Virtual Grace Hopper Celebration 2021
Thanks to the support from my organization and Microsoft, I went to the virtual Grace Hopper Celebration 2021 (vGHC 21') last week and want to share my experience and takeaway. Noted this is my personal experience which cannot represent other individuals.
What is Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC)?
Created in 1994 and inspired by the legacy of Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, the AnitaB.org flagship event, Grace Hopper Celebration, brings the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. It is the world’s largest gathering of women in computing. — Wikipedia + the Internet
This year is the second GHC hosted virtually. It is a multi-track conference for five days, including sessions, on-demand videos, career booths, and an Open Source Day.
Sessions
Talks are pre-recorded but only available at a specific time. Each session is about 30 min. Topics cover technology, career building, mental health, track meetup, speaker’s corner with distinctive styles — presentation, panelist, breakout rooms, lightning talks, and yoga.
On-demand videos
Other than live sessions (live broadcasting but pre-recorded), there are 100+ on-demand topics that attendees could watch anytime. Based on the videos I watched, they are recorded for GHC 21'.
Career booths
Attendees with sponsor tickets could join Sponsor Hall via Hopin. Inside the app, there are virtual booths from GHC sponsors.
In addition, an attendee could schedule 1:1 with sponsors to explore job opportunities. (I didn’t schedule one and heard from others the seats ran out quickly.)
Open Source Day
GHC hosted an Open Source Day with contribution and learning tracks.
The contribution tracks are like a one-day hackathon where AnitaB collaborates with small OSS projects to help attendees commit their first PR. And the learning tracks taught attendees with basic open-sourcece knowledge, such as GitHub and first commit.
I worked on a website with folks from Lima. It overlaps air quality metrics with a map of Lima, intending to bring air quality awareness to Lima residents.
The secret sauce
I’ve heard of GHC for years but haven’t got a chance to go. What is interesting is that I rarely heard negative things about GHC. On the contrary, everyone who attended the conference always states, “It is awesome! You must go!”
With many tech conf experiences, I am curious about the special sauce of GHC that leads to such high satisfaction.
After attending GHC 21', I realized the secret is the framework and a shared goal. GHC provides an environment for women & non-binary technologists to:
- Demonstrate themselves to others with life experience and insights.
- Allow others to see and believe themselves.
- Create a network to amplify each other.
The shared goal among GHC attendees, “bring more women and non-binary technologists in tech,” differentiates itself from other tech conferences.
Mind-blowing moments
Two mind-blowing moments with my headline (not the actual title of the talk).
Bravery: Dare to challenge the conference and its sponsor on their stage.
Knowing Google is one of the GHC sponsors, Timnit Gebru shared her unpleasant work experience at Google. She called GHC along with other organizations to examine their relationship with corporations.
She highlighted how corporations use their involvement with the forums meant to help marginalized groups, alienate them and create toxic and harmful work environments. In addition, it penalizes those who speak up.
She also pointed out how often black women are the last to benefit from women allyship groups. As a result, they are constantly ignored and harmed.
I admire her courage and appreciate AnitaB, who welcomes her truth even with a direct challenge.
Possibility: Who defines what is possible for others?
Haben Girma gave an inspiring talk titled “Disability is an Opportunity for Innovation.” During the talk, she shared her pictures of dancing, surfing, communicating with the other person with sign language as a deaf and blind woman.
She pointed out,
“Ableism is the biggest barrier”
and noted the Internet is still a terrible place for people with disabilities.
“Small barriers build up over time, and a small change makes a difference.”
It was touching but a reflecting moment that many of us are part of ableism. Yet, regardless of culture, background, and environment, we shouldn’t define what is possible for others.
Networking is tricky
GHC 21' has a big room for improvement in terms of networking. Although we learned from last year’s attendees that this year is better than 20'.
Networking is generally challenging due to the lack of a unified platform/app and structural meetups. Plus, technical scalability issues (with Zoom and their web servers) make the experience more frustrated.
Folks sent LinkedIn invites and messages. Others created a discord server where specific personas participate. The talk webpage has an endless scrolling Q&A section that is suitable for one-line comments instead of conversations. The Open Source Day uses Slack. And Hopin is the place to connect with sponsors.
Among those difficulties, we found a way out. First, there were collaborative contact lists one could sign-up with information for connections. For example, there are contact lists for software engineers, AI interested groups, program managers, AR/VR/MR communities, mid/senior career folks. Second, people created various LinkedIn groups per community.
Networking is doable but tricky.
Microsoft vGHC 21' community
My Microsoft vGHC 21' buddies amend the networking frustration. Someone had a great idea to create a Microsoft Teams channel with all the Microsoft attendees. In this channel, we took collaborative notes from sessions, set up daily post-event meetups to share takeaways, built a shared booklist, and left tips for future vGHC attendees. In addition, some of us formed internal mentorship rings; some of us started a trial career coaching class.
It is fascinated to see how we came together and helped each other.
Observations
These are things I found interesting but not actionable.
- There is a trend among the audience to pivot their career to project/product manager (PM).
In meetups I attended, many attendees, from software engineers to data scientists, were looking to transition into PM and asked for guidance. I don’t understand what’s going on and why. But, with respect to others’ career decisions, I wish software engineers could realize the beauty of this role and be open to exploring more before jumping to a conclusion. - It seems more than half of attendees are students or early in their careers.
The room is full of students, including undergraduates, masters’, and Ph.D. They were eager to learn what is ahead of them. Suppose you are a student or early in your career. In that case, GHC is an exciting event to connect with industry folks and understand how to plan for the future.
However, this should not discourage ones who aren’t in their early career from attending the event. I believe GHC could be impactful to post mid-career folks who come with a plan.
Wrap-up
I would recommend GHC to others, especially for students or people in their early careers.
To mid-career and beyond folks, participating with a plan could help to maximize the experience — Be clear about what you are looking for during the event.
For instance, these goals helped me stay focus through the conference:
- Experience and learn about GHC.
- Find five diversified mentor, peer, mentee candidates and build long-lasting connections.
- Be open and inspired by others.
Besides, noticing other women play leadership roles in their domain is encouraging.
For executives, please consider being on the stage to share your experience. One’s story might be ordinary to herself/themselves, it could be inspiring to many others.
Seeing role models is crucial to building belief in ourselves, leading to a flywheel effect to bring more people into technology.
“If she/they could do it, maybe I could…”
“What she/they talked about is interesting. Maybe I should…”
I knew some male managers sought to attend the event to learn more and become better allies. But I would recommend prioritizing women and non-binary technologists first. Attendees should feel free to bring learnings to your teams and managers.
Last but not least, thanks to the people who spent time with me during the event. Great appreciation to AnitaB.org and all the presenters that make the conference happened. Thanks to the support from my team and manager who created space for me to focus on the event. Thanks to the sponsorship from my organization and Microsoft.
