It was October 4th, 2017 in a conference room in the Orange County Convention Center, Orlando. More than 10,000 people had gathered for the keynote of the largest conference for women in technology. What conference am I talking about? The Grace Hopper Conference for women in technology, which took place from October 4th to October 6th last year in Orlando. Let me start with how I ended up there.
The first time I ever heard about Grace Hopper Conference, more commonly abbreviated as GHC, was in the summer of 2016. I don’t remember how I came across it, but I tried applying for one of the scholarships to attend it. There are a lot of different companies which provide scholarships to students to attend GHC. I remember not being accepted for it and the disappointment that followed through. When I came back to UF (University of Florida) the following Fall semester, a friend of mine told me she had received a Google scholarship to attend it in Houston, Texas. I asked her about the experience when she came back with a truckload of swag – t-shirts, bags, pyjamas, bottles, sunglasses and other random little things. The experience and my last year of school (and who am I to deny, the swag) was enough motivation to be proactive the next year to apply for scholarships. March 2017 came, and I started tracking all the companies which provided scholarships to attend GHC and applied to them when they opened. Strangely enough, since the conference was in Orlando, my school – UF also sent out an email saying they were accepting applications from students in the CISE (Computer and Information Science and Engineering) department. I applied for it as well but didn’t really think much about it since it was going to be a small number of scholarships. It was around June, in the middle of a team lunch, when I received an email from UF saying I had been selected for the scholarship. I was so excited with a crazy smile on my face that wouldn’t come off. I was an intern with Amazon that summer and we would have weekly team lunches, which is what the team lunch meant. In the next months, I received information about the itinerary – travel and lodging. Orlando was a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Gainesville, which is where UF is, and we were going by bus and staying in a hotel near the Convention Center.
October 4th arrived in no time and I had my bag packed to leave for Orlando on an early morning bus. We reached almost in time for the opening keynote of the conference, which started at 9 am. It was overwhelming to see thousands of women gathered together, almost empowering to even be part of them. The highlight of the keynote for me was listening to Dr Sue Black share her life experiences and the difficulty she faced in pursuing technology only to never give up. She talked about how she was in an abusive marriage and the decision to leave it with her three children. It was transfixing to learn the courage and dedication she showed when she took classes at a night school, eventually enrolled for an undergraduate degree and to see how far she had come. Another inspiring speech was by Melinda Gates who talked about how she learned to operate computers back in the 1970s. She shared an anecdote about how her love for computers was more than that for Bill Gates. Being in that room and listening to all these different stories made me realize how privileged I was to be able to choose Computer Science with the support of my family rather than them being against it.
Soon after that, the conference was declared open. There were multiple presentations on different tracks like Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, Open Source, Human-Computer Interaction etc. There was also a career fair which was going to take place for the next three days with hundreds of companies participating in it. I did not have a fixed plan for the conference but did want to attend the career fair and a few presentations whose titles I found interesting. I started going around the various booths in the career fair, talking to different companies about the diversity there, what they were doing to increase the number of women in tech and how was the work environment. Most companies usually have women representatives at Grace Hopper which made it the best place to know about their experiences. Compared to the career fairs at universities, this was more informal, relaxed and conversational. There weren’t huge lines to talk to a company which was very refreshing. I collected more t-shirts than I could carry, and it was crazy to see the amount of swag these companies had brought. They had everything there, starting from lip-balms, nail paint, sunglasses to t-shirts, pyjamas and even flip-flops. The conference closed at around 5 pm for the day. I quickly made a stop at the hotel to leave my bag and rushed back for the dinner at 7 pm organized by UF. Even though I had come on the same bus as other students from UF, the dinner gave me an opportunity to talk and know them. We talked about what we were studying at UF and also how our first day at the conference had been. After the dinner, I roamed about and went to Instagram and Intel’s party where I talked to some people and learnt about their day-to-day work life, their favourite part about working at the company and what could be improved. Earlier in the day, I had felt that the career fair was very informal, but these parties were taking it to another level. Everyone was so very friendly, super nice and helpful. All in all, it had been a great start to the next two days that were to follow.
At the Instagram photo booth in the career fair
For the next day, October 5th 2017, I had planned to attend a presentation which had a very intriguing title but by the time I was able to reach to the other end of the convention center the place was already full. One piece of advice to people attending Grace Hopper for the first time, make sure to check the room for the presentation and how far it is from the place you’re at and reach a bit in advance (maybe like fifteen minutes to half an hour) for the presentations you want to attend. The rest of my day was mostly spent in the career fair and student lounge. In the evening I attended two parties – one was with General Electrics and the other one was with eBay, I think. Seeing everyone be so casual, fun-loving and enjoying was totally unexpected for me. There were drinks, appetizers, photo-booth and a dance floor with everyone having an amazing time. It was an entertaining evening involving meeting people and dancing around. I was beginning to realize how the dynamics shift with having more women around. The environment’s somewhat more relaxed, less awkward and little less judging (that’s how I felt). I was really happy to be a part of this community and celebration, even for a few days, to learn that women bring a lot to the table.
The last day of the conference, October 6th 2017, was filled with events till the end. There was a keynote in the afternoon to mark the conference as closed. In the evening was this grand party, with appetizers and everyone was dancing and singing. There were all sorts of glow-in-the-dark merchandise that people could wear – sticks, pins, rings and glasses. It was nothing like I have ever experienced before. I also got a photo clicked with Dr Sue Black, which was like an icing on the cake. Here was this woman, whom I knew nothing about till three days ago. But hearing her experiences and her persuasion to never give up, made me respect her immensely. The party ended around midnight, after which we (all the people who had come from UF) took a bus back to head back home.
With Dr Sue Black
I collected a lot of swag from the conference and here is a picture with all of it. My favourite piece of swag was the Disney ears given out by Disney which would light up. Another interesting thing was given out by Expedia – it was a world map which could be scratched to represent all the countries you’ve visited.
Truckload of swag
Favourite swag – Disney Ears
To all the women out there in tech, this is an experience worth having. Make sure you apply to scholarships when you’re in school or get a chance to go with your company if you’re working. As someone who’s just began her career a few months ago, I can positively say that it was a gratifying experience.
Stream keynotes for the GHC 2017 conference here.
List of scholarships to GHC here.
great article!