I went to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing!

Last week I went to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. It was a fun experience, well, mostly, so I thought I'd write about what I saw and did there.

I attended a variety of sessions, and I think most of them were pretty good this year. I think that means I did a better job at choosing which ones to go to this year! Here are the titles of all the sessions I went to. I'll do posts about the ones I found most interesting / have Opinions about, and may or may not say much about the others.

• Opening Welcome and Keynote - Shafi Goldwasser
• New Managers - What's your challenge? (Birds of feather session) - Emily J. Leathers (Brigade)
• Communicating for Impact and Influence - Denise Brosseau
• Male Allies Plenary Panel - Penny Herscher (Moderator, FirstRain), Mike Schroepfer (Facebook), Alan Eustace (Google), Blake Irving (GoDaddy), Tayloe Stansbury (Intuit)
• Keynote (day 2) - Satya Nadella in Conversation with Maria Klawe
• Accountability and Metrics for Gender Diversity - Denise Menelly (Bank of America), Lazlo Bock (Google), Danielle Brown (Intel), Theresa Kushner (VMWare), Jeanne Hultquist (Anita Borg Institute)
• The Dynamics of Hyper-Effective Teams: How inclusive environments drive innovation - Lori Mackenzie, Caroline Simard (both from the Clayman Institute for Gender Research)
• Reverse Male Allies
• Keynote (day 3) - Dr Arati Prabhakar (DARPA)
• New Perspectives on Gender-Inclusive Game Design - Elisabeth Gee (Arizona State University), Gillian Smith (Northeastern University), Carolee Stewart-Gardiner (Kean University), Gail Carmichael (Carleton University), Kate Compton (University of California)
• Addressing Stereotype Threat in the Education System: Brainstorming Possible Approaches - Beccie Magnus, Danielle Del Rosario (both from ThoughtWorks, Inc)

Aside from the sessions, I had a blast meeting tons of different women from around the world and talking to them! Overall, I think the conference was a net positive for me (although next year I think I will decline to do so many interviews - I had to miss several sessions, including part of the opening keynote!). I hope the Anita Borg Institute listens carefully to the feedback and media attention this year's GHC elicited, and improves on the parts which were not so good.