As has been mentioned (a few times now, sorry!), I am part of a four-person international collaboration that will be presenting a Birds of a Feather session (Friday, October 3rd, 5:10 p.m. — 6:10 p.m.) at this year's Grace Hopper Conference. Our session is entitled: "ʃIntegrating Ideas = Together We Can Make a Better World", and will be presented by Aakriti Agarwal, Sunayana Sitaram, Alicia Chong, and me, Kate Tsoukalas.
Here is a quick excerpt from our session proposal:
"Facebook, email, the internet and other types of online networking provide our long distance relationships with the fastest and easiest communication ever. This session is mainly about Student Group Networking, because different Women in Technology Student Groups around the globe are working with similar purposes. These networking applications make it easy for us to share ideas, but most importantly, integrating them can give the result that most groups expect and are working hard to accomplish. We really think that Together We Can Build a Better World - that by integrating our ideas, sharing old ones and making new ones our Student Groups can grow, and new student groups can come forward."
Part of the presentation will consist of a discussion of our experiences using networking tools to build our own women in technology student groups, with advice and tips on how you can too. However, we want to try to 'integrate' the ideas from a larger community - the global community - to help give women in technology groups a boost the world over.
This is where you come in!
Before, during, and after the session, we will be collecting your ideas, feedback, and experiences, and posting them on the internet so that we will have a record of all the amazing things being done to promote these student groups. So whether you've faced challenges or experienced great successes, we'd love to hear about it and possibly share it during our session. You can leave your comments right here at this post, and we'll be sure to 'integrate' them with our session materials as the conference approaches. Post away!
... a view into The Grace Hopper Celebration!
Thanks Kate for the wonderful post :)
ReplyDeleteI am soooooo looking forward to the BOF session. I would encourage everyone to send in your ideas/suggestions, doubts, questions, etc. We would love to hear from you!
I think this is great for us as presenters too, as we can work towards focusing on the common issues. Moreover, this will help everyone to have an awesome set of ideas even before the session :)
Looking forward to hearing from you guys!
-Aakriti
Thanks Aakriti! :)
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned networking tools to build our own women in technology student groups are great advantages we have now. But these advantages are here if we decide to use them.
ReplyDeleteI will be one of the presenters and if I'm not mistaking my group is the most recent been founded in February this year.
As a new group I feel there have been more challenges than successes but, wooow I tell you when there is a success its worth it! and well, as we gain experience, challenges are less
also, for us using this networking tool and asking groups with more experience, getting advice and also recognizing we are so many looking for similar purposes is a great motivational tool, to keep going when you face the hardest challenges.
I really hope everyone collaborates with ideas, that you get interested in this topic, because we can actually build a network and help our local student group grow and many new ones arise, its a great experience.
Is there anyone with a new student group as well? or maybe that wants to start a new one or even someone that had the opportunity to start one? I've heard many experiences and each is different, but for us here is motivational because every group has its success :) I hope here we can learn more and to hear from more people