Katy Dickinson

GHC Panel: Girl Geeks in High School

"Girl Geeks in High School: Technical Experiences of Future Inventors" was the panel I moderated this afternoon at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing here in Orlando, Florida. See my 3 August 2007 blog entry for a full panel description. My daughter Jessica and I worked on developing this panel for over six months. She and three High School girls from the Silicon Valley joined me on the stage today. Both she and I are blogging about it. (I haven't read Jessica's blog entry yet but you can read it at Feeling Elephants.)

I think the panel went well, both for the girls and for the audience. In our hour, we covered both questions the girls and I had discussed in advance plus new questions from the audience. We talked about how the girls use technology in school and for fun and what was working best for them. There was some range of opinions but the girls agreed on many points:

• There were some differences between male and female teachers of science, math, and technology but the gender of the teacher generally didn't matter.
• The gender of mentors mattered - females were much preferred.
• Laptops could be of great benefit in class but there was also temptation to misuse them during less interesting classes.
• No one used tablets nor had they seen them used effectively.
• Hands-on and interactive projects teach better and are more interesting.
• Many of their peers and adults also did not understand their interest in Engineering. However, their teachers and parents had encouraged and supported them.
• All of them came from families in which technology was used comfortably.

A very interesting question from the audience was whether the four girls saw themselves as users or creators of technology. They said they saw themselves "using to create" (being somewhere in-between using and creating). However, their examples of how they used technology were very sophisticated - far beyond the abilities of a passive simple user.

I agree with one of the audience members who told me later that she would be fascinated to see what these very talented and charming young women did in the next twenty years. I do look forward to watching their progress.

Official GHC 2007 Blogger. You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum. You can find me at http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog.

Posted at 08:32PM Oct 18, 2007 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  | 

GHC Presentation: Introducing the Computing Community Consortium

"Introducing the Computing Community Consortium - Facilitating Visions for Our Future" was a presentation I attended this first afternoon of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing here in Orlando, Florida. Susan Graham of U.C. Berkeley presented information about the newly-created Computing Community Consortium (CCC) which is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and was established by the Computing Research Association (CRA). CCC is to create venues for community participation in developing research visions and stimulating new research activities. The CCC website says:

Under an agreement with the National Science Foundation, CRA will establish a consortium of computing experts that will provide scientific leadership and vision on issues related to computing research and future large-scale computing research projects. Under the three-year, $6 million agreement, CRA will create the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) to identify major research opportunities and establish “grand challenges” for the field. The CCC will create venues for community participation for developing visions and creating new research activities.

It is interesting (if confusing) to listen to unfamiliar professional jargon. Although I helped to teach a class at U.C. Berkeley Engineering for many years, I have never formally been a part of a university. I have also never worked for the government. So, the steady flow of new acronyms and organization/funding assumptions used in describing CCC took some immediate mental translation. In fact, because of these language barriers, I am not entirely sure I understand how CCC works, so this is a hard blog entry to write.

As an example of the kind of research CCC supports, Jen Rexford of Princeton talked about Geni (Global Environment for Network Innovations), a project with the goal of creating an academic grass-roots community to improve Information Technology infrastructure. Creating a new Internet, thinking from scratch to create a new long-term vision, seems to be at least part of Geni's work. More on the Geni initial design and science plan is available. Dr. Rexford said that the research community needs to think big to play a lead role in how the Internet will evolve.

I asked about the relationship of this academic research community with the open source community as well as with industry. I wanted to know if CCC's visionary work was mostly to be done by academic researchers or would include a larger technical community. In my question, I used the example of Sun's OpenSolaris open source community to illustrate the kind of work and complex communication that goes into creating technology collaboratively. From Dr. Graham's answer, I think that CCC will mostly focus on academic work but individual CCC projects will get some input from industry. Dr. Graham said that industry had a shorter term vision while the academic research community developed visions more than 5 years out. In my experience, industry does create longer-term visions. We talked after the presentation and I hope to discuss the question further.

Official GHC 2007 Blogger. You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum. You can find me at http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog.

Solaris and OpenSolaris are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries.

Posted at 07:41PM Oct 18, 2007 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  | 

GHC Panel: Invited CTOs

"Invited CTOs" was the second panel I attended at this first morning of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing here in Orlando, Florida. Represented are Chief Technology Officers from Mayfield, Intel, Symantec, Thoughtworks, and Network Appliance. I was pleased to see Mark Bregman (CTO of Symantec), with whom I worked on the Silicon Valley Heart Walk last month. I was sorry to see just one woman on the panel, but that is reality.

One of the first themes discussed by this panel was how a CTO is different from a most-senior Engineer or most-senior Manager or Executive. From what the panelists say, this is also a regular topic of conversation both inside and outside of companies. "CTO" may stand for Chief Talking Officer or Chief Travelling Officer. Justin Rattner of Intel said: "My job is about communication - talking about our technologies. The ability to communicate effectively across a broad range of technical subjects is very important. Influence directions, nudge people, guide people - get them to make crucial decisions. Cultivate technical workforce and then communicate with them." Another panelist said that being a CTO is being a technology influencer rather than being a technology innovator. (I am sitting in the way back of a big room because that is where the electrical outlet for my laptop is so I can't see who is talking...)

The most fascinating topic for me was: What does it take for a woman to become a CTO or Fellow? Why does the population of women in technology companies drop dramatically in the mid-grades and higher? The first answer when this topic was raised was that persistence and determination matter - you can't get promoted if you leave. Maria Klawe (President, Harvey Mudd College) then asked an applauded question - "Do women choose to leave or get driven out?" The panelists discussed management track vs. technical track and how they often saw talented women encouraged to shift to the management track (that is, discouraged from staying on the technical job ladder).

In answer to my question about how they had worked against the problem that many women lack confidence in their own ideas and get lured away into non-technical executive jobs because they don't think they will ever get promoted to Fellow, Mark pointed out that this could be a cultural problem as well as a problem for women. He then said that mentoring could help: a one-on-one encouraging relationship with a very senior person promotes persistence and success. (The benefits of mentoring was a regular theme and favored remedy mentioned by all of the panelists.) Rebecca Parsons (CTO of Thoughtworks) said that each of us needs to take responsibility to push back when arrogance or agressiveness shut down questions or new ideas. Being shut down in public will make many people stop trying and leave. None of us can condone or sit silently listening to this kind of bad behavior if we want to support the flow of diverse ideas and people in technical leadership.

Official GHC 2007 Blogger. You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum. You can find me at http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog.

Posted at 10:04AM Oct 18, 2007 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  | 

GHC Panel: Career Choices

"Career Choices: Evaluating Technology Career Opportunities Among Diverse Business Sectors" was the first panel I attended at this first morning of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing here in Orlando, Florida. The panelists started by introducing themselves and telling us where we can apply to work for their companies (Semantec, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Medco, SAIC, and Yahoo!). I am sitting in the back corner of a very full room. I have already been at the conference for 3 hours: setting up then moving then setting up Sun's recruiting table again for the first hour, then attending the Welcome and Keynote session. Fascinating talks by Jeanette Wing (whom I last heard when she worked at CMU, before she started at the National Science Foundation) and Donna Dubinsky (CEO of Palm and now Numenta)!

Work-life balance is a big topic among the panelists. Without making little of the need, I do get tired of that phrase! In my experience (both before and since I had my two kids), work and life are best integrated rather than balanced. Being able to work from home sometimes, having supportive management and family, scheduling, prioritization, and delegation are all essential to making life work. That is, I have never found that work and life are two different things that need balancing but rather work is a part of my life as my family and church and volunteer jobs and hobbies are also a part of my life. It is all my life.

Finding work you love, being brave about continuing to search until you find that work, always continuing to learn, and the broad range of choices are major (standard) themes of the panel's discussion. It seems like most of the women asking questions are looking for work after school. Since this is not my situation (I have a job I love!), I am less interested in this topic.

The panel grows most interesting to me in answer to the final question about negative work environment and the downside of being the only or one of the few women in a technical workplace. One of the panelists said "The jerks will eventually disappear - fade away - become irrelevant." Another said: "Become competent and confident and you will outlast them. Find mentors!" A third said: "Listen to their point of view. Also, be stable and authentic about what you know - earn your way to respect." The last said: "Ask questions! The person who asks questions is the person with the power." Good advice.

Official GHC 2007 Blogger. You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum. You can find me at http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog.

Posted at 08:10AM Oct 18, 2007 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  |