Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference 2009

In 1994 Dr Anita Borg and Dr Telle Whitney co-founded the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) of Women in Computing Conference. They have since had eight conferences with more than 7400 attendees and over 1000 scholarships awarded to students. Together with Association on Computing Machinery (ACM) these conferences “offer opportunities for mentoring, motivation, networking, technical and career development.”

On September 30^th, 2009 the GHC will land in Tucson, Arizona with the theme of “Creating Technology for Social Good”. http://gracehopper.org/2009/

The conference offers a wide variety of workshops and sessions including a Resume Clinic, Robotics workshop and “How to Become a Person of Influence.”

The Resume Clinic is an opportunity to have your resumes “edited and polished by industry and academia professionals.” This is an invaluable service for those of us who just aren’t sure what we contribute or don’t know how to convey all that we do. Traditionally, women don’t make a big fuss over their accomplishments and therefore don’t acknowledge the awesome talents and contributions they have and make. Having your resume re-vamped by people who can see through the veil of non-value that I personally have worn is a most liberating and self esteem building process.

The Robotics Workshop will cover cutting edge research and present career paths in robotics. Topics will include “Engineering Self-Organizing Systems”, “Living Better with Robots” and a panel on “Career Paths in Robotics”. Undergrads looking for options, beginning graduate students searching for that ever elusive research topic, researchers interested in latest developments and faculty looking for that cool new motivator for their computer science students will all enjoy these sessions.

Jo Miller, CEO of Women’s Leadership Coaching, Inc., will be providing the “How to Become a Person of Influence” workshop where you will “explore ways to gain credibility, get buy-in for ideas, and make a larger impact in business, through understanding the mechanisms of power an influence.” The topics include influencing skills and differing perceptions of power and influence among others. There will be a self-assessment, group discussion and an action plan to become that person you want to be.

Speakers will include:

1        Josephine Cheng IBM Fellow and Vice President, IBM Almaden Research Center,

2        M. Bernardine Dias, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon,

3        Susan Landau Distinguished Engineer, Sun Microsystems,

4        Brenda Laurel Professor and Chair Graduate Program in Design California College of the Arts

just to name a few.

 The conference will even include FREE Child Care for attendees with children ages 0-13. WOW! They do think of everything! Be sure to check out the website for other great sessions and to register for the event! http://gracehopper.org/2009/

Be the greatest you you can be!

Amelia