I See Tech Women

"Helping one another is part of the religion of our sisterhood."
— Louisa May Alcott

Providing support and empowerment to women and girls is one of my passions, although to date that has not been the work I'm paid for. I scheduled my departure from work so that I didn't have to return to the office after the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) in Orlando. Although I've only been able to attend sporadically, GHC has always been one of my favorite conferences. For starters, there is the sheer pleasure (and rarity) of being at a technical conference where we women are in the majority. Then there are always the great programs (the TechLeaders for Social Innovators workshop was awesome) and the wonderful role models (like the Award Winners and Fran Allen, the first woman to win the Turing Award!).

This was also the first time I've ever moderated a conference panel and with the help of my awesome panelists it was great fun. I came back from GHC with lots of notes, urls to check out, business cards and ideas -- so many that it will take me awhile to process them all. The Grace Hopper Celebration is a program of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. You'll hear more about them in later posts.

On Monday I was off to She's Geeky: A Women's Tech (un)Conference in Mountain View, CA. Again, a great program and more awesome female role models. This conference was much smaller (GHC had 1408 attendees; She's Geeky had an intimate 175-200). The Open Space unconference format on Tuesday, faciliated by Kaliya, was perfect for this group of women. I only wish I had a clone so I could have attended more of the sessions!