Celebrating Women in Technology: The Anita Borg Institute’s Jerri Barrett Talks About the Grace Hopper Conference

In 1994, noticing few female faces other than their own at technical conferences, longtime friends Anita Borg and Telle Whitney decided to do something about it. Together they created the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) of Women in Computing Conference, a program of the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology, with the stated purpose of attracting women to technical fields.

I recently spoke about the Grace Hopper Conference with Jerri Barrett, Anita Borg’s director of marketing, who works extensively on the Grace Hopper event.

What makes the Grace Hopper Conference special?
Not only is the conference designed for women in technology, but the Anita Borg Institute works to create essentially a brand-new conference every year. We have keynote speakers at each event, of course, but the rest of the schedule varies from year to year, and we’re always introducing something new. Last year we started a new résumé clinic that was a great success, and we’re including that event again at this year’s GHC.

What are the big events at this year’s conference?
GHC 2009 includes more than 300 speakers, over 100 sessions based on 8 technical tracks, competitions for students, the Computer Research Association for Women (CRA-W) Career Mentoring Workshops, and of course that popular résumé clinic!

Tell us about the topics you’re covering in all those sessions.
Topics covered this year include computing, robotics, academia, open source software, helping at-risk youth with technology, maximizing profitability of software teams. We’re also addressing a variety of leadership topics, such as how to become a person of influence. The social topics this year reflect the annual theme of the Grace Hopper Conference, which is “Creating Technology for Social Good.”

Do people attend on their own, or as company representatives?
In addition to individual attendees, leading technology companies are strongly represented at the conference, because they’re interested in recruiting conference attendees and participants. The NSA has even become a Patron of the Grace Hopper event, which indicates something of the level of interest that this event attracts.

Who are the speakers?
Some of the well-known expert technical speakers headlining at the 2009 GHC are Josephine Cheng, IBM Fellow and VP of IBM Almaden Research Center; Bernardine Dias, of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon; and Susan Landau, Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems and an information security expert who has advised the U.S. government and the European Union.

We also have some marvelous keynote speakers. Fran Berman is a professor in the University of California Santa Barbara Department of Computer Science and Engineering, a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), and a Senior Member of the IEEE. Megan Smith is Vice President and General Manager of some little company called Google. She helped to develop the acquisition that led to Google Maps. Mike Schroepfer is VP of Engineering at Facebook.

Do you expect a lot of women to attend?
Absolutely! The GHC is the largest conference in the world for women in computer science. Attendance at this year’s event is expected to reach nearly 1,500. Despite such large numbers, the event really is imbued with a feeling of celebration—even including a dance at the end of the conference! Women in technological careers often feel isolated due to the male dominance of the field. But many women report having a sense of bonding and community as a result of attending a Grace Hopper event.

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference will be held September 30 – October 3, 2009 in Tucson, Arizona. For more on the conference, see http://gracehopper.org/2009/. For more about Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, for whom the conference is named, see http://gracehopper.org/2009/about/about-grace-hopper/.

More About GHC
The Plenary Panel at this year’s Grace Hopper Conference is composed of leading male and female company officers, including Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com; Linda Brisnehan, Vice President of Military Support Programs at Lockheed Martin; Nora Denzel, Senior VP and General Manager of Payroll at Intuit; and Sophie Vandebroek, CTO of Xerox. The moderator is Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College.

Based on a survey given at previous events, the Grace Hopper Conference has proven to help in retaining women in technology and providing a sense of home and belonging in the technology field: 73% of scholarship recipients agree or strongly agree that attending the conference has increased their intention to pursue studies in computer science or engineering, and 79% agree or strongly agree that attending the conference has increased their commitment to a technology career. [http://anitaborg.org/files/ghc2008report_final_2.pdf 2008 Evaluation Report on Grace Hopper Celebration ] Out of 900 applications, 167 scholarships were awarded at this year’s GHC.

Because one of the goals of the Grace Hopper Conference is helping men and women to work together, attendance at the GHC is not limited to women. Men are also welcome, and many do attend the event. Barrett says that men also apply for and receive scholarships to Grace Hopper. .

Another stated goal is “50/50 by 2020”; in other words, an equal number of men and women in technological careers by the year 2020.

Grace Hopper 2009 Web Site
Grace Hopper Bloggers
Anita Borg Institute Web Site