Friday Keynote

Friday afternoon's keynote wrappped up the week in full circle about the women in technology of the past, the present, and the future. We were honored to have Mark Benioff from Salesforce talk to us about the methods he did with his company to expose the unequal pay between men and women. He is the leader in equality for all, urging companies to take it upon themselves to "find the inequalities in the workplace, and solve them with equality." He also talked about teaching more equality among K-12 grade students- that getting the students to be aware of unconscious biased from early on will help us in our success.

We also heard from today's leaders, including the producer of an upcoming film called "Hidden Figures" , an astronaut, and a female electrical engineer at NASA. These women remind us that we can do amazing things.

The next speaker was Megan Smith, who is in her own right an extroadinary technical leader. After spending 10 years at Google, she was asked by the president of USA to be the CTO. She currently works at improving tech in the government. She talks about continuous opportunities to improve government- some of those being modern webpages, services, and security. I can't give her enough praise for being such an amazing technologist, speaker, and always finding ways to improve society, a true civic servant.

In summation, I found that GHC (Grace Hopper Celebration) is absolutely necessary, if we want to be an inclusive, truly diverse society. We need to remind ourselves and others, that yes, women and minorities can be technologists, leaders, engineers, scientists, and anything else they strive to be. 

Grace Hopper Kickoff Keynote

The Grace Hopper Celebration keynote this morning was a great start to what will be 3 days of networking, classes, and celebration of Women in technology in computing. We had amazing speakers, who were top technology industry leaders, sharing their inspirational stories. Before I get started on what each speaker had to say, I want to point out a few interesting facts about GHC.

The Grace Hopper Celebration grew from 500 attendees in 1994 to 15,000 in 2016. 1000 attendees were men. Attendees came from 83 countries from around the world. The convention is named after Grace Hopper who was a naval officer and in 1944, wrote the first programming language compiler. This celebration of women in computing and technology inspires women and industries in general, to effectively create a movement that signifies change - that women's roles in technology will continue to grow. We are celebrating achievements by women in history, achievements by women today, and cultivating achievements for tomorrow. Although we do think of women today at leaders and innovators, we still have room to grow. Currently, women hold only 21.7 % of tech jobs 14% of leadership positions. So this is why we celebrate at the Grace Hopper Celebration.

The first speaker, Dr. LaTanya Sweeney, works at Harvard University as a Data Privacy researcher. She is the first African American woman to earn a degree in Computer Science and Software Engineering at MIT. She spoke about how technology impacts people and dictates our future. She shared a about how she recognized problems with data security in the health industry, and how she worked to find a solution.

"We live in a technocracy" was her message, and that we can harness technology for public interests. Her story introduced an important idea that data science can help change and/or save the world - we are impacted by how we treat data. We have unforseen consequences when it comes to data and we must adjust everywhere we can at the design stage. This powerful message will definitely provoke thoughts and ideas within the leadership of tomorrow.

Next, Suzie Armstrong, VP at Qualcomm presented the 2016 ABIE award to Anna Patterson in Technology Leadership. Anna talked about measuring what matters and recognized that women aren't represented enough in technology. "We still have work to do in order to close in on the gender gap."
It was nice to note that 60 organizations participated in Leadership Index - a participation where policies were created to promote more women in the workplace, including a formal leadership development process, gender diversity training, and flexible time policies.

I thought that Ginni Rometti held one of the most pleasant and inspiring talks I have ever heard. She started with some history about herself, her family, and finally how she came to be the CEO of IBM. She shared a touching childhood story about her mother, being a point of inspiration. Her story about where she draws her motivation from, is a story that alone - is very touching and powerful. Although she holds a top leading position herself (as one of Fortune's top leaders at that) - she acknowledges that IBM hired the first female engineer in 1935 and the first female Executive in 1943. She is essentially saying that women have paved the way for her, and that she is proud today to see so many women in technology. She is inspired by women from the past, one of them being Ada Lovelace, a woman who wrote the first algorithm in 1840. She also looks up to women like NASA Mathematicians Catherine Johnson and Mary Vaughn. She left us with several quotes:
"Past is prologue. Era is cognitive."
"Build learning into everything you do. Growth and comfort never coexist."
"Work on something you are passionate and something bigger then yourself."
Ginni is essentially and effectively, paving the way for the future of women in technology and computing.

Lastly, we heard from Alyssia Jovellanos, a 17 year old student who grew up in a town that wasn't exposed to programming. She found ways to promote programming in her hometown by leading an organization to help children learn programming and technology. Hers was a story of fighting for what she believes in, and helping others realize their dreams. Alyssia is set to become a future leader in technology, and we are all proud to have her.

Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking

Poornima Vijayashanker and Karen Catlin, authors of Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking provided tips, tricks, and methods for public speaking as a techie.

The information in this GHC plenaries talk was very insightful and inspirational for anyone who wants to be better at public speaking. The key takeaway for me was the ultimate "power pose" that you can do before you go out there on stage. A power pose is when you get into the same position an athlete who just won would, or how a superhero poses when he's looking over a city in the roof. That's right. Get into that pose for about two minutes before going out there on stage, and your testosterone will increase while you cortizone increases, setting you up for an amazing speech.

Of course, the normal things that you should do to prepare for your talk still holds. Things like practicing, knowing the audience, storytelling, relating, etc. etc. Another thing I took away from this talk was to limit the use of text in PowerPoint slides!

Finally, of course, I left feeling inspired and pumped!

Download the book at gum.co/present-ebook/ghc

Houston Arrival

While boarding the flight to Houston, I looked around and realized, I am on a Grace Hopper plane! That's exactly what the other passengers called it, a Grace Hopper plane. We were all on the plane to Houston specifically to attend the Grace Hopper conference. Even though we had to endure TSA, and even though it was 7:30AM (a time of day I rarely see) there was not a frown in site. We are going to a massive networking event after all, so why not? We all had this one thing in common, and so the networking begins. To the left of my seat was a Researcher from Cambridge, MA "not England as that's a big difference" he assured everyone. This will be his third year at GHC and in order to win a conference pass, he had to have 4 conputers running on different servers during open enrollment, and ready, to press the button. Impressive, I thought. Great to know for next year. 

To the right of me was an IT person who manages data centers. In order to get to attend GHC, he had to volunteer as a recruiter. This will be his 4th year. Some other passengers were first timers like myself, mostly from Microsoft or Amazon. Those two companies after all, dominate the tech industry in Seattle. Not one person I met was staying at the same hotel as me. 

Once we landed, we all cheered or sighed in relief. Did I mention the weather at an earlier blog? Confirmed by the captain at landing, it was a searing 90degrees... something I'm not used to this time of year. I looked at my sweaters and realized I had only packed long pants. Then suddenly the researcher on my left said "we aren't allowed to wear shorts anymore because Lisa Brummel left the company so all I brought are long pants!" Was that inappropriate? I hope not. It did make me feel better because I wasn't alone with the long pants.

After riding in a taxi through Houston, I wasn't very impressed. The streets seemed empty, and building windows were very dark. I couldn't peek into buildings without looking out of place. At 5 pm, commuters fill the streets and compete to get hom. Hot breeze welcomes you every time you exit a building or a taxi. Then the cool Air Conditioning welcomes you back every time you enter a building or taxi.  

In Houston city, free busses run within city limits. Taxis will take you to another place in the city for a flat rate of $6. You can also rent a bicycle and ride designated bike lanes around town. The Galleria provides mall-like shopping. Its supposed to be one of the biggest malls in the area. I may hit that up later this week.

Its hard to imagine that there are 15000 conference attendees, all converged on this one city. I will see all attendees at once when the conference begins tomorrow.

I then attended a pre-conference social event. When you enter, you are given 5 bracelets in one color of your choice. Your goal is to meet people with different bracelet colors, and exchange bracelets. If you succeeded, you will end up with 5 bracelets of all different colors. What a very fun way to meet people! I met people from the Identity team, Microsoft Office Tokyo, Bing, Office Online, Windows Server, from all types of jobs: devs, PM, SWE's, managers, etc. It was almost a neverending social meeting. While meeting one person after another, somehow along the way, my brain forgot that I was an introvert and at that point, I actually had fun! I met a person who works out of Boston and was confused about what she would be doing tomorrow. I gladly helped by showing her the app, showing the schedule and how she can add a topic of interest to her schedule. She left a happy camper.

After the networking event, three girls and myself decided to roam the city for dinner. We discovered that restaurants in particular, close at 10pm. So we walked. We walked and walked and walked. Suddenly, there was light in the distance. We were tired and hungry, so we all agreed to go there. 

The place was like a foodcourt in the basement. BBQ tacos in the corner, Izakaya on one side, Beer on tap, and crepes. We ate our fill, and each ordered an uber back to our hotels.

I felt the day was a great preamble to the conference tomorrow. We networked, met people. We opened up, which is hard for many folks. Every meet is an opportunity. I'm ready for the real thing tomorrow!

Created my schedule

Out of hundreds of sessions at the GHC confernce in Houston, I had to choose 20 for the three days I will be there. From personality studies in the workplace, to Software Engineering, data amalysis and artificial intelligence. No shortage of subjects here. I hope I outlines my session right!

It's the Final Count Down

It's the final countdown, meaning we are 4 days away from the Grace Hopper conference in Houston, Texas. I checked the weather in Houston, and its a whopping 84 degrees! They get 84deg and we get 42 degrees in Seattle with a windstorm. Nice. I spent the evening downloading the ghc16 app. I'll tell you what. The app has pretty much everything you need! And the hotel, flight, and conference ticket of course. Next steps for me is to prepare for my presentation at the Microsoft booth on Friday at 11:30am. I hope I get a great turn out for my presentation!

Countdown started

We are exactly 2 weeks away from the Grace Hopper Conference and boy, the amount of stuff I have to do just keeps adding up. In addition to signing up for booth time, I'm going to be note taking! I'm also working with my team (Microsoft Office) to create a presentation at the booth. I can't wait to meet everyone.