This is going to be a short summary post because I am exhausted from the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference and I wanted to write this post now while I am still fresh.
For those who hasn't been following me, I went to the Grace Hopper conference this past week in Portland, Oregon. Without any funding from UBC, I did a road trip with 3 fellow UBC grad students and shared a room with them to make the cost of the trip lower. We managed to keep the cost to $120 from transportation and hotel which was pretty good but lost 12 hours to driving. Not too bad!
I didn't know what to expect in what to get out of this conference other than I had lots of people tell me that it's great. I think I was a little disappointed at the conference but that was only because some fellow students made the conference as if it's the greatest week of my life. The bar was set a little too high but I actually really enjoyed the overall experience of the conference but not at a specific reason. So, what was so great about it? There were 2908 participants and I have never seen that many technical women before! The networking aspect was great. I got to meet so many people this week and it was amazing getting to hear their stories. I was a little shocked at the fact that only about 1/3 of the participants were only students while much less of those were undergraduate students. I thought it was great to meet people in the industry and hear about their struggles in the workforce.
The food was actually good for the event. Since they provided the food, I ended up more chances to mingle with other people. Also, there were very few UBC students (6?) so it meant I met a lot more people. The career fair was also great. There were a lot of companies there so I got a chance to learn more about their companies and internship programs since I'm actively seeking internships for next summer. Some of the talks were very technical, or practical skills to use or inspiration. I felt that sitting through that many talks was useful since I'm not very good at presenting. A lot of the presenters are actually students so they weren't always excellent but I got to see some amazing speakers. One thing I do have to critique is that while the talks do tell you what the topic is about, they don't necessary say whether they are for beginners or for a more advanced audience. For most of the PhD forum talks, they consist of PhD students talking about their researches but I was not familiar with their research topics at all. And after 5 minutes into their talks, I was clueless about what they were talking about. At the same time, I sat through some presentations where the talk was too simple and I got nothing out of it. Since the conference is so big, I guess it's very hard for them to make it fit for everyone but nonetheless I learned a lot through the many talks.
Some of the talks that I enjoyed were the CRA-W undergrad track, HTML5, technical speaking, how to maintain your confidence, and tips on negotiation. (I'll try to talk more about these talks later) Sheryl Sandberg's talk was inspiring. I wish I have the skills to have as big of a stage presence as she does. One of the best advice that I got this week about how to survive this conference was to take breaks and not attend certain talks if it meant you would get more out of the next talk. This was my first time at GHC and I have to say I was very overwhelmed and exhausted. The days there were like 8am to 8pm. I didn't have enough time to do everything. Luckily, my travel group decided to stay at a place really close to the convention center so I was able to go back to my hotel for a brief break and get away from everyone when I felt tired.
On the last day, I was at the Open Source Day working on the Google Crisis Person Finder. I actually quite like that project because it's written in Python using Django framework and Google App Engine and it's small and simpler than other open source projects that I know. I didn't get as much as I could out of it because I was absolutely exhausted after 3 straight days of the conference and frying my brain for the code sprint was a little too much. Nonetheless, I was able to fix a bug with a fellow googler and submitted it! I hope on this project for more.
Overall, I was very happy with this conference and totally glad I made the trip. The conference was very well planned and every minute was worth my time. I missed the tournament with my UBC ultimate team but I heard they won the Sundodgers tourney this year again! (Yay 3-peat). I hope that I'll be able to go next year to Baltimore for GHC 2012!
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