EWomen participate in GHC 2006

From EWomen

A few of us had a great experience at the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing 2006 conference and we wanted to share it with you. As a recent article put it, GHC "provides a place for women to discuss both the technology industry and the state of women in it". Below are some of the things we enjoyed at GHC2006, as well as info and how you may be able to get funding to attend GHC 2007. I tried to keep it short, but there were so many things going on that we wanted all of you to find out about!

NETWORKING:
We met a lot of women involved in technology from the academia and the industry (in technical, as well as management tracks). This year's GHC had a record number of participants (~1300 women). It was empowering to see such a large number of technical women, all in the same place :-)

CONFERENCE TOPICS:
The sessions revolved around varied interesting topics, including recruiting, retaining and advancing women in computing at all levels (K-12 to college, grad school and academia/industry), work/life balance, how to transition from grad school to faculty member, advice for junior faculty members, how to advance your technical career in the industry and many others. Take a look at the notes from almost all of the sessions!

PRESENTING YOUR RESEARCH OUTSIDE YOUR COMMUNITY:
The conference featured a PhD forum where women grad students close to finishing their PhD presented their thesis research. There was also a poster session where women undergraduate and graduate students could present their research to all GHC attendees (no other sessions going on on parallel). Both are great ways for presenting research outside ones research community - very useful practice for jobs interviews:)

INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITIES:
There were also a lot of internship opportunities. All major companies such as IBM, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Sun etc had designated booths throughout the duration of the conference, explaining internship opportunities and collecting resumes. Some of them displayed brochures featuring each company's efforts for recruiting and retaining more women. All GHC2006 student participants were encouraged to submit their resumes in a centralized database, for the conferences sponsors to use as pool of job or internship applicants. I was approached with the opportunity of presenting my research work in a major company while presenting my poster :-)

PARTICIPATE NEXT YEAR!
You should seriously consider participating in the next GHC 2007, which will take place in mid October next year, in Orlando, FL. (We'll send a reminder a few months in advance.) It's a great opportunity for meeting amazing women in the technical field, networking and getting your work known outside your research community.

FUNDING OPTIONS:
In terms of funding, the CS department offers $500/year for conference travel to CS students that are speakers at the conference. (You can register to present a technical poster, your PhD research, as well as propose some panel discussion.) This year, there was funding available through the CE department (thank you, Richard!). Also, the Anita Borg Institute and ACM awarded travel scholarships to selected students. So if you're interested and willing to participate, you should be able to find funding somehow :) It would be wonderful to have more eWomen at GHC next year!

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