Category Archives: Hopper – Anita Borg Institute

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

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

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.

Today is the first day of the
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (aka GHC 2008)
in Keystone, Colorado. I have lived most of my life at sea level in
the San Francisco Bay Area, so the dry thin air here in the Rocky
Mountains (at 9,300 feet) takes some getting used to. The hotel
is very pleasant but only offers heat – no cooling in the rooms.
Our room has a lovely mountain view but it heats up fast when the
sun hits the windows. We have the humidifier going full and the
balcony door open for cooling – not the most efficient combination.

This morning,
Tanya Jankot and I unpacked the Sun Microsystems shipment boxes and set
up our company table in the exhibit hall. We have already given away
several boxes of the Java 10 year commemorative book (with signed
card by James Gosling), Sun
pens, and Women@Sun sticky note cubes. We will be giving away Sun Women
in Engineering tshirts (in six languages!) starting this afternoon.

My daughter

Jessica flew in this morning from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her
suitcase has not yet arrived. However, Jessica carried her four
foot square
Hopper poster in her arms most of the way so it is in good shape
for the opening session tonight. We put it up in the poster hall a
little while ago – it looks interesting and very well done. I am so
proud of her!

Jessica’s poster topic is “How to Combat Plagiarism in Academia
(and How Not To)”. It presents her research on how major universities
(including CMU, Stanford, MIT, CalTech, Indian Institute of Information Technology – Allahabad), address the potential
for plagiarism through technical and non-technical solutions (such
as honor codes). Some of Jessica’s conclusions:

“Companies which sell technical solutions to academic plagiarism argue that students cheat and that the only way to stop them is to use a commercial technical solution. In this poster I have shown

1. Three of five top [Computer Science] schools in the world choose to rely on non-technical approaches to plagiarism—Honor Codes.
2. I have found no data suggesting that schools which employ a technical solution have more honest academic cultures.”

Jessica started thinking deeply about this topic (both plagiarism
and treating students as “guilty until proven innocent”) when she served
on the Harker Judicial Committee
during her Senior year in High School. (She is now a Sophomore at CMU.)
I hope she will continue this interesting research.

I have arrived in Keystone, Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains
near Denver, for the
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (aka GHC 2008).
It was an uneventful trip. On the flight from San Francisco, I sat next
to a pleasant woman who wore a silver leather jacket and more
sparkley jewelery and clothes than I have ever seen on one person.
Everything, even her glasses and shoes, had sparkles.

Flying over the mountains, there were big patches of yellow rust color
that the pilot said were aspens wearing their autumn leaves.
It was dark when we arrived but I am looking forward to seeing
the mountains in the sun tomorrow.

Tanya Jankot and I were on the same flight. We had dinner at the
Denver airport, then took the
shuttle to Keystone. There were so many women headed for Hopper
that they had to call for a second van. Our driver said it was his
4th trip of the day. I teased him that some men would be happy
to be on a two hour van trip with eleven women but he said he had
four older sisters so he expected to be picked on.

Tanya and I will be setting up the Sun table in the exhibit hall
tomorrow after lunch. I hope that all of our stuff has arrived
in good shape. My daughter

Jessica arrives tomorrow morning.

More than thirty-five Sun staff will be at the
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in
Computing this week in Keystone, Colorado. Many of us were able to
check in with each other by conference call this afternoon. I am flying into
Denver tomorrow afternoon. Today, I am printing everything I think I may need
while I am traveling and at the conference:

• Airline boarding pass
• Denver-Keystone-Denver airport shuttle tickets
• My travel itinerary (California-Colorado-California) and my
  
  daughter’s travel itinerary (Pennsylvania-Colorado-Pennsylvania)
• Hotel reservation confirmation
• Phone numbers and names of people I plan to contact
• Information about Sun staff attending Hopper 2008
• Information on my panel “Taking the Long View – Many Careers in One Company” – Thursday, October 2nd, Session Three, 2:45pm – 3:45pm
• Information on the MAGIC BOF in which
  I am a participant – “Setting Up An Effective Organization To Support Girls” on
  Friday, Oct 3rd, 5:10pm – 6:10pm
• Sun job and program and MAGIC program information, in case anyone asks me

I am also carrying Sun business cards and MAGIC business cards, pencils printed
with “www.getmagic.org MAGIC girls” for distribution at the BOF, books, clothes,
etc. Sun’s Hopper t-shirts and other giveaways were already shipped, as were
our posters and quick screens. I updated my laptop software this afternoon but
John is messing with it now (in case he, as our family sysadmin, can think of
more stuff I might need).

I talked with Jessica and she is ready to print her poster for Hopper’s
Technical Poster Session (Wednesday, 1 Oct, 7 – 9 pm). I am looking
forward to seeing it (and my girl!).

Keystone temperatures are expected to range between 65 degrees F and 25
degrees F, at 8930 feet above sea level, with thunderstorm potential, so
I am packing for cold and maybe wet weather. Almost ready to go… I
am very much looking forward to this. Hopper conferences are well worth
the effort.

There is a solid feeling of accomplishment in having business cards
printed up the first time for a new venture. The
MAGIC core team now has its
cards to take to the
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing next week in Colorado.
Here is mine:

The MAGIC mentoring program
for middle and high school girls will be featured at a BOF
called
“Setting Up An Effective Organization To Support Girls”, on
Friday, Oct 3rd, 5:10pm – 6:10pm. If you attend Hopper, please come
by and talk with us!

Image Copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson