Katy Dickinson

Hopper Conference Photos (GHC09)

We have all of my Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC09) photos from last week uploaded, so I just finished adding the pictures to my GHC09 blog entries so far:

• Day Before the Hopper Conference, Tucson, Arizona (GHC09),
  Tuesday, September 29, 2009
• 1st day at Hopper Conference (GHC09),
  Wednesday, September 30, 2009
• 2nd Day at Hopper Conference (GHC09),
  Thursday October 01, 2009
• I Am a Technical Woman, 3rd Day at Hopper Conference (GHC09),
  Friday October 02, 2009

Here are additional photos, some from the walk my daughter Jessica and I took on Saturday morning before we left for the airport.

Katy and banner

Jessica and cactus

Katy and Jessica badges

saguaro hill

Cactus skyline

last cactus flower

little cactus, rocks

Images Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 10:43PM Oct 05, 2009 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  |  Comments[0]

I Am a Technical Woman, 3rd Day at Hopper Conference (GHC09)

This is the third day of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC09), in Tucson, Arizona. I was on a second panel ("The Two Body Problem" about couples managing two technical careers*). My daughter Jessica gave a five minute "Ignite Talk" called "Playing with Alice After School" about using the Alice programming tool in a music teaching curriculum she developed for a group of middle-school Girl Scouts. This is Jessica's third time presenting in the Hopper Conference (she started when she was a High School Senior); she is already planning what to submit for next year.

Jessica and Alice

Sun table

Katy, Evgenia, Amarda, Kristin

At last night's award's ceremony, Jerri Barrett, Marketing Vice President of the Anita Borg Institute (ABI), gave the first showing of the excellent new YouTube video called "I am a Technical Woman". It is great fun to see the large number of Sun women included.

After the awards were given, about five hundred of us danced for hours. It started with Electric Slide dancing, then large circles were formed of women who worked together, then a bigger circle formed and pairs of women would go in to dance together before giving the space to another set, after that there were line dances, then back to circle dancing. Women wore sari, hijab head scarves, little black dresses, fitted suits, and jeans with tank tops. Everyone danced with and for everyone else. There were maybe a dozen men in the group. Chief Technologists danced with junior engineers and Presidents of technical colleges danced with students. It was delightful.

Today began for me with the first joint breakfast between the ABI Board of Trustees and the ABI Advisory Board, of which I am honored to be a member. Breakfast was followed by the superb keynote presentation by Fran Berman, Vice President for Research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, called "Creating Technology for Social Good, A Prologue".

Anita Borg Institute

Dancing at Hopper

Enjoying the dance

Two highlights of today's conference offerings were a fun mentoring skit and commentary session called "Mentoring: Difficult and Sensitive Issues", and Bernardine Dias' report about TechBridgeWorld and Computing Technology for Developing Communities. I last saw her speak at an NCWIT event in May 2009 and she was every bit as impressive this time.

This evening was the big Sponsors' Night party around the pools with food, dancing, tshirts for all and prize drawings. There was much excitement when someone saw a rattlesnake in the bushes beside a path.

Sun's GHC exhibit hall table is now closed down. The few items left from Wednesday's large pile of boxes of tshirts, pens, reports, books, and other giveaways are already shipping home. As our little procession of Sun women was carrying those last items to my hotel room for packing, we were stopped twice by students begging for a cool Sun Women in Engineering tshirt. Alas, all of the shirts were distributed by yesterday.

* Panel Slides: "Solving the Two Body Problem" by Kristin Yvonne Rozier, Katy Dickinson, Amarda Shehu, and Evgenia Smirni, 2 October 2009 (9 pages, PDF format)

Images Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 11:29PM Oct 02, 2009 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  |  Comments[0]

2nd Day at Hopper Conference (GHC09)

This is the second day of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC09), in Tucson, Arizona. My daughter Jessica and I are rooming together and hanging out when we are not attending or participating in other events. Last night, Jessica's Poetry and Prose Performances Project poster** was well received. Every time I saw her during the reception, there were people asking questions.

My first panel was today: "The Value of Awards and How to Get Them"*, with Dr. Chandra Krintz (Associate Professor, Computer Science Department, University of California at Santa Barbara) and Dr. Bob Walker (Professor and Chair, Computer Science Department, Kent State University). The panel was well-attended and we answered many good questions. Unfortunately, we were in the same time slot as the ever-popular Imposters Panel. I gave away fifty copies of our panel handout but there were people who did not get one, so I have linked it here.

Katy Dickinson, Chandra Krintz, Bob Walker

Sun's CTO Greg Papadopoulos and all of us are very sorry that he was unable to attend the Hopper Conference at the last minute. He had been invited to talk about his new book: Citizen Engineer: A Handbook for Socially Responsible Engineering.

.

We are handing out 100 of Greg's books from Sun's exhibit hall table with a unique-to-GHC09 insert featuring a signed quote from Greg from 2006:

"Beyond corporate initiatives, it's critical to provide a broader sense of community for aspiring female engineers and leaders. Organizations like the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and Women in Technology International serve such a purpose, giving women the opportunity to share ideas and experiences at conferences like the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing...
In the end, society is influenced by a variety of motivations. Whether yours is social justice, personal experience or the old-fashioned profit motive, there is no doubt that being more inclusive in engineering will make the whole field richer, wealthier and more connected to society. Consider this. When was the last technical conference you attended called a 'celebration'? My point precisely."

We are also giving away copies of the new Sun Labs technical report: "Sun Mentoring: 1996-2009" (2009, by Katy Dickinson, Tanya Jankot, and Helen Gracon)

I was at a VIP breakfast this morning that started at 7 am. Crossing the arroyo bridge between sections of the hotel, I saw a desert lynx sitting below. One of the hotel staff said the lynx had just had her babies and nesting there. So cool! Tonight is the GHC Awards presentation and dance.

* Read the official GHC09 blog entry on my Value of Awards panel.
** Read ACM's Valerie Barr on "Opening Day of Grace Hopper Conference" for a review of Jessica's poster.

Images Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 02:41PM Oct 01, 2009 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  |  Comments[0]

1st day at Hopper Conference (GHC09)

This is the first day of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC09), in Tucson, Arizona. My daughter Jessica arrived this afternoon. She put up her Poetry and Prose Performances Project poster for the opening reception tonight.

Now, we are in our room sorting swag from the registration bags, including: Sun's wonderful water bottle, a notepad in a case (Symantec), hand-crank flashlight (SAP), glasses case (Raytheon), waterproof case (NYU), survival light-compass-whistle (Virginia Tech), makeup mirror (NetApp), purse hook (NetApp), USB hub that looks like a chew toy (Thomson Reuters), weird red nail polish (State Farm), mints (Microsoft, CA), sunscreen (Yahoo), pens and pencils (lots), a big mesh beach bag (Lockheed Martin), a strange ninja coder coaster (Amazon), and 1 free download song (HP). We are still checking out Hopper Conference tshirts (but of course, I like Sun's best).

Sun water bottle, GHC09 bag

Sun GHC09 tshirt

I have already talked with dozens of impossibly interesting and cool people and am looking forward to the first regular day of sessions tomorrow. The Sun women have already unpacked Sun's exhibit hall table (in a very good location near the bottom of the escalator). We have been giving out Sun tshirts, pens, books, technical reports, copies of Open Solaris software, and other stuff to an enthusiastic and energetic crowd of 1,600 technical women in industry, faculty, and students. What fun!

Gilda Garreton

Jessica with Maria Klawe

Pamela Parish

Cynthia Chin-Lee, Sonia Leon

Cathleen Wharton

Deirdre Straughan

Images Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 05:12PM Sep 30, 2009 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  |  Comments[0]

Day Before the Hopper Conference, Tucson, Arizona (GHC09)

I just arrived in Tucson, Arizona, where it is 101 degrees F and huge cactus grow everywhere. I am here for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC09), the best technical women's conference there is. My daughter Jessica arrives tomorrow. Both of us have published blog entries on where you can find us at Hopper:

• Where to find Jessica who is presenting a poster and a workshop
• Where to find Katy who is chairing one panel and joining another

Of course, whenever possible you will find us together. I love the Hopper Conference and will very much enjoy the talks and activities, but (as a Mom), I also love the opportunity to spend three and a half days with my wonderful lovely daughter who goes to college over 2,600 miles away from home.

Jessica's work can be seen in her blog and (just published!) in the Carnegie Mellon Student Affairs Study Abroad "Student Perspectives".

View from my Tucson, Arizona room

Image Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 05:42PM Sep 29, 2009 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  |  Comments[0]

Sun Bloggers at the Grace Hopper Conference (GHC09)

At least 23 Sun staff will be attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC09) 2009 in Tucson, Arizona, starting on 30 September 2009. Fifteen of us are invited speakers, presenters, panelists, posters, and birds-of-a-feature session leaders. You can follow the conference by reading the GHC Bloggers. You can see more on the GHC Community: GHC Bloggers web page.

Bloggers who will probably have something to say about Sun at the Hopper Conference include:

• FeelingElephants's Weblog by Jessica Dickinson Goodman (my daughter, an Official GHC09 Blogger)
• Gilda en Espanol, by Gilda Garreton
• Greg Matter, Greg Papadopoulos's Weblog
• Katysblog, by Katy Dickinson (me), alternate Katysblog
• Un Posto al Sole, Finding My Place in the Sun, by Deirdré Straughan
• Valerie's Weblog, by Valerie Fenwick (Official GHC09 Blogger)
• Women@Sun - Shared Perspective, A Group Blog

Posted at 01:09PM Sep 18, 2009 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  |  Comments[0]

Sun @ Grace Hopper Conference 2009 (GHC09)

Sun is again a Platinum Sponsor of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC09). "Hopper" is an annual conference designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. The conference is presented by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). This year's conference is almost sold out even though it does not start until 30 September, 2009 in Tucson, Arizona. Sun is honored to have fifteen invited speakers, presenters, panelists, posters, and birds-of-a-feature session leaders this year!

Thanks to Sun's CTO Greg Papadopoulos for his long-term support of the Hopper Conference and the Anita Borg Institute! (Greg is an ABI Trustee-Emeritus.) Thanks also to the Women-West@Sun (particularly Susan Miller) for funding Sun's 2009 GHC Platinum Sponsorship!

Why go to Hopper?

1. Professional education, celebration, and excitement
2. Networking (with Sun and non-Sun attendees) and Visibility
3. Recruiting (University and Professional)

Sun's Giveaways and Images for Hopper 2009

• Sun GHC 2009 Advertisement/Program and Poster Image
  
  Thanks to Margaret Nguyen for her work on this! There will be a poster version of this image at Sun's exhibit hall table.
• Sun Women in Engineering Tshirt, cloth is espresso (dark brown)

Sun's shirt front, with correct colors

Sun's shirt back, colors will be blue and green

• Sun Women in Engineering Water Bottle (in every conference attendee's bag)


• Distributing 100 copies of Greg's new book Citizen Engineer: A Handbok for Socially Responsible Engineering, (fifty copies at a book signing after his 1 October talk, fifty at the Sun exhibit hall table)
  
• We have borrowed a black Sun logo table cloth from University Relations. They are also generously sending some tshirts and pens.
• Distributing copies of two Sun Labs Technical Reports:
  "Sun Mentoring: 1996-2009" (2009, by Katy Dickinson, Tanya Jankot, and Helen Gracon)
  "Technology and Courage" (1996, Ivan Sutherland)
• OpenSolaris standing banner for Sun's exhibit hall table.

Sun's Schedule at Hopper 2009

• Wednesday, 30 September
  7 pm - Ania Pavilion, Poster Session, during the Opening Reception (featuring 4 Sun posters)
  - "3D Collaborative Environments for Social Good" poster by Gilda Garreton and Nicole Yankelovich
  - "Designing for the 100+ Year Archive" poster by Cathleen Wharton
  - "Formal verification on leading edge microprocessor design" poster by Catherine Ahlschlager
  - Video blogging poster by Deirdre Straughan


• Thursday, 1 October
  10 am - Tucson A - "Citizen Engineer - Become One" talk by Greg Papadopoulos with Sophie Vanderbroek (Xerox CTO) - book signing after the talk
  10 am - PW4 - Tucson E, "Developing sustainable technologies for an improved future" (Sudesna Dash, panelist)
  11:15 am - PW6 - San Pedro 1-2, "The Value of Awards and How to Get Them" (Katy Dickinson, panelist)
  11:15 am - PW9 - Tucson F, "Women and the Flat Connected World" (Meenakshi Kaul-Basu and Sumitha Prashant, panelists)
  3:15 pm - PW13 - Tucson E, "Open Source Community Development" (Valerie Fenwick and Teresa Giacomini, panelists)


• Friday, 2 October
  10 am - PW18 - San Pedro 1-2, "From Spec. to Silicon: Performance Benchmarking through the Lifecycle of Chip Development" (Manisha Hardikar presenter)
  10 am - PW17 - Starr Circle Pavilion, "Technical Mentorship and Sponsorship: Why You Need It and How to Find It" (Cathleen Wharton, panelist)
  11:15 am - 12:15 pm Starr Circle Pavilion "The Software Soul: Maximizing Profitability by Unleashing the Spirit of Software Teams" (Meenakshi Kaul-Basu, panelist)
  1:45 pm - IT6 - San Luis 1-2, Susan Landau invited talk "Bits and Bites: Explaining Communications Security (and Insecurity) in Washington and Brussels"
  1:45 pm - PW26 - Tucson E, "Solving the Two Body Problem: Creating Technology While Maintaining Your Social Life" (Katy Dickinson, panelist)
  5:30 pm - BOF9 - San Pedro 1-2, "Speed Mentoring for Latinas in Computing" (with Gilda Garreton)

Images Copyright 2006-2009 by Katy Dickinson and Sun Microsystems

Posted at 03:51PM Sep 17, 2009 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  |  Comments[2]

Sun Presentations at Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing

The Hopper conference announced its acceptances yesterday. I just finished collecting review results from Sun's submitters. Sun staff submitted or were part of groups which submitted 19 proposals to Hopper 2009 and 13 were accepted (69%) - Sun's best acceptance rate ever! This includes Susan Landau's invited technical talk. The 2009 Sun presenters are from a very broad range of Engineering disciplines: Microelectronics, Software, Storage, Sun Labs, and the Systems group.

GHC 2009 will be held:

Tucson, Arizona
September 30 - October 3, 2009

Sun will be a Platinum Corporate Sponsor for the Hopper conference again this year.

Also, my daughter Jessica sent in two GHC 2009 submissions, both of which were accepted. This is Jessica's third Hopper conference and her second as an accepted presenter (she started out on my Girl Geeks panel in 2007). Jessica has just finished her Sophomore year at Carnegie Mellon University.

Sun's accepted submissions are:

1. "Bits and Bites: Explaining Communications Security (and Insecurity) to Washington and Brussels" invited technical talk by Susan Landau
2. "3D Collaborative Environments for Social Good" (Sun Proposal - accepted as a poster), Gilda Garreton and Nicole Yankelovich
3. "Designing for the 100+ Year Archive" (Sun Proposal - accepted as a poster), with Cathleen Wharton
4. "Developing sustainable technologies for an improved future" (panel submitted by Intel), includes Sudesna Dash
5. "Formal verification on leading edge microprocessor design" (Sun Proposal - accepted as a poster) by Catherine Ahlschlager, Pamela Parish, and Shrenik Mehta
6. "From Spec. to Silicon: Successful Validation of a Server-class SoC Microprocessor" (Sun Proposed Presentation), with Manisha Hardikar
7. "Open Source Community Development" (Sun Proposed Panel), includes Valerie Fenwick, Teresa Giacomini, and others
8. "Solving the Two Body Problem: Creating Technology While Maintaining Your Social Life" (NASA Proposed Panel), includes Katy Dickinson
9. "Speed Mentoring for Latinas in Computing" (IBM Proposed BOF), includes Gilda Garreton
10. "Technical Mentorship and Sponsorship: Why You Need It and How to Find It" (Google Proposed Panel), includes Cathleen Wharton
11. "The Value of Awards & How to Get Them" (Sun Proposed Panel), includes Katy Dickinson
12. Video blogging (Sun Proposal - accepted as a poster), includes Deirdre Straughan
13. "Women and the Flat Connected World" (Sun Proposed Panel), includes Meenakshi Kaul-Basu

Some Hopper 2008 Photos:

Jessica's Poster

Sun Reception

M Kaul-Basu

Susan Landau interview

Images Copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

Posted at 03:13PM May 18, 2009 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  | 

Savvy Geek Chix and Anita Borg

I just got home after attending the successful first Savvy Geek Chix event, put on by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI). On this celebration of Ada Lovelace Day, it seems appropriate to have attended an event for women in computing. There were 110 women present. I learned some, talked with old friends, and met some very impressive new friends whom I look forward to knowing better. It was a typical ABI event - interesting, well managed, and a valuable use of my time.

ABI was named in honor of Dr. Anita Borg (1949-2003), whom I had the honor to meet several times during the last years of her life. Sun Microsystems was one of the companies which provided Anita Borg with funding to start the organization now known as ABI. In addition to starting ABI, Anita also created the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference and the Systers email community of technical women in computing. With Anita's example before me, it is hard to say "it can't be done".

Image Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 11:11PM Mar 24, 2009 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  | 

Submissions for Hopper 2009

I have spent the last few days reviewing drafts for submissions to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing ("GHC"). Hopper will be held in Tucson, Arizona: September 30 - October 3, 2009. Sun will again be a Platinum conference sponsor (thanks this year to generous funding from the Women@Sun-West internal-to-Sun group). All conference submissions are due tonight.

Not counting invited talks and presentations submitted by other groups which include Sun staff, I think Sun will finish with about a dozen proposals for panels, BOFs (Birds of a Feather discussion topics), posters, presentations, and workshops on topics including:

• Creating an open online community for student developers (BOF)
• Designing for the 100+ Year Archive (Presentation)
• Dual-Career-Couple Problem (BOF)
• From Spec. to Silicon: Successful Validation of a Server-class SoC Microprocessor (Presentation)
• How environmental and economic factors are changing manufacturing and supply chain designs (Panel)
• Leveraging the Power of Your Women’s Network (Panel)
• More Than Just Coding: Alternate Careers in Computing (Panel)
• Open Source Community Development (Panel)
• The Value of Awards & How to Get Them this is my own panel!
• Women and the Flat Connected World (Panel)

I have also reviewed two Hopper submissions by my daughter Jessica:

• Playing with Alice After School (Workshop)
• Poetry and Prose Performances Project - p4 (Poster)

Jessica has already been on a Hopper panel (GHC 2007's "Girl Geeks"), and she presented the poster “How to Combat Plagiarism in Academia (and How Not To)” at GHC 2008.

GHC 2009 selection decisions will be announced on 18 May 2009.

Posted at 10:54PM Mar 16, 2009 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  | 

Women in Computing - Take 2

I was very interested to read the article "Women in Computing - Take 2" in the February 2009 issue of the Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery). This is a follow-up to an article written in 1995. "Women in Computing - Take 2" is by Maria Klawe (President, Harvey Mudd College), Telle Whitney (President and CEO of the Anita Borg Institute or ABI), and Caroline Simard (Director for Research at ABI), all of whom I have known and respected for many years. I have two favorite parts of the article: First, the quote from Jean Bartik (Eniac Programmer):

"The best advice I've ever heard about how women should compete in the workplace was spoken by Betty Snyder Holberton, the first of my three favorite work partners: 'Look like a girl. Act like a lady. Think like a man. Work like a dog.'."

Second, the reference to my own SEED Engineering mentoring program. If you go to p.75 you will see:

"Some of the successful approaches that companies may use for recruiting, retaining, and advancing more women in computing, as well as in other technical professions, include:...
Implement a mentoring program. Indeed, make mentoring which positively impacts career advancement and satisfaction, a basic part of the organizational culture. Sun Microsystems' SEED program, for example, is is regarded as a major step in this direction."

The article even includes a footnote to "Five Years of Mentoring by the Numbers", my 2006 presentation to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women and Computing.

I spent Thursday night and all day Friday with the other members of the ABI Board of Advisors and staff in our annual meeting. Here we are in what is I think the first-ever ABI Advisors' photo:

Left to Right - Back
Caroline Simard, Carol Muller, Allan Fisher, Chandra Krintz, Katy Dickinson, Kathy Richardson, Robin Jeffries, Kim McLeod, Deanna Kosaraju, Jody Mahoney, Pamela Arya, Nina Bhatti, Carole Dulong, Tracy Prentiss, Jerri Barrett, Ruth Stergiou, Amy Clark, Rachelle Siskin

Left to Right - Front
Kathy Gee, Rebecca Norlander, Telle Whitney, B.J. Wishinsky

Image Copyright 2009 Katy Dickinson

Posted at 04:39PM Mar 08, 2009 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  | 

1st MAGIC Mentee Meeting

Ira Pramanick (of Google), Kristin Yvonne Rozier (of NASA), and I visited Girls' Middle School yesterday to kick off the MAGIC mentoring pilot term. Ira, Kristin, and I are three of the five member MAGIC core team. We have been working this last year to set up the MAGIC program and test it out in the GMS pilot.

Yesterday, we met with the first ten GMS girls to sign up as MAGIC mentees. We distributed MAGIC pencils and business cards and played a game to introduce ourselves. The girls are a mixed group, between 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. This was their first chance to ask questions and for us to meet them together. The girls will start meeting with their new mentors next month.

Here is MAGIC's core team:

Dr Ira Pramanick

Katy Dickinson

Foz Saeed

Dr Kristin Rozier

Meenakshi Kaul-Basu

Posted at 10:08AM Oct 16, 2008 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  |  Comments[1]

Getting 37 to Hopper

For those who are just starting to appreciate how wonderful the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is for your Engineering organization's networking, technical education, morale building, and recruiting, here are some tips. Sun Microsystems has been a Hopper conference sponsor for many years. Earlier this month, at GHC 2008, Sun was a Platinum sponsor and had 37 staff participate, including 14 presenters and panelists. (We met some Sun Campus Ambassadors and former Sun interns at Hopper as well!) There were companies which sent more staff to Hopper 2008, but not many!

Dr Sheueling Chang

Dr Gilda Garreton

Valerie Fenwick

Dr Susan Landau

Catherine Ahlschlager

How did Sun get so many people to Hopper 2008?

• Hopper asks for panel, presentation, poster, BOF and other proposals long in advance of the conference. (The deadline for Hopper's October 2008 conference was in March 2008.) Sun submitted many more proposals than were accepted. Start working on ideas now for Hopper 2009!
• In these tight money times, many managers feel that they should not spend their travel budget, even for a CTO-sponsored conference. I have found that Sun's CTO organization offering a limited number of free registrations plus matching funds for travel puts Hopper in a new category and encourages Sun managers to approve the balance of the travel funds. Winning a travel scholarship is seen as an honor.
• Papers required for travel vary a great deal from country to country. Check out the Visa Network Requirements page for details. It can help (and sometimes is required) for a non-US traveler to have a formal letter of invitation from the organization they will visit in the USA. With a travel scholarship award to someone coming from outside of the USA, I always offer to write them a formal executive letter of invitation to support their visa.
• Frequent email communication giving information on conference preparation can be of great help. "Frequent" means once or twice a month starting about 9 months in advance, increasing to one or two emails a week in the month before the conference.
• Not everyone is an experienced traveler. Some travel advice that proved valuable:
  • Remind newbies that they may need to order business cards weeks in advance so they are delivered in time to pack. Provide information on how to order cards.
  • Send out weather information so travelers know what to pack.
  • We started from many places (Beijing, San Francisco, Boston, San Diego) but all flew at the same place (Denver, CO). A Wiki page listing arrival and departure times allowed us to share shuttles, rental cars, and companionship.
  • One of the airport shuttle companies was much cheaper than the others - providing this information in advance saved Sun travel money.
• Having a single Sun internal web page listing Sun's speakers (with talk/panel titles, dates and times, room names, etc.) with photos, names, and titles of all participants helped us plan our time and find each other during the busy event.
• Having one person be the contact on key topics (like shipping giveaways, posters, and other exhibit table stuff) makes for less confusion.
• Sun provided great tshirts (soft, well fitting, and well designed) for both staff and giveaways. We encouraged Sun staff to wear their shirts at Hopper - this is good advertising plus we were easy to see in a crowd.
• Sun's table in the Hopper exhibit hall served as a central place to find people, leave or pickup messages, and find current information. Next year, I want to follow up on a suggestion and offer a sign on Sun's table listing where Sun staff are speaking.
• We had professional recruiters with us but most of those staffing Sun's exhibit table were Sun Engineers or executives, who could answer questions from their own experience in software, microelectronics, systems, storage, research, systems, networking, security, and operations.
• If possible, I encourage more than one person per country to attend - so they have support and someone familiar to talk to and maybe travel with. This may be particularly important for younger staff who like to travel in packs.
• Dr. Greg Papadopoulos (Sun's CTO) is executive sponsor of Sun's participation at the Hopper conference but I ask other executives to get involved and show their support by funding Sun's reception, giveaways, or part of the sponsor fee.

Dr Sukyoung Ryu

Katy Dickinson

Foz Saeed

Tarik Ono

Meenakshi Kaul-Basu

Some of Sun's Giveaways:

Sun's Hopper 2008 Shirt

OpenSolaris Student Pack

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 04:09PM Oct 14, 2008 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  | 

Hopper 2008 Photos

Here are some of my photos from the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (aka GHC 2008), in Keystone, Colorado (1-4 October 2008). Sun Microsystems was a Platinum conference sponsor and had 37 staff participate, including 14 presenters and panelists.

Some Publications:

• "Grace Hopper Celebration For Women In Computing Introduces New Hardware Track At 2008 Conference" 9 June 2008 Press Release by ABI, includes information on Sun Labs' hardware development scholarships
• "Sun at the 2008 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing" September 26, 2008 story on Sun Labs' external web page
• Sun Bloggers:
  • Valerie's Weblog - GHC 2008
  • Gilda en Espanol - GHC
  • Katy Dickinson - Hopper - Anita Borg Institute

Some Photos:

Lodge Room View

ABI Sign

Aspen Tree in Autumn

More Aspen Trees

1 Oct: Poster Hall Setup in Process

Tanya Jankot Unpacking Sun's Table

1 Oct: Jessica's Poster

Aspen Leaves, Keystone CO

1 Oct: Technical Poster Session

Sheri Kaneshiro

1 Oct: Technical Poster Session

2 Oct: Fran Allen

2 Oct: MAGIC Core Team Lunching

2 Oct: CTO Panel

'94 Hopper Banner

Sun's Exhibit Table

Meenakshi Kaul-Basu

3 Oct: Open Source Women Panel

Checking Out Alice Software

Interviewing Susan Landau

3 Oct: MAGIC BOF - Table View

Women@Sun Reception

3 Oct: Sun Reception

Tanya, Cathleen, Sheri

Sun Reception

Sun's Hopper 2008 Reception

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 03:07PM Oct 05, 2008 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  | 

Last Hopper Day

Yesterday was the third and last of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (aka GHC 2008), in Keystone, Colorado. Sun had 37 staff participate, including 14 presenters and panelists. As usual, there were too many excellent events overlapping but I very much enjoyed those I attended.

Friday's superb keynote presentation was by Mary Lou Jepsen. Working with Nicholas Negroponte, Jepsen was the founding CTO of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). She was listed by Time Magazine in 2008 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Also this year, Jepsen founded the company Pixel Qi to follow up on the OLPC technology.

Other Friday GHC talks and panels I attended:

• Session Six: "Internship Program Showcase" It was interesting to see how other companies manage their internships. Interns are a big part of our world in Sun Labs.
• Session Seven: "Women in the Brave New World of Free and Open Source Software". This energetic panel was put together and chaired by Meenakshi Kaul-Basu and also included Valerie Fenwick of Sun. The room was packed and full of questions. You can read more in Valerie's Weblog about this excellent panel. Sun's registration bag giveaway for Hopper was our OpenSolaris Student Pack (see my September 19, 2008 blog entry).
• Session Eight: "Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award Winner - Elaine Weyuker (AT&T Labs)". I spent 1985-1993 as one of the architects and overall program manager for Sun's software product life cycle (aka the Software Development Framework), so this talk about AT&T's statistical approach to bug reduction in large software was fascinating.
• Session Nine: "Intellectual Property & Patents Empowering Innovation" This was an interesting talk, particularly in light of the recent JMRI case.
• BOF: Our MAGIC BOF! "Setting Up an Effective Organization to Support Girls" MAGIC was kicked off at our 2007 GHC BOF. The 2008 MAGIC BOF was well attended and we heard many helpful suggestions for the MAGIC girls' mentoring program's second year.

After the BOF session ended, we boogied over to another building for Sun's private reception. Sun's CTO organization partnered with the Women@Sun group to host the event. We invited both Sun staff and friends. After the Sun reception, most of us went to the joint Google-Microsoft party for dinner and dancing.

Sun's Hopper 2008 Reception

Image Copyright 2008, by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 09:45PM Oct 04, 2008 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  |