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