Category Archives: Hopper – Anita Borg Institute

Carol Muller (MentorNet), Mary Jean Harrold (Georgia Tech), and I met tonight
at the Hopper Conference poster session and opening reception to make final
plans for our “Mentoring by the Numbers” panel tomorrow morning. It was hard
to talk for long because so many interesting people dropped by our table to visit.

I am sorry that our panel will be in the same time slot as Radia Perlman’s
talk “What’s a PKI, Why Would I Want One…”. I would have liked to have
heard that. Radia is always interesting.

It was a pleasure to meet tonight with some of the 30 Sun Engineers and
executives attending, particularly those who have not been to a Hopper
conference before. Watching them look in wonder at over a thousand
technical academic and professional women in the Golden Ballroom here at
San Diego’s Town and Country Convention Center was fun. So
many technical women work in groups where they are the only woman or
one of a very few. When the Hopper conference starts, it is hard not to
say to yourself “so that’s where all the other women are!”

ghc2006

Carol Gorski and I have finished our presentation on “5 Years of Mentoring
by the Numbers” here at the TechLeaders Workshop of the Hopper Conference
in San Diego. Our two sessions about Sun’s SEED Engineering mentoring program
were well attended and we answered many good questions. As always at Hopper,
it is a pleasure to meet so many interesting and accomplished technical
professionals. At this workshop, we are sharing ideas of programs and
methods that work to increase the numbers of women in computer science
and encourage those already in the field.

Tomorrow morning, the full conference starts. The keynote speaker will be
Shirley Tilghman, President of Princeton University. My panel “Mentoring
by the Numbers” is right after her talk.

I had less than six hours of sleep last night after an uneventful flight from
San Jose. I hope to get more sleep tonight. We three who are on the
panel tomorrow are going to meet after the workshop to make plans but that
should not go too late.

ghc2006

I am in a “phone room” in Sun’s Executive Briefing Center (EBC) in
Menlo Park waiting for a meeting to break up. I have been in the
meeting all day but they are now in executive session. I am
waiting for the others to come out to hear if there are any final
actions I need to take before I can drive to the airport tonight.
I am flying south to San Diego where I will participate in the Hopper
Conference starting early tomorrow morning.

I hope I have everything packed in such a way that San Jose Airport
security will let me through. The new travel rules are confusing and
shifting about what you can take in the cabin and what needs to be
checked in luggage. My husband’s laptop computer board was
smashed in a TSA inspection on our last trip so I have become concerned
about what and how to pack.

I am carrying my handouts for my presentation tomorrow on “5
Years of Mentoring by the Numbers” plus paper copies of the 2004 Research
Disclosure on the SEED Engineering mentoring program. So, my luggage
is heavy. At least I will not have to carry the handouts back home!

ghc2006

Next week is the
Anita Borg Institute’s
Grace Hopper Conference on Women and Computing. Sun is both a Gold Sponsor of this conference and an
ABI Partner. Sun will have 9 presentations by 7 presenters and over
30 participants. We have all of the giveaways (chatchkes) for Sun’s
conference table shipped to the hotel in San Diego already. There are
just two more documents due back from the printers on Monday. The
conference runs 4-7 October 2006.

Sun HR Director Carol Gorski and I will be teaching at the TechLeader’s
Workshop on Wednesday. The workshop theme is “Building and Sustaining Change in Technology Cultures: Showcasing What Works”. Carol and
I will be talking about “5 Years of Mentoring by the Numbers”. That is, presenting our learnings and metrics from 5 years of running the SEED Engineering mentoring program.
I am also on the “Mentoring by the Numbers” panel on Thursday with
Dr. Carol Muller (MentorNet) and Dr. Mary Jean Harrold (Georgia Tech).

This will be my 3rd Hopper conference. I always come home energized
and full of new ideas. I have signed up to write blog entries from
the conference so look here for more…

ghc2006