Category Archives: Hopper – Anita Borg Institute

I was able to hear the Hopper Conference’s final speaker, Helen Greiner (Co-founder
and Chairman of the Board, iRobot), before catching my flight home to San Jose. I had
to be there because the drawing for Sun’s contribution to the raffle (a full pass
to JavaOne next May) was right before the talk. I am very glad I stayed to listen.

I have not been very interested in robots but if anyone could make me a fan, it would be
Helen Greiner. Her talk was interesting, inspiring, and entertaining. The two
practical robot applications she presented (housecleaning, plus military scouting and bomb
disposal) are very different but both seem to work well. Watching her video of someone
throwing a tactical mobile robot scout through a glass window onto a concrete
floor only to have it right itself and work fine: going up stairs, through water,
and over rubble, was just amazing.

Helen Greiner’s sense of fun made the talk even better than its content. She showed
pictures of Rosy (the Jetson’s TV cartoon robot maid), R2D2 from “Star Wars”, and other famous
robots. She even replayed the irreverent “Saturday Night Live” fake TV ad for “Woomba”
to the great delight of the audience mostly made up of women. I wish I could have stayed
for the rest of the panels and presentations on robotics and to see the robots themselves
between sessions. What a fun ending to a great conference!

ghc2006

Tonight was the Hopper Conference Sponsors’ Treasure Hunt and party.
Each of the Gold Sponsors had a location in which they could offer
a party or entertainment or just a table for giveaways. Conference
participants each had a map and got a stamp when they went to the
location for each company. Sun’s table was the final stop for the
treasure hunt so we collected the maps, complete with all the stamps
plus the name and email of the participant. The maps will be used for
the raffle drawing tomorrow morning on the final day of the conference.
There are some great prizes. Sun contributed a full JavaOne conference
pass to the drawing.

I spent most of the evening at the Sun table in the gazebo in the rose
garden. During the conference, Sun gave away over 700 pounds of
mugs, notebooks, pens, bracelets, toiletries bags, hats and company
information. We know the weight because we had to ship the stuff to
San Diego. We are shipping home just two small boxes of paper after
giving away the final dozen boxes of stuff tonight.

I did get to visit the other sponsors’ locations briefly so I am coming
home with three new t-shirts, a frisbee, and some other toys. At the
Microsoft party everthing was red while Cisco had a Hawaiian theme.
IBM had a drawing every ten minutes for a small prize. HP featured movies
and movie toys (sadly, all gone by the time I got there). Google hosted
a wild party with dancing and games and fancy colored bar drinks.

Most of the Sun staff went the rounds but ended up back in our gazeebo
talking with each other. We so rarely get together from all over the
country, it is fun just to visit and get to know each other better. We
ended up cheering and clapping as each group of treasure hunters came
through to us with their maps all done. It was an enjoyable evening.

ghc2006

I am now listening to Dr. Carol Muller of MentorNet speak. Carol and
I were on a panel on mentoring here at the Hopper Conference yesterday
morning. Last night, Carol won the Anita Borg Award for Social Impact.

The Hopper conference day started with a talk by Dr. Sally Ride.
Dr. Ride talked about applying to be an astronaut
when she was a doctoral student at Stanford, following up on an advertisement
she saw in the campus newspaper. Not only did she show amazing pictures
from space but she had strong words on the need for more American women in
Engineering and the hard sciences. Dr. Ride has taken leave from her
professorship in Physics to speak on this and work for improvement. Sally
Ride was introduced today by Sun’s own Radia Perlman.

My daughter has a
biography called Sally Ride, Astronaut, An American First from
1984. I brought this to the conference and Sally Ride was gracious
enough to autograph it for Jessi.

Following Dr. Ride’s keynote, I went to the panel “Non-Traditional Ways to
Advance Your Career”. It was interesting to hear Robin Jeffries (Google),
Catherine Courage (Salesforce.com), Susan Landau (Sun Microsystems),
and Jill Stawbridge (Shopzilla) talk about their academic and
professional careers. The common theme was that each followed her heart.
Out of many choices, many not clearly leading anywhere and some unpaid,
each picked work in which she had a passionate interest. Particularly
memorable was Susan Landau’s story of choosing to live below her means,
that is, picking a home and mortgage that cost less than she could
afford. This meant Susan did not have to pick jobs solely by pay: it
gave her more options.

Carol Muller is giving us a demo of the MentorNet system. The web-based
profile collects information on both the mentee and their preferences
for a mentor in areas of background, career, gender, geography, etc.
One of the MentorNet participants spoke about her experience with the
program. She said the most important aspect of her mentoring relationship
was that even though her mentor was in the UK and she was in the USA,
he was very responsive and answered her questions quickly in email.

ghc2006

Telle Whitney announced last night that the Hopper conference will be
held every year starting next year (17-20 October 2007, in Orlando,
Florida). I think this is a good idea and even though it will be twice
the work to prepare for, I very much look forward to getting Hopper’s boost
in energy and ideas twice as often. Over and over the executives who
stood up to talk and present awards at the celebration dinner last night
talked about the amazing buzz they felt by being at Hopper. So true!

I am sorry that Sun’s CTO Greg Papadopoulos could not attend the
Hopper event. When we talked about it recently, he was very disappointed that
he had a customer visit he could not cancel. Even though he could not join us
in person, Greg did what he could by supporting Sun’s Gold Sponsorship of
Hopper plus Sun’s corporate partnership of the Anita Borg Institute, being on the
ABI Board personally, and giving an excellent opinion piece in CNET called “Perspective: Engineering field must have diversity” which was published
yesterday.

I have been working for Greg for 8 out of my 22 years at Sun, the longest I have worked for anyone. Greg is just plain cool:
a great technical leader of solid integrity with good ideas about how both Sun
and Engineering as a whole need to develop. Also fascinating to talk with.

ghc2006

I always enjoy hearing of the current research by Catalyst. It was a
special treat today to hear Kara Helander of Catalyst speak along with
Betty Shanahan of the Society of Women Engineers and Telle Whitney of
the Anita Borg Institute. Their panel followed the Women of Color
lunch here at the Hopper Conference in San Diego. Kara and I worked
together some years ago on Catalyst’s book Bit by Bit in which
the SEED program is presented as the case study on mentoring in industry.
After the panel was over, I left Kara with a copy of my presentation
“5 Years of Mentoring by the Numbers”, SEED’s metrics
report. I look forward to her comments.

The specific data presented by the panel on technical women in industry
was interesting and I hope to
get a copy for further study. However, I think most interesting was
some advice that Betty Shanahan offered about how women can support
other women in a nasty situation
that many professional and academic women face: that of getting heard in a
room mostly full of men. The problem is not vocal volume but rather
silence or lack of acknowledgement. Here is what often happens:

In a discussion, a woman
voices an opinion. This is followed by silence and then the discussion
continues as if nothing was said. Later, her idea is presented again by
a man and discussed as if for the first time.

I have had this happen to me more than once and I have heard many women
talk about the pattern, so I think it must be a common experience.
Betty made a specific suggestion: if a woman sees this happening to another
woman, she can ask her a question. That is, without agreeing or disagreeing
with the original opinion, the second woman can insert into the silence
the words “Please tell us more.” This simple acknowledgement of the
first woman’s opinion breaks the pattern and ties the
idea to its originator. I want to try this!

ghc2006

Four Silicon Valley girls are on the panel – Amy from Stanford Univ (Homestead
High School public school grad), Madeline (Gunn High School, a public
school), Sophie (Girls Middle School, a private school), and Brittany
(Notre Dame, a girls’ private school).
Unfortunately, neither of the two scheduled panelists from Harker School
are present. All of the girls come from families where one or both parents
are Engineers and their technical interests are strongly supported.

The girls are very bright, confident, and friendly when
answering questions from a packed room here at the Hopper Conference in San
Diego. The first questions were on what the girls are learning in math and
computer science and if they see any differences between how boys and girls
use computers. The audience also seems interested in any differences they
see between public and private schools, especially in what courses are
offered and whether the girls had taken them.

I asked the girls whether they had their own laptop and what was their
relationship to it. Three of the girls did have a private laptop but all
of the girls were very involved with their computers for communications,
music, schoolwork and entertainment. Amy was most emphatic in saying
“If my dorm room caught fire, my laptop would be the first and only thing
worth saving.”

The audience follows up with questions about internet confidentiality,
software preferences, and their interest in computer hardware design.
Brittany talked about going around with her friend in her Palo Alto
neighborhood streets on trash
pick up day collecting electronics and computer parts to take apart.

When the question comes up on why the girls think that there are so few young
women in computer science, answers include “too much commitment of time”,
“scary”, “no one knows about it – what it is”, “needs to be a graduation
requirement class so everyone takes it”, “girls are encouraged to take
science and history but not math – people don’t think it is creative”.
The girls are confident that computer science can change the world and that
they will continue to be involved even if it is not their college major.

Michelle Hutton, the panel moderator and a teacher at Girls Middle School
talked about computer science being a GMS expectation and requirement and
what a gift that is. She said that she had discovered computer science to
be more available pre-college than she had originally thought but that
computer science is sometimes hard for students to find out about or make
time for among competing academic requirements. Michelle also encouraged
people to join the Computer Science Teachers’ Assoc. (CSTA) and to put
up the CSTA poster that was part of Hopper’s conference package. She hopes
to encourage more high schoolers, particularly girls, to become interested
in computer science.

ghc2006