Katy Dickinson

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  |