KatysBlog

Here are some of the photos I took at the
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (17-20 October 2007, Orlando,
Florida). Sun was a Platinum Sponsor: we had 24 women attend, 10 of us were
on panels or running BOFs, 3 of us were

GHC Community: Official Bloggers. My daughter Jessica was on the “Girl
Geeks” panel which I moderated and she was also an
official conference blogger.

Robin Jeffries cuts Systers 20th Birthday cake:

Poster Session and 1st night reception:

Gender and Social Networking Sites Poster:

Efficiently Handling Wildcard Queries in XML Poster:

Determining Scribble Intention in Musical Notes Poster:

Hardware Security Protocols for IP Protection Poster:

Jeanette Wing speaks at 1st Keynote Session:

Sun’s Recruiting Table:

Sun’s Recruiting Table:

Sun’s Recruiting Table:

Sun’s Recruiting Table:

Official Bloggers and Notetakers:

Girl Geeks Panel Members:

Girl Geeks Panel in Session:

Girl Geeks Panel Afterwards:

Hopper Conference Badges and Ribbons:

Fran Allen and Jessica:

Robin Jeffries and Jessica at Awards Banquet:

Sun Table 1 at Awards Banquet:

Sun Table 2 at Awards Banquet:

Dancing at Awards Banquet:

Sun in Green Room at Sponsors’ Night:

Sun in Green Room at Sponsors’ Night:

Sun in Green Room at Sponsors’ Night:

Official
GHC 2007 Blogger. You may comment on this blog by visiting the
GHC Forum. You
can find me at
http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog.

Images Copyright 2007 by Katy Dickinson

I attended the “Workplace Mentoring” panel this last afternoon
of the
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. On the panel
were representatives from HP, Clarke University, Intel, MentorNet, and
Google. Mostly, they told war stories and gave best
practices advice. Resources recommended were:

• 
  http://www.cra.org/Activities/craw, CRA Committee on the Status of Women in Computing research (CRA-W), look for mentoring workshop information
• In Action: Creating Mentoring and Coaching Programs
  by Linda Stromei, 2001 (ISBN-10: 1562862847 and
  ISBN-13: 978-1562862848)
• 
  http://www.ncwit.org/practices.box.mentoring.html
  “Mentoring-in-a-Box: Technical Women at Work”
• Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham, Donald O. Clifton, 2001 (ISBN-10: 0743201140 and ISBN-13: 978-0743201148
• http://research.sun.com/SEED/
  Engineering Mentoring: SEED Sun Engineering Enrichment & Development
  program, data and flowcharts

There were a variety of experiences and programs described at many
levels of maturity and success. Other program representatives were
identified in the audience. Some of the topics discussed in detail
were the difference between mentoring and patronage, the three-way
complex relationship between mentors, mentees, and the mentee’s
manager, cultural influences and differing expectations of mentoring,
and how “mentoring” was translated.

Official
GHC 2007 Blogger. You may comment on this blog by visiting the
GHC Forum. You
can find me at
http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog.

The “Invited Change Agents” panel at this second day of the

Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing features the
three women who won this year’s 2007 Anita Borg Change Agent Awards:

• Wafa Abdul Rahman AlMansoori (Bahrain)
• Zeinab Safar (Egypt)
• Irina Khomeriki (Georgia)

This award was created by Turing Award and inaugural Anita Borg Technical
Leadership Award winner, Fran Allen (IBM Fellow, retired). Fran was in
today’s audience. Change agents
work in their community to attract and support women in technology.
Recipients are recognized for their technical leadership and advocacy work.
The Hopper Conference is remarkable for the geographic diversity of its
participants (and for its lack of gender diversity, being almost all women);
so, these three are not the only women here from their areas of the world.
However, they are remarkable for their accomplishments and vision.

Dr. Safar talked about some of the barriers she faces in Egypt:

• 30% women illiterate, 20% men illiterate
• Language, social, and cultural barriers for girls and women
• Lack of access to computers for girls (boys have more access if there
  are computers available)
• Encouragement and permission is needed for girls to become educated (fathers need to make opportunity for women to be trained). However,
  once girls are in the school system, they can continue and succeed.
  IT is popular and women succeed in the field professionally and
  represent 30% of the IT sector.

Dr. Khomeriki and Dr. AlMansoori said that their countries shared
many of these same problems. They each added that there was a generation
difference, with the younger people being more computer capable.
Dr. AlMansoori said that Bahrain literacy is 98% in the under-50 age group.
She said that men needed to be mentors for women so that women could learn
to do more than keep the home and take care of children.

Dr. Safar said that she hoped women would do something for women,
to help women in Egypt
to learn more about Information Technology. She looks to NGOs
(non-governmental organizations) and private donors (like industry and the
Anita Borg Institute) for support. Dr. Khomeriki talked about internet
use in Georgia (3.75 users per 100 people, often by way of a smokey
cyber cafe) and how important it was to have quick information access.
Dr. AlMansoori said it was hard to get program funding in Bahrain
because everyone knows her country is rich. Also, Bahrain is a small
country and only boys can work out of the country, so women have fewer
job opportunities.

The moderator asked a question from one of last year’s Change Agent
Award winners: what had the three learned by attending Hopper 2007,
and what would they do differently?

• Dr. Safar said that she should have brought a student, and also
  since the Hopper Conference includes about half students, that she should
  get more students to participate in her conferences in Egypt.
• Dr. Khomeriki said she had a new point of view.
• Dr. AlMansoori
  said she would have looked for a mentor to enrich her
  experience. She plans to establish a mentoring program in Bahrain for
  students, Engineers, and fresh graduates to bring out their best. A
  mentoring program will encourage people to seek help from others who
  know how to do things better. She wants them to know that seeking
  improvement is not admitting inability. She is looking for help to
  set up this new mentoring program.

I gave Dr. AlMansoori the 2006
“Mentoring for Employee Development” 2-page handout from the National
Center for Women & Information Technology
(NCWIT), a reference to Sun’s
http://research.sun.com/SEED/
web site about the SEED Engineering mentoring program which I manage,
and my card. I hope she will follow up with me! It would be very interesting
to follow up on today’s discussion.

Official
GHC 2007 Blogger. You may comment on this blog by visiting the
GHC Forum. You
can find me at
http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog.

I am up early this morning after dancing late at last night’s
banquet for the
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing because Maria Klawe
is speaking. Maria Klawe is amazing – she is now President, Harvey
Mudd College, after serving as Dean of Engineering at Princeton.

Maria’s wants Engineers to do great technical work but
also have a full life and make a difference in the world too. Having
seen Maria dancing last night, I know she lives what she recommends.

The paradox which Maria highlighted in today’s keynote talk is that
there are increasing percentages of women in Computer Science
Faculty, grad students, and leadership positions in industry and
academia; however, undergraduate CS women student numbers continue
to decrease. Right now, 20% of Computer Science PhD students in the USA
and Canada are women, while only 14% of CS undergrads are women. Yet,
the worldwide demand for workers with CS degrees is higher now than
ever before (she believes that trend will probably continue for the
next 10 years).

Maria encouraged outreach to schools, parents, and teachers to help.
She said if each of the 1,400 women at Hopper 2007
could convince 3 girls to go into CS, the problem would start to reverse.
She advises finding opportunities to talk to any organization (about
leadership or whatever) and then insert truths about CS as an aside.
To talk with girls, go where they are: to art classes or camp rather
than to High School CS classes. Craft messages for High School math,
bio, chem, art and other
classes. Maria asked the audience to raise their hands if they would commit
to talk with at least one (preferably 20!) High School girls. Most of
us did!

Maria Klawe’s advice on how to attract female college students to Computer
Science:

• Fabulous CS intro (and later) classes
• Get some CS required, have Dean advise all students to take CS classes
• Bring frosh to Hopper
• Post-frosh summer research experiences
• Make it easy to switch into CS (and offer CS in the summer)
• Provide CS double major option and flexibility
• Make a digital pre-med program

Official
GHC 2007 Blogger. You may comment on this blog by visiting the
GHC Forum. You
can find me at
http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog.

“Girl Geeks in High School: Technical Experiences of Future Inventors” was
the panel I moderated this afternoon at the
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women
in Computing here in Orlando, Florida. See my

3 August 2007 blog entry for a full panel description. My daughter
Jessica and I worked on developing this panel for over six months.
She and three High School girls from the Silicon Valley joined me on the
stage today. Both she and I are blogging about it. (I haven’t read
Jessica’s blog entry yet but you can read it at
Feeling Elephants.)

I think the panel went well, both for the girls and for the audience.
In our hour, we covered both
questions the girls and I had discussed in advance plus new questions
from the audience. We talked about how the girls use technology
in school and for fun and what was working best for them. There was
some range of opinions but the girls agreed on many points:

• There were some differences between male and female teachers
  of science, math, and technology but the gender of the teacher
  generally didn’t matter.
• The gender of mentors mattered – females were much preferred.
• Laptops could be of great benefit in class but there was also
  temptation to misuse them during less interesting classes.
• No one used tablets nor had they seen them used effectively.
• Hands-on and interactive projects teach better and are more
  interesting.
• Many of their peers and adults also did not understand their
  interest in Engineering. However, their teachers and parents had
  encouraged and supported them.
• All of them came from families in which technology was
  used comfortably.

A very interesting question from the audience was whether the four
girls saw themselves as users or creators of technology. They said
they saw themselves “using to create” (being somewhere in-between
using and creating). However, their
examples of how they used technology were very sophisticated – far
beyond the abilities of a passive simple user.

I agree with one of the audience members who told me later that she
would be fascinated to see what these very talented and charming
young women did in the next twenty years. I do look forward to watching
their progress.

Official
GHC 2007 Blogger. You may comment on this blog by visiting the
GHC Forum. You
can find me at
http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog.