Today is the second day of the
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (aka GHC 2008)
in Keystone, Colorado. We are at 9,300 feet and few people are
sleeping well because of the altitude but the conference is
still excellent.
Today started early with a kenote/CTO breakfast, followed by an
interesting keynote presentation by
Fran Allen
(IBM Fellow Emerita and first woman to win the prestigious
Turing award).
Before Fran spoke, two female sailors from the
USS Hopper
missile destroyer showed pictures from their ship. There were many
activities, panels, and presentations to pick from. I attended:
- Session One: “Innovating with Chip Multi-Threading Technology”
by Catherine Ahlschlager (Sun Microsystems) and
“Outside of Normal Operating Conditions: Using Commercial
Hardware in Space Computing Platforms” by Heather M. Quinn
(Los Alamos National Laboratory) - Session Two: “Enabling Nonprofits to Accomplish their Missions through
Technology” - CTO Plenary Session – “Leading Technology, a View from the Top”
(including Sun’s CTO
Dr. Greg Papadopoulos) - Session Three: my panel! “Taking the Long View – Many
Careers in One Company” with Sheueling Chang-Shantz (Sun Microsystems), Martha Lyons (Hewlett Packard), Cristina Mahon (Hewlett Packard),
Ana Pinczuk (Cisco), and me. Our panel was well received with both the
panelists and audience enjoying themselves. - Session Four: Invited Technical Speaker – Anna Karlin,
Professor, University of Washington, on “A Survey of Some
Recent Research at the Border of Game Theory, Economics, and
Computer Science”
There was a thunderstorm and rain at lunchtime but the weather
cleared after. Dinner was another buffet in the poster hall followed
by the annual award ceremony, a “Rhythm and Hue” painting performance by
David Garibaldi
(who painted portraits of Admiral Hopper and Anita Borg), and finally
dessert and a dance.
Closing the Hopper awards with a dance was
a tradition started by Anita Borg and remains one of the unique
and delightful experiences of the Hopper conference. Dancing with
several hundred women college students, Engineers, and executives from
all over the computing world is a real delight. (But having my daughter
Jessica as a
dance partner was the best part!) The few men present
seemed to have a good time as well. Our
MAGIC girls’ mentoring BOF is tomorrow.
KatysBlog 