: almost everyone feels like a fraud at times. The huge crowd attending the session provided further support for this hypothesis. The session was a lot of fun, as each of the panelists introduced herself as an imposter and shared her experiences with both humor and sincerity.

To summarize, some of the times when the panelists feel/felt like imposters include:
* In new situations where they don't fit in yet, especially when doing things "successful people" do or women don't often do. (It was interesting to note that the first imposter experience for several panelists was in graduate school.)
* When asked to take responsibilities they don't feel qualified for.
* When surrounded by senior people.
* When they see other people working much harder.

Some tips they gave for getting over (or surviving despite) the imposter feeling are:
* Believe in yourself and the things you excel at. Remember your past successes, not your failures, and be proud of them. Speak up for yourself.
* Act like you have confidence; pretend to be competent; keep bluffing it!
* Surround yourself with people who believe in you and support you, and don't hesitate to support and help others yourself. If necessary, tell people you respond well to encouragement.
* Realize that only you can make yourself feel like an imposter. In that sense, you are the creator of your own experience, so don't give that control to anyone else. Don't let other people make you feel like a fraud.
* Work hard! And have fun at the same time.
* Listen well, especially in the first few months of a new job or situation.
* Take calculated risks that make you stand out in a good way.
* Practice!!
* Accept self-doubt as part of who you are. It keeps us humble and helps us help each other.

The main point to remember is that you are not alone. I'm with you. :) And if that's not enough, so are all the other people who were in this session!

GHC08: Unofficial blog: The Imposter Panel

I'm sitting in the Imposter Panel, though not an official blogger for this particular session, I am just overwhelmed by the sheer number of people in here. It's great to know thta I'm clearly not the only one that often feels like an imposter in various technical situations. These women on the panel, in addition to all being very funny, are all very insightful. They are all so very accomplished, yet they al feel like (or have felt like) imposters at one time or another.

Dr. Williams made a great comment: "I am the creator of my own experience."

Essentially, nobody ever told her she was an imposter, she was telling herself she was. So, she decided to stop telling herself that, and her confidence gets better & better every day.
The entire panel was wonderful - I just wish there were more hours in the day to attend sessions at Grace Hopper. They all seem to end too soon.

My computer woes have gotten worse and worse - now my networking driver is failing to attach, the wired connection is working, so I assume this is an additional hardware issue. Oh, and the CPU is throwing errors now, too. So, that brand new laptop has become a very expensive, slow to boot, word processor (does "vi" count as word processing software?). One of the fanstastic Sun recruiters lent me her laptop, and I ran off to the imposter session, desperate to upload my last blog from my thumb drive. Alas, this session was so crowded, I couldn't obtain an IP address! But, small wonders keep happening at this converence - a wonderful woman sitting next to me offered me her laptop, where I'm blogging from right now.

Valerie Fenwick

GHC08: Women in the Brave New World of Open Source

This was my first time speaking at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, and it was so exciting! I had just met most of the other panelists yesterday (didn't meet Stormy Peters until lunch today), and found it was so cool to find all the things we had in common and just as interestingly, all the differences we had in experiences, opinions and careers. The panel went really well - the more we talked, the more ideas we all had that we wanted to share. It was great sharing my eperiences with working on OpenSolaris with others, particularly the students. I hope between the OpenSolaris bite-sized bugs, the Linux "janitorial" work and the Google Summer of Code that we will gain many new women in the world of open source after this conference. I wish we'd had more time, and do hope to hear more from the students that were there as well as the other women in industry. Together we can learn and discover more in the world of computing. This is not the official blog, just my experiences being on the panel. More later...

Valerie Fenwick

GHC08: Climbing the Technical Ladder: Obstacles and Solutions for Mid-Level Technical Women

Caroline Simard (Anita Borg Institute of Technology) and Andrea Henderson (CalState Northridge) presented a new study done by ABI and the Clayman Institute at Stanford University on men and women in the high tech industry in the Silicon Valley at 7 hight tech companies.

Ms. Simard started off the presentation with the broad statement that diversity is good for business and social tasks, which has been backed up by research study after research study. And while it has been shown that women control 80% of the consumer spending, men are still designing 90% of technical products. More frighteningly, women only make up 13% of the board of directors of Fortune 500 companies and less than 5% of the executives.

The research study they did found that men are more likely to be in a senior postion than women (24% vs 10%), even though men and women surveyed had nearly the same distribution of higher level degrees.

Ms. Henderson then continued the talk to let us know that women are more likely to make decisions like delaying having children (30% of women vs 18% of men) in order to advance their careers, or forgo having children all together (9% of women vs 3.5% of men). Another odd statistic out of this study was that the majority of women in high tech careers also have a partner in high tech (68.5%).

The presentation then went on to perceptions of success, covering what men and women considered to be the top attributes of success and then self assessment of how many of those attributes they think they have. One big noted attribute is that women believe you must work long hours in order to be successful (a belief that the men in the survey did not agree with), but don't believe they can meet those needs. Such self discrepencies can actually be a big barrier to success all on its own.

Women in high tech companies really want to see more investment by the company in corporate development on the job (as opposed to relying on the employee to do it in their "spare time"), make mentoring a part of the corporate culture and fix the wage gap. Ms. Simard notes that it is just not true that women don't care about financial rewards and being paid fairly for their work. Their survey showed that women care just as much about health benefits, financial rewards and salary as their male counterparts.

The survey showed that some of the most important things to high tech women was for the company to invest in professional development on the job, mentoring to be a part of the corporate culture and to see the wage gap corrected.

Discussion came around one of my favorite books, Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide. Apparently the authors did a follow up study and discovered that women who negotiated were more likely to be seen in a negative light by both men and women. Ms. Henderson & Ms. Simard noted that there was a lot of research finding that gender bias is very ingraned in both men and women, so as women we actually need to work at this ourselves and make sure we are aware when we are making such judgements. Ms. Simard noted that women who are most successful are able to "tune" their assertiveness depending on the situation and whom they are talking to.

Valerie Fenwick

GHC08: Experiences with OLPC Technology in Ghana, West Africa

Suzanne Buchele, from Southwestern University, spoke to us about her experience in Ghana, West Africa with the One Laptop Per Child program.

She started with the background of the pros for having OLPC in countries where many children don't have electricity or even anything better than a dirt floor in their house. One of the big pros for this program is to help provide education for young girls, as families can't often afford to educate all of their children - so they tend to only educate boy children. She also believes this helps bridge the digital divide for incredibly impoverished children.

Ms Buchele then asks, is it really the best use of money for these incredibly poor people, when the laptops, while cheap compared to standard laptops, are far from free - especially when you consider what it takes to deploy them and secure them. She seems to think that it is, because it's just not possible to train the teachers appropriately in a country where the median age is 25 - and not all of the existing teachers even want to go into those very rural areas. These laptops help to put education directly in the hands of the students, giving them a unique perspective of ownership and pride of taking care of the laptop themselves.She talked extensively about the current educational realities in Ghana. For example, that students there learn by rote, which means they may know that 9 by 9 is 81, but would have no idea what that means. Same as they may know how to copy a sentence, but they won't be able to tell you what the words mean. Also, the teachers are grossly under educated or just not available, or there are just not enough classrooms or no classrooms at all.

So, there seem to be real benefits to providing these laptops directly to the children at no cost to their family, which gives the children more direct learning opportunities on their own timeline.

Valerie Fenwick

Web 2.0 Session: Online Social Networks - Impact to Our Careers

Panelists: Kimberly Blessing (PayPal), Stephanie Liu (Google), Susan Miller (Sun Microsystems), Jessica Mitchell (Cisco) [moderator].

In this panel, a number of social networking tools were mentioned, including Flickr, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace,Twitter, blogging, Orkut, FriendFeed, Plaxo, wikis, and virtual worlds. Not everyone uses all these, but social networking and having an online presence are increasingly important, especially in some areas. Companies and professionals use tools to reach out to customers, generate interest about products, or bring in traffic to their website. A person's use of social networks also ranges from being connected as part of her job, to networking, to staying in touch with friends and family. This raises the questions of what information about ourselves to make available, and how.

People's answers for "how" varied according to their own preferences. LinkedIn was recommended as more tailored towards a job search, but some mentioned having to be on Facebook because so is everyone else. Micro-blogging was considered great for mass communication, needing less effort than email. Aggregating services like FriendFeed were also suggested. One result is that your network of people acts as a filter for information -- you can check their updates rather than the news, to find out what's really important to your community.

Regarding what to make available, one goal is to create a brand image of yourself, yet still retain a personal touch. Thus it helps to focus on your area of expertise but also include some personal details. So what about separating your professional and social lives? While people seeing you as a real person beyond work can strengthen connections, there is also the danger of too much information. One can address this by having limited profile access for some contacts, or separate work and social profiles.

Other privacy issues also came up. For instance, you may want to protect your name in the internet space by creating an account on a new service before someone else can impersonate you there. It's also possible that an information source you're following is actually an impersonator. Furthermore, once you put information about yourself online, you no longer have control over it (beyond some amount of deleting or blocking). Friends may choose to publicly re-distribute your personal information, and it is quite possible for "everyone in the world" to know it eventually.

This last issue is my biggest concern with social networking. I see a conflict between needing to have some online presence freely available to prospective employers, and not wanting the rest of the world's strangers to have any information at all. If would-be employers don't find you on the web before formally being in your network, you may be dismissed as nobody. But any information you put up can be swallowed by questionable parties with loads of free time, and used in ways you had not imagined. As far as I can tell, there's no real solution. To paraphrase one panelist, you can't really live your life in that much fear. So perhaps the only thing to do is to find a balance that works for you. On that note, I'm curious about what balance works for you, and how you handle this conflict. Thoughts?

Multi-Robot Intelligence

This talk was given by Manuela M. Veloso from the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. Since I've always wanted an Aibo and even worked on a robotics competition last year, there was no dilemma for me about which talk I would attend!

The talk started with some examples of robots at work in CMU: the Roboceptionist, robots helping the elderly, and even dog and humanoid robots playing soccer! Dr. Veloso then discussed what makes a robot: integrated intelligence. Basically, there are three components:

• perception: the processing of sensory data
• cognition: learning and action selection
• action: the motion and manipulation of the robot.

Multi-robot soccer was invented to help scientists work on the multi-robot problem, in which robots perform a task by working together. We saw an example of "Small-Size" Robot Soccer, which has 10 robots and a golf ball, with five robots per team. It was neat to watch the video of the robots, called the CMDragons, actually playing soccer! Dr. Veloso's major breakthrough was to include teamwork in the game-play, in the form of passing. She then explained some of the details behind the robots' visual signal interpretation.

Dr. Veloso also gave some examples of soccer strategy for robots. She showed a video where the robots completed four passes and a chip-kick before scoring. The funny thing is, this had never been observed in the lab prior to the competition! Dr. Veloso also showed videos of Aibos playing soccer and explained the difference between the teamwork problem when the robots can and can't communicate with each other.

Did you attend Dr. Veloso's talk? Are you interested in robotics or working on these problems in robotics? Let us know!

Ed & Ashley's 5 Minute Show - Episodes from Wednesday

NOTE: I have inadvertently misplaced our first tape with all our previous videos as well as two interviews from Wednesday. Please, please, please keep an eye out for a miniDV tape (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:MiniDV_cassette.jpg) that is black and in a case. It is most likely in the entrance to the conference center, in the conference room on the third floor, or outside at the tables nearest the registration area.

Other than that, I'm not going to give you much text, because this post contains a whopping five shows!

Outreach Sessions

Hi everyone! I hope you have all been enjoying GHC as much as I have. Since I'm not blogging on this site, but rather my personal blog The Female Perspective of Computer Science, I wanted to point out the three sessions I was assigned to cover in case you missed them in the side bar. I'm blogging about much more, so if you want to read the rest, you can check out my posts with the label GHC08.

• The Artemis Project: Teaching Computer Science to Adolescent Girls
• Using Robots to Introduce Computer Programming to Middle Schools
• Inspiring Girls in Technology: How to Make Every Outreach a Success
• Recruiting High School Women Into Computer Science

As you can see, there was a bit of a theme on outreach in these sessions. I'm hoping to bring back new ideas to my school's Women in Science and Engineering group to help us do the best we can with outreach. Have you done any outreach? What has your school/company been involved in?

Getting It Together: Empowering People through Information (Integration)

With so much information available today, we have many opportunities to exploit it for different purposes. A big challenge is how to integrate data coming from diverse sources and in different formats.

Laura Zavala blogs about the talk given by Laura Haas of IBM Almaden Research Center on the area of Information Integration:

http://blog.laurazavala.com/?p=243

Mary Lou Jepsen's Keynote

Mary Lou Jepsen is the CEO of Pixel Qi, a for-profit spin-off from the One Laptop per Child project. Mary Lou began her talk by discussing children in developing companies and why giving them laptops increases their opportunities in life. Children and teachers reported that they love their laptops, with one child saying "I love my laptop more than my life".

Challenges to providing laptops such as OLPC are:

• price: needs to be low
• low power: many places in the developing world often don't have power sources that most laptops require
• network: these places often aren't connected to the internet either
• other infrastructure
• lifetime: it will need to last
• distribution: how to get the laptops to the children/schools?

One other interesting thing Mary Lou showed us was that GDP climbs when teledensity, or the density of cellphones in a population, increases.

Mary Lou also discussed some of the technical challenges, especially with respect to power consumption. Using a Linux OS is 160th the size of Vista, so using that required less hardware to run. They also found a way to turn off the CPU in 1/10th of a second, and wake it back up in the same time with a keyboard event or packet from the internet.

One major problem the laptops faced when first mass-produced was that they didn't ever come out of hibernation! Luckily they were able to fix the problem within three weeks, and since then, about 1 million have been deployed, with millions more ready to go.

The price of the laptop is expected to drop to $100 by next year. I've always wanted an OLPC, but haven't got one yet. Do you have an OLPC? If so, what are you using it for? Do you like it? Let us know in the comments below - maybe you can convince some of us to buy one!

Wendy Hall: ACM & Women in Computing

Wendy Hall is the first person outside of North America to be elected President of the ACM. One thing she announced during her talk is that the ACM is going to be elevating the ACM-W within the organization this year, which is exciting news. They also have an ACM-W Ambassadors program which is really neat. This year there will be an ACM Women's Council, chaired by Elaine Weyuker. The ACM Women's Council will give us a voice at the top levels of the ACM, which is also really cool.

I'm curious if you are a member of ACM, or if you've participated in ACM-W. If so, what is the best part about these organizations for you?

Student Groups Networking: Come Integrate Your Ideas Today!

Hi everyone! Hope you're having a great time at the conference so far!

A bit of shameless self-promotion again! Our BOF session (entitled "Integrating Ideas: Together We Can Build a Better World") is today at 5:10 and we'd really love to see you there. Come contribute to our discussion on student groups, whether you are part of one or would like to be! We truly believe that by helping each other build these groups and by sharing our ideas, we can build a better world.

We'd also like to mention that we are building a collaborative website for sharing ideas post-conference. It's nowhere near complete and we need you to help make that happen! If you would like to collaborate with us and share your ideas, send an email to: kjtsouka AT gmail DOT com. If you don't want to become a site member at this time, you can also leave a message on our forum to ask questions or give answers. Whichever you choose, we'd love to hear from you!

Transforming Yourself into a Technical Leader

Some of the interesting points about the session:

Stephen Tolopka from Intel started the session with a very interesting question that, “What is the difference between a leader and a manager?”

Linda Apsley from Microsoft said that, “Women don’t realize how far they can go”.

Ramune Nagisetty from Intel mentioned that even her mom faced lots of barrier in her technical career and so does majority of other women today. However, today people admit the problems more openly.

Monique Jeanne Morrow from Cisco looks at disruptive technologies and mentors more men than women because there are so few women in the technical fields.

Ira Pramanick from Google mentioned that in the 17 years of her career, she has seen very few women at higher level. Ira founded (or co-founded) “Magic” to motivate high school girls to study science, engineering and mathematics.

Catherine C. Lasser from IBM said that the leaders take the lead and make sure that the right work is done. She is interested in disruptive business models and said that you can’t dictate these to people but you have to motivate people to come on board.

The panelists believe that leadership is a lot about passion, the ability to change the status quo, and is absolutely collaborative. Leadership is changing what people think “is possible”. The requirements for being a leader are passion, inspiration, ability to motivate and show the path to others.

According to Ira, the prerequisites for being a technical leader are strong technical skills, ability to set examples, and the ability to divide work between people according to what they are good at. Give credit when the team members perform well and take the responsibility when something goes wrong. Be passionate about people and their growth. Leadership is about taking risks. Take a challenging problem and find innovative approaches to solve the problem. It’s OK to fail and never become too comfortable about the work you are doing. Solid Planning is very important

One panelist said that leadership can’t be taught while other said that there are communication courses that you can take to polish your skills. Socialization aspect is very important. Communicate up, down, and laterally. Be true to what you are and don’t try to change your personality to “fit-in”. Don’t stop doing something useful when you become an executive J. It’s very important to be a learner throughout your life. Learning doesn’t stop!

Additional details about this session can be found in Kate's post on the same topic. I did a voice-recording for the session and will update the post soon with more interesting details.

Till laters, stay smiling :-)

GHC08: Awards ceremony and DANCING!

There was no awards banquet this year, as the Grace Hopper conference took a more casual approach to the awards reception. Dinner was served buffet style in advance, which nice as we all got a chance to actually pay attention as awards were given out, instead of attempting to balance between eating & listening to the presenters. I really enjoyed the switch!

I have never seen an awards ceremony with so many heart fealt hugs and ear to ear grins. The wonderful stories told about Grace Hopper and Anita Borg were fascinating to listen to. It was cool to see a fellow Gaslighter Alum, Elisa Camahort Page, and her colleagues win the Anita Borg Social Impact Award for their work with BlogHer. I especially liked the acceptance speech from Elaine Weyuker for the Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award.

I was lucky enough to be entertained again by David Garibaldi, who dazzled us as he did 6 foot portraits of both Grace Hopper and Anita Borg in less than 10 minutes each (perfectly coordinated to music). I saw him last time at the Professinal Business Women of California conference in April.

The evening then turned to dessert and dancing - what a fantastic combination! Though, I will admit, dancing is challenging at altitude! :-)

Valerie Fenwick

GHC08: Getting it Together: Empowering People through Information (Integration)

Laura Haas, from IBM, talked about how we have lots of information - but the problem is it is in lots of places. There is a big challenge of integrating data so the right data is available to the correct people at the right time - and most importantly in a format they can understand.

This research has been going on for decades, but advances in technology are making easier to find the right information that needs to be collated together.

She went on to describe how to use search, as well as "was this what you were looking for" type queries to better aggregate the data, and noted the problems with dirty data sets.

There are still a lot of problems to tackle - it still needs human input, and too much expertise to run.

Ms. Haas is very passionate about this subject and has a list as long as her arm of followon work. Definitely seems like there are a lot of opportunities in this area!

Valerie Fenwick

GH08: Future Mobile Technology Empowering Users: Understands, Guides, Decides

This session from Mary Smiley, from Intel's Emerging Technology group, was presenting on new micro technologies that enable all of us to "live large".

Some of the technology she covered were sensors, like the one in the iPhone or iPod Touch that can tell when you tip or shake the device. Some more advanced sensors that seem to be in the pipeline would be able to judge your mood from your body temperature, recognize your voice to determine more quickly if your phone might be stolen, and just check how healthy you are.

Some of their research leverage the Polar heart rate monitor straps and the mobile devices that measure activity to get an overall picture of their health. Clearly their are privacy implications for this, where you would not necessarily want to share all of this information with just anyone, and apparently those are being addressed.

Valerie Fenwick

GHC08: Fighting Crime using Gunshot Location Systems

This is a very interesting talk on the ShotSpotter technology by Elecia White and Sarah Newman. This technology has been installed in several major cities, helping to solve crimes when the shooter can be pinpointed quickly. In one example, a sniper shot someone from a roof, and actually stayed on the roof, relaxing and smoking a cigarette - thinking he was out of the expected shooting area. But, the ShotSpotter technology had pinpointed him and the police were able to make an arrest.

Of course, this technology needs to attempt to differentiate between firecrackers, hammers, backfiring cars and gunshots. The technology takes a first pass at guessing what it was hearing (and gives a level of confidence), but then asks the police dispatcher to make a judgment call on whether police action is required or not.

They find this gets faster and better reporting than actually relying on people calling 911 (as there is a longer delay before they call and only about 50% of gun crimes are called in). The system isn't perfect, but seems that it can definitely help!

Valerie Fenwick

(this entry originally appeared, with links on Valerie's personal blog)

PhotoSphere of Grace Hopper Photos

A Popfly mashup of Grace Hopper photos on Flickr. Don't forget to upload and tag your photos!

Confessions of a Woman Developer: 4 Steps to Navigate Grace Hopper

Hilary Pike blogs about how to navigate the crowd at Grace Hopper. http://blogs.msdn.com/springboard/archive/2008/10/02/confessions-of-a-woman-developer-4-steps-to-navigate-grace-hopper.aspx

Confessions of a Woman Developer

Hilary Pike blogs a Confessions of a Woman Developer Series for Grace Hopper:
http://blogs.msdn.com/springboard/archive/2008/10/02/grace-hopper-2008-confessions-of-a-woman-developer-series.aspx

CTO Lunch & Forum

While the CTO Lunch wrapped up, I had the chance to talk to several other attendees. We all agreed that both the lunch and networking session prior to it were extremely beneficial and eye-opening. Many of us are are either in school or just starting our careers and learned some interesting things about what CTOs do. Nan Mattai summarized this well by saying that her job consisted of "5 T's" - Technology, Tools, Training, Travel, and Talking.

One interesting thing I learned is that in the last two years, 50% of the engineers Xerox has recruited have been women! I think that is truly amazing and hopefully a trend that other companies will follow.

CTOs emphasized that their schedules require a lot of traveling. It seems like time management is a crucial skill they have in common as they have very tight schedules, often making round trips from the US to, for example, India, within the span of five days. There is a lot of networking involved in their roles as well, and they often meet with CTOs from other companies, which is something I hadn't considered.

Did you attend the CTO sessions? If so, what did you take from it? Who did you meet and what was your favorite part?

Mid-Career Course Correction

Panelists: Ira Pramanick (coordinator), Ana Pinczuk, Catherine C. Lasser, Anne Krook, Mimi Hills, Robin Goldstein

In this panel, each panelist answered 2 of 4 questions:

* How do you realize your career's off-track?
* How can you get it back on track?
* What are some related women-specific issues?
* How does the discussion vary for forced versus voluntary changes?

AP started by pointing out that it's important to first understand what you want. Understand what "on track" means to you. Do you enjoy what you do, are you proud of it? At one point, she felt she was stagnating and went back to school to get her third master's.

MH never felt her career was off-track, though others might have said it was. She recommended being unafraid to make lateral moves, knowing your priorities, and talking to people. When you make a change, make sure your "career sponsors" (such as previous managers or people you worked with) know about it and why you're doing it.

CL also never thought of her career as being offtrack, but as a continuum that she had to keep re-visiting. She pointed out that goals will change over time; 30 years ago, she didn't know this is what she'd be doing. Again, she reiterated the importance of enjoying what you do. If you do enjoy it, you are passionate about it and it helps you go forward, especially early in your career. Again, it's also good to tell people what you want, both mentors and managers. In terms of voluntary versus forced career changes, she recommended that if it's voluntary, don't get "too comfortable" in a position. If it's forced, look for the learning opportunity and what it can do for you.

AK said women are more likely to take time away from the paid workforce. Therefore, think about a career change as something that's more likely than not to happen, especially by the time you're over 40. Also think of yourself as having a skill set rather than a job. And a bright side of forced change is that it can minimize the amount of time you spend fearing change, which may be one of the most debilitating factors in a voluntary career change.

RG realized careers can go off-track for reasons like self-applied pressure and self-doubt. Trying to chart an ideal career track based on things you "should" be doing in order to prove yourself can actually move your career off-track instead. She learned this herself after 2.5 years of pain trying to follow a track she "should" follow. Instead, look at your own priorities (for both voluntary and forced changes), and remember that a career track need not be vertical.

There was plenty of interesting audience comments and discussion. Topics included:

* How are things different in a small versus large company?
* How do you make the move from a stable job when you want more (and what is the harm in not making the move)?
* What one skill did each person carry across careers?

And now, it would be great if you could also share your experiences and responses to some of these questions / topics! Have you changed careers? How far do you agree with the panelists? What skills do you find the most transferable?

Transforming Yourself Into a Technical Leader

This talk was designed to be an interactive discussion between panelists and audience members. The panelists were a diverse group of industry representatives, including Stephen Tolopka from Intel, Monique Jeanne Morrow from Cisco Systems, Catherine C. Lasser from IBM, Ramune Nagisetty from Intel, Ira Pramanick from Google, and Linda Apsley from Microsoft.

It was interesting to hear all the speakers note that there were too fewer women in our field, and that as you go higher you tend to see fewer technical women, and that they would like to change that.

The panelists gave some interesting characteristics of good technical leaders:

• Being a technical leader requires passion about technology and the work
• You need to be able to work well with your team by setting an example, dividing the work and making it a partnership
• Give credit to people who help make the work happen, and take responsibility for the mistakes
• You have to be competent technically

They also gave some strategies strategies for building a technical career, such as:

• Take on a high-risk project that no one wants and that will help you build your career
• it's ok to work on a project that fails, just like Fran mentioned in her talk
• Above all, take risks!!

They also mentioned some specific skills you can use to improve your leadership:

• Every person (i.e. on your team) needs to feel like you acknowledge them and listen to them
• Celebrate and recognize successes
• Leadership happens through conversations: every interaction is an opportunity for leadership and influence

And my favorite moment of the session: Monique Jean Morrow's assertion that: "If you do not toot your own horn, someone will use it as a spitoon". She went on to say that you should communicate up, communicate down, and communicate laterally, and have the courage to be the change agent.

Have you used any of these tips in your own career? Or, if you are a student, do you see ways to use these ideas in your student life?

Organizations Building a Better World: ABI, ACM-W, CRA-W and NCWIT

Well, it's always better when we're together Yeah, it's always better when we're together...
Jack Johnson sings, but in the first Sesion of October 2, the panelists seemed like they were singing the same song, I mean they we're just reunited in Torreys Peak III of the Conference Center in Keystone, Colorado, sharing experiences of the projects that they do. They emphasize that they're not competition with each other, they work together to achieve more to more. These organizations are everywhere, Turkey, Africa, Germany, UK, where women in the world could make projects for the local community.

Fran Allen's Keynote Address

Fran Allen draws a lot of excitement from women technologists and I think it's safe to say the audience was very eager to hear her keynote address.

Fran's Background
Fran is a legend in our community, but I still learned something new about her. I'd known about her graduate education and background in mathematics, but hadn't known she originally took a degree in education! No wonder she has consistently been involved with mentoring without her career - it's an example I think we should all look to follow.

Fran started her talk by outlining her work at IBM, including STRETCH (1956-1961) and HARVEST (1958-1962). These projects made advances in both hardware and compilers. But beyond the projects, she wrote papers, went on sabbatical at NYU, and went back to IBM research.

When she returned to IBM Research, she noticed a glass ceiling that hadn't seemed to have been there before. Fran has an interesting insight as to why: she noticed that at this time, computer science emerged as a profession, with better standards for what one needed to know in order to get a job in the field. Companies hired based on a set criteria, often pulling students from engineering schools, which were mostly populated by men. Prior to this time, these standards weren't in place and people from many different educational backgrounds entered the field, leaving more opportunity for women to get involved.

Whither Computing Science?
Fran next talked about where she thinks Computer Science is headed next. She explained a bit of background on Moore's Law and talked about parallelism as a solution. John Hennessy says, "[This is] the biggest problem Computer Science has ever faced.", but Fran has an answer: "[This is] the best opportunity we will ever have to improve user productivity, program performance, and system integrity." I liked Fran's positive approach and how she viewed the challenge as an opportunity.

Where Have All the Women Gone?
Fran mentioned that so many women she worked with were deserving of so much more recognition than they got, although many man were too. Fran wants to change this, especially the way we do recognitions. Just like mentoring, this is highly important. It's important for both men and women, but equity is lacking.


Fran's Hopes for the Future
Fran has high hopes, among which:

• She wants to see a new generation of women experience the excitement she feels for the field.
• She wants to see women creating the workplace that meets their needs
• She wants to see CS become a core science of more interest to women (and others).
• She wants to see us achieve Anita's goal: 50-50 by 2020!
• She wants to enjoy the company of many more women Turing Award winners!

Fran ended by remembering a few great women, including Anita Borg, the Wrens at Bletchley Park, the ENIAC "computers" (such as Jean Bartik), and Betty McDonough. Earlier in the Welcome Address we heard it said that among the audience, there is definitely at least one Anita Borg or Grace Hopper.

I really enjoyed Fran's talk and I'd be interesting in hearing what you thought of it too! Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below.

3 lessons learned from 'Recession proof your career'- Networking event by Jo Miller

Phew! I finally found some time to type this post. The first day of GHC was an amazing experience and I'm looking forward to the rest of the conference.

The networking event was an eye-opener for me. The community volunteers have done a great job in updating the wiki and you can find the post for this session here. I'd like to bring your attention to three things that I had not thought of before and helped me see things from a different perspective.

- Work less! Upon hearing this, most of the members of my table (including me :)!) said "huh?". But, after I heard Jo's logic, I was like "that totally makes sense!". Hard work attracts more hard work. However, it doesn't really make you visible. Instead, taking 5-10% time off of your work and networking and building meaningful and synergistic relationships would really make you more visible.

- Create a networking plan. This was something I never thought about previously. Her idea was to create a table with two columns. The left-side column denotes "who" of your networks (who will you build relationships with). The right-side column denotes "how" of your networks (how will you build those relationships). By brainstorming and coming up with possible techniques, you have a plan to network and hence are more prepared to build the relationship in a proactive manner.

- Practice the 30-second commercial. I heard about the 'elevator' talk long before and had actually mentally prepared a few sentences about myself before coming here. Jo had a structured networking event soon after her talk where the participants practiced their commercial (in pairs). I was surprised to know that what I mentally rehearsed was not what was coming out of my mouth! It was nice that we had quite a good number of practice trials. I'm more confident of my elevator speech now than I had been half a day earlier.

To summarize - work less (work smartly, and spend the rest of time networking), create a networking plan and practice your 30-second commercial to build a great network and become more visible!

Ed & Ashley's 5 Minute Show - Eps. 3 and 4

Today was super, super awesome. Granted, I'm also super tired so my blog post is simply going to consist of the latest two episodes of Ed & Ashley's 5 Minute Show. Episode 3 we filmed while waiting for our flight, and episode 4 was filmed today. I'm especially excited for episode 4 since it has a bunch of soundbytes from Grace Hopper attendees! Check it out:

GHC Sights

Today was a beautiful day. In between a packed schedule of sessions and lunches, we managed to have a quick car ride and see some of the sights. There is really some beautiful scenery, and if you get a chance you should try to check it out. One thing you can do is take the free shuttle on a 20 minute sightseeing trip around the resort, which was fun and relaxing, and there is still beautiful fall colour to see.

Anyone else have any suggestions for things to check out?

Recession-proof your career: Ed's Prespective

Jo Miller's talk about Recession-proofing your career was great!  I would definitely recommend checking out the GHC Wiki, specifically the page that has the notes  from Jo Miller's talk.  My number one take-away from this session was to create several 30 Second Commercials for myself.  Having one 30 Second Commercial is great, but having several is even better since they can take you through multiple situations.  I have several different flavors of 30 Seconds floating around in my head.

• Student/I'm looking for a job
• Tutor/Training
• Women in Computer Science chair

This is the suggested format of a 30 Second Commercial:

1. Your name
2. Job Title/Personal Brand
3. I am responsible for/take care of/specialize in X, Y, Z
4. Come to me if you need A, B, C

Tonight I'm going to write down my 30 Second Commercials.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll have them all ready and I can have Ashley tape them so everyone can see my 30 Second Commercials!

I feel really good about having a 30 Second Commercial.  I would love to hear what everyone is going to include in their 30 Second Commercials, so please leave some comments!

What's in a name? ****Part 2 of the post along with corrections in the Part 1******

Today I met many excellent women techies from different cultural backgrounds and found my "name memorizing" technique extremely handy to remember their names. I would like to share the technique with you all. I feel that there is a "feel-good-factor" if you remember the name of the person you are interacting with during your second conversation.

Tip 1) Instead of saying just "Hello", try to say "Hello (followed by the name of the person)". Example, "Hello Ritu" :-).

Tip 2) While parting, instead of saying a simple "Bye", try to say "Bye (followed by the name of the person)". Example, "Bye Ritu" :-).

Tip 3) Use the name of the person as many number of times as you can in the conversation. Example, instead of saying, "I think you have an excellent research topic", try saying, "I think you have an excellent research topic (followed by the name of the person) " .

Tips 1, 2, and 3 will help you remember the name by the rote learning method.

Tip 4) Try to create memory maps. Break the name down into smaller parts that you are familiar with. Example, break "Ritu" into "Re" as in repeating and the number "two". It's easy to register new information in your memory if you can identify with it in part or whole.

Tip 5) Be a good listener :-). Be attentive when the person is introducing herself/himself.

Tip 6) Associate an image to the name. For example, if you meet someone with the name "Ritu Arora", think about "Aurora Borealis" and associate that picture with the name.

Tip 7) Try rhyming ...cool isn't it? For example when I met "Ling Yang", I thought "Ling Yang, staying young" or when I met someone with the name "Jill", I thought, "Jill set to kill". The point here is spending some time and effort to conciously register the name in your mind.

Some of the tips might sound silly but they get your mind working on remembering the names. Making that extra effort is the core. I hope the tips help. Have fun.

The Connect Project: Ed's Prespective

Today during the networking workshop, everyone got to hear all about the Connect Project.  From a show hands in the room, lots people were signed up with the Connect Project.  This is great; the more people that are signed up, the better it will be.  This is a beta test of the project, but I think it is going very well.  I love having the color-coded name tags to help me identify important people that I want to talk to!  I've actually connected with some people so far!

For me, I was able to use the Connect project to find potential employers.  I'd like to go into industry first and from there I'll decided if I'd like advanced degrees.  Because I'm looking for a job, I can look for the right colors.  This morning I got connected with some recruiters from Fort Wayne, IN, so I've been able to experience the Connect Project first hand!

Please share your Connect Project experiences in the comments!!

Ed & Ashley's 5 MInute Show - Episode 2

I know only a few hours have passed, but the next episode of Ed & Ashley's 5 Minute Show is now available! What can I say, when you are super pumped about something (GHC) it's easy to get a little over productive. :)

Introductions All Around

With GHC only a day away, I figure it's high time I introduce myself. I am the Ashley that Ed briefly mentioned in her introductory post way back at the beginning of August.

We both attend DePauw University, where I am currently a junior. Ed and I met back in CS1 and became fast friends as we pulled typical CS all-nighters to complete our projects. (Heh. Looking back, those were the days: projects literally took only a night to program.) Fast forward a couple years, and we are elbow deep in CS involvement!

For GHC, Ed and I have decided to video blog our experience. I am proud to bring you the first episode of Ed & Ashley's 5 Minute Show:

Conversation Techniques

We've all heard networking is important!

But what if I'm shy, awkward, feel insecure about my language skills...

I've heard chatty people give advice like: "find someone in the room that isn't talking with anyone else". Shy people like me know that is bogus! We will be both standing there looking at each other, not knowing what to say. Not fun!

There are some easy things you can do without becoming someone else, or spending a lot of time learning new skills to improve your connection ability and confidence.

A conference provides the perfect opportunity to pre-plan some conversations. You can create very useful questions that fit the context of the conference and get a conversation started.

I think about what I'm interested in, and some of the issues I face so that the conversations I start are useful for me, and the other person.

• I'm interested in what inspires and motivates others
• Interdisciplinary technologies

Then I think up some conversations I would be interested in having:

• You work at X. Do you like it? What do you work on? Have you always worked in that area?/What other things have you worked on? Is this a good area for someone like me to consider entering? Do you have a graduate degree? Why/why not? Do you think it would be to your advantage to have more schooling in this area?
  
• I see you are a PhD student. Wow. How did you decide that you really wanted to get a PhD? What is your research area? What about your research do you find the most interesting? What about the program is different than you thought before you started? How did you pick your school/program/adviser?
  
• Did you go to the talk on Bioinformatics? I missed it - I had volunteer duties. Do you know anyone that went to the talk? What did you do instead for the morning session slot? How was that? What did you come away from the other talk with? OR What can you remember about the talk? which of the speakers was the most interesting? If I wanted to work in this area, who do you think I should send e-mail to? Do you think it would be ok to just e-mail her?

Assume that conversation might get derailed, and let it go to new places. You can come back to some of those conversations if you need to.

Getting back to what you were saying about X....

Assume that many of your questions will be reflected back at you. Don't be surprised if you are asked "So what about you?"Conversations often go that way. It is generally a good thing.

TRY to answer more than is asked of you. It gives others something to be genuinely interested in.

How long have you been at U of X?

I've been there 3 years, and I really like it. My classes are
all really small.... And the computing program is closely linked with
the biology department. The winters are cold, which is good for
studying.

Turn any piece of information or answer into a broader question: how, why, do you know if that relates to Y, who else works on this, etc?

It is OK to open with something very generic and simple!
Have a line, and a general response that shares something about you. You can give them your response if they don't give you much to go on.

Hi, having fun at the conference?

>yeah.

I think it is great, but I'm kind of overwhelmed. I'm the only one from my
school and I don't really know anyone yet. What about you?

As the conference progresses you will feel more comfortable with your conversations and be able to modify your question set based on what you have gotten out of the conference or really want to gain from the conference.

Good Luck!

Answering Jeopardy Question 4 :Who is Mary Lou Jepsen?

Thanks to my co-blogger (funny! instead of co-worker) Ritu Arora for asking us these
questions in Jeopardy. I want to share with you the answer. I start to read the name of Mary
Lou Jepsen since I was in college, but when I list for the master I take a course, I think it was the first course, where I read a paper of Nicholas Negroponte, where he mentioned Mary Lou Jepsen. I read about her iniative of Pixel Qi, and another reference: Wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lou_Jepsen) where the biography of Mary Lou Jepsen captivate my attention. I mean I admire her, she's an example of how we could Build a better World. I invite you to read more about her and keep waiting for the posts and comments of her conference on Grace Hopper 2008.

Where Are You Traveling From?

Reading some of the posts on the Facebook site, I've seen messages from people coming from the US, Australia, and the UK. My own presentation group has people coming from Canada, India, Singapore, and Mexico. It's exciting to have an opportunity to meet people who are studying in different places and see such diversity in Computing!

With less than a week left until the conference, I'm curious as to where you're traveling from, and wondering who is making the longest journey... who knows, maybe you'll find someone here who is coming from the same place as you, that you didn't know before!

Networking to Build a Better World

To be honest, I'm an engineer and I struggle with the idea that networking is self-serving. I KNOW making solid connections is very important for everything I hope to accomplish, but....
It is much easier to do something for someone else than it is myself.

Maybe you feel the same, or maybe you just want to make a bigger impact in the world. Networking doesn't need to about you. It can be about others. I find it much easier, more comfortable, and more rewarding to help someone else than to ask for help.

Any connection is someone you can potentially help with something in the future. And it doesn't matter if they are professional, personal, customer, client, corporate, friend, foe...

So today I'm encouraging everyone to comment with at least one way they have helped someone else through your connections. OR some suggestion for helping others at GHC. I will start with a couple of examples:

• Got my friend Caroline a short term contract job just when she got laid off and really needed a boost.
• Got donated supplies for another friend's non-profit project from my hobby supplier.

At GHC:

• I plan to connect people with mentor-mentee possibilities.
• I plan to ask the question, "So what do you want to be when you grow up", and be a sounding board for their thoughts.

Please add your thoughts to the discussion!!

Getting Involved

As many of you may know, this is my first GHC.  I am so excited to go; I've only heard spectacular things about this upcoming experience.  I'm honored to have received a scholarship to go since that was able to free up funds to allow one of my fellow students to come with me!
When I first decided I wanted to go to GHC earlier this year, I really wanted to be able to participate in the conference.  I prepared and submitted a BoF proposal.  Unfortunately, my proposal wasn't accepted.  This was rather disappointing for me.  After looking at the program though, I could see that absolute best of best will be presenting.  I've come to conclusion that if you have to get beat, get beat by the best!  I know that all the sessions are going to be riveting!  I wish I could be in five places at once so I could go to them all!
Because I wouldn't be participating in the conference in the "official" capacity, I started to look around for other ways that I could participate in the conference.  As is turns out, there are lots and lots of opportunities to participate in the conference, even if your name isn't on the program schedule!  I've been able to contribute to and follow this blog.  This has really helped calm some first-timer nerves (Thanks Kate for the great posts!).  I also follow GHC on Twitter and offered to send updates during the conference!  Then I realized that I can also help with video blogging.  I got a camcorder last Christmas, so that would be perfect for me!  Ashley (my fellow student) and I are planning on teaming up to make some great videos while we're at GHC.  I'm also planning on taking notes at all the sessions I go to, in order to contribute to the GHC wiki.  That will be a great resource for me to take home and use with DePauw's Women in Computer Science group too.
The opportunities for participating in GHC are endless!  I'm so elated that I'll be able to contribute so much to the conference.  Being able to participate so much has given me a small sense of ownership of GHC and I want my participation in GHC to help make it the best GHC that it can be!
I love being involved in the GHC community.  It's so supportive and the connections made with other women are so valuable.  If participating in GHC sounds like something you can and want to do, I highly recommend it.  I believe there is a deadline of September 18th, so you have to hurry!  Check out all the ways to get involved on the GHC Community home page!
See everyone soon!  —Ed

Countdown to GHC!

GHC is now less than a month away, and I've been trying my best to keep up with what's going on in various places. But as the conference looms closer, I've seen several comments about worried first-time GHC attendees: whether they are nervous about being in a foreign country, anxious about meeting such amazing women, or intimidated about coming alone.

It's hard to imagine because it is such a different experience (one perhaps many of us are unused to), but GHC brings together such a diverse group of women, from so many backgrounds, fields, and occupations (students, industry people, academics) that it really would be hard to find yourself out of place. Last year, I felt an amazing sense of community almost immediately upon arrival at the hotel, and I've read accounts from other attendees who have expressed similar sentiments.

It's easy to meet people too! Last year's GHC was my first, and I was pretty new to networking at conferences. But I met people and made some lasting friendships in some unexpected places. For example, a few of us were staying in a condo and had some extra room, so we advertised on the Facebook GHC group for additional occupants. We found two lovely girls from Toronto and we are still in touch today! We had an awesome time and I learned a lot from them. There were some other students from my own school that I hadn't really had a chance to talk to before, and I got to know them much better as well. Sharing a room, car, or making travel plans together is a great way to meet new friends, and if you are looking to try it out, there is a new discussion topic on this year's Facebook group for just this purpose, so check it out!

There will also be lots of other opportunities to meet people informally, whether you are chatting between sessions, enjoying the banquet, or partying at the Sponsor Night (speaking of which, does anyone have any theories about this year's party?). If you are a Hopper, get to know your fellow Hoppers! Attend the lunches, or make a point of chatting to your neighbour at breakfast. You won't be disappointed!

Jeopardy!

Would you like to play jeopardy? Ok, here's something for fun that should be a piece of cake if you have aquainted yourself with the conference website. The correct responses are towards the end of the post.


Section: Trivia
Points: 100

Answer 1)
Though controversial, the origin of the term "debugging" is often attributed to her. The following quotes are also attributed to her:

"It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."

"A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what a ship is built for."

"I believe in having an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out."



Section: Trivia
Points: 200

Answer 2)
He is the recepient of the Grace Murray Hopper Award for the year 2007. About the Grace Murray Hopper Award: An award for $35,000 is awarded every year to an outstanding young computer professional who is selected on the basis of a single recent major technical or service contribution. The award recepient should be 35 years of age or less at the time the qualifying contribution was made.




Section: Trivia
Points: 300

Answer 3)
Making Waves.



Section: Trivia
Points: 400

Answer 4)
She is the CEO of Pixel Qi and the founding CTO of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).



Section: Trivia
Points: 500

Answer 5)
She is currently serving as Chair of SIGPLAN, which is the Special Interest Group on Programming Languages for the ACM. She serves on the steering committee of CRA-W, which is the Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women, where she works to encourage more women to pursue research careers in computer science.






Question 1)
Who was Grace Murray Hopper?

Question 2)
Who is Vern Paxson?

Question 3)
What was the theme of the Grace Hopper Conference in the year 2006?

Question 4)
Who is Mary Lou Jepsen?

Question 5)
Who is Kathleen Fisher?

GHC - an opportunity for life changing connections

I had the great fortune to attend the first Grace Hopper Celebration in 1994, just as I was finishing my Ph.D. I was looking to begin my career and looking for ways to be successful.

I felt so comfortable at the conference, the speakers passionate about their work and I met so many amazing women that I wish I could be like, and many that I personally could aspire to be.

Since I was looking to my future, I looked to connect with those further in their career. Most were 40-ish and doing well, but still struggling. Since then, almost everyone of those women has taken leaps forward. They are now department heads, deans, and presidents of universities. They have started companies, non-profits, joined the executive ranks, and encouraged and mentored thousands of younger technologists. I truly believe that the Grace Hopper Celebration has played a big role in their success. It gives us all role models and colleagues (around the world) that share our passion for technology and for building a better world. It gives us new ideas on how to lead, inspire, and take chances to accomplish things we are passionate about.

Since I've found GHC to be such a wonderful place to build long term professional and personal relationships, I'm working on the CONNECT project and encouraging everyone attending GHC to network and build friendships. You will see more posts from me on this as we get closer to the conference.

For now, I just want to give you the basic info on the CONNECT project, and encourage you to sign up.

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CONNECT at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing

Looking for a fun way to improve and expand your personal and career network? Try CONNECT, a new innovative system that will be in place for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. With CONNECT, you can set networking goals, receive help to ensure you meet your goals, and learn the latest networking tips. The best part about CONNECT – it’s free!

Here’s how it works:

Ø Register at http://toilers.mines.edu/connect/. Enter your information, who you would like to meet while at the conference and any difficulties you have networking with others.

Ø You will receive a conference badge with a bar code on it. Throughout the conference, when you meet someone who you like to exchange contact information with, you will be able to scan each other’s badges using the CONNECT SCANNER.

Ø All attendees will wear a colored ribbon corresponding to their respective work area (e.g., Assistant Professor or Software Engineer). These ribbons will help you make the connections with others you want to make while at the GHC conference.

Ø Each night you will be receive updates on the status of your networking goals based and list of connections you've made. These emails will include a summary of the types of people you have met so far and suggestions on the types of people you should try to meet the next day.

Ø Networking tips tailored to your needs will also be sent via email to help you improve your connections with others at the conference.

Ø At the end of the conference, you will receive contact information of the other attendees you connected with. In addition, you will receive tips on maintaining the connections you made over the long run.

With CONNECT, you will develop your networking skills, gain valuable career contacts, and make immportant connections with those in your field whether they are peers, mentors, mentees, or role models. Register for CONNECT today and take a step towards improving yourself and creating long-lasting relationships with others in the computing industry!