#ghc2018

Grace Hopper Celebration 2018 - Sketchnotes

Sep. 26–28 in Houston, Texas

Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) is the world's largest gathering of women technologists. More than 20K attendees this year!

I sketched live 10 talks and workshops at GHC. From topics around Web design Accessibility to Career, passing by Machine Learning and Cyber Security. Visualizing the talks helps me connect the dots between the essential ideas and make the learnings more memorable. Thank you to the speakers for their knowledge sharing.

Sketchnotes have the power to make ideas more clear! I tweeted the notes on the spot to share across borders and interests. Look at what people said:

“ Love your perspective here! This must have been a life-changing #GHC18 session. Your note taking skills are 🔥 and really inspire me!” - Chelsea “These sketches are amazing!!!” - Beth Kelly “Also, amazing sketch notes! Wow!” - Carolyn Griffel “This is awesome! Thanks for sharing” - Shruti Kapoor

Get to know more about the event at AnitaB organization and follow me on Twitter for the next event I will be live sketching. (I also tweet about UX and Development. Sharing the multi-sides of people!)

Website: nadiaferreira.com

Twitter: NadiaNadienka

This morning at Grace Hopper, one day after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Professor Anita Hill spoke about the past, present and future of the #MeToo movement. It felt like the planets aligned to see her speak in this oasis of supportive women at the same time as the wider world is in an uproar over an eerie déjà vu of her 1991 allegations against Clarence Thomas.

While Kavanaugh’s confirmation is all but certain, it was nonetheless reassuring and empowering to hear Professor Hill’s thoughts on the current climate surrounding sexual harassment. She reminded us that, while we may feel isolated as women in tech, especially when issues of sexual harassment arise, the room before her was proof that none of us are actually alone in our experiences. She noted how she felt particularly isolated when she testified nearly thirty years ago, but that she has noticed a decided shift in the time since then. There are of course many people who still do not believe survivors, or believe and do not care, and an unfortunate number of them reside in the Senate. But support for survivors and concern about sexual harassment has grown considerably since 1991, especially recently as a result of the #MeToo movement (source). I find that a small but solid comfort amid the despair of electing an attempted rapist to the highest court in the country.

Okay ladies and gentlemen, we’re back and we’re still learning graphQL but we’re also at Grace Hopper so please forgive the tangent. There is such a staggering diversity of women here, it’s hard to believe that I encounter so few of them in my everyday life. Seeing them all here working on such amazing things, pointing out hypocrisies in workplace practices that I had started taking for granted, it’s like being back home when you didn’t even realize you had left. Probably in particular because, unsurprisingly, it reminds me of Wellesley. 

In one of my favorite sessions so far, Diane Boettcher, a Security & IT Executive at Microsoft, pointed out something I’ve thought myself on a few occasions but had not heard framed so neatly. We are often told that in order to be successful and respected in the workplace we should avoid certain words in our emails (don’t say ‘just’ or ‘sorry’), talk in a more commanding voice (no uptalk), and hide strong emotions -- in other words, we are told to act more like men. As Boettcher pointed out, this is a way to survive in the workplace, but to thrive requires a fundamental shift in workplace culture. It requires that these so-called ‘feminine’ traits be stripped of the stigma they carry.

So I just found out I'll be getting to go to the Grace Hopper celebration 2018 with my company and there's a helluva lot of awesome stuff happening but I need to give them a top 5 sessions/panels I want to go to so they can build the schedule of who is in the booth/doing interviews around people being able to go to the stuff they want to go see. I need help sifting through the events for awesome particularly stuff that I, as a cis man who wants to support women in tech as much as possible, could really benefit from!

Here's the schedule for anyone interested.

I know I don't have a ton of followers but I'd appreciate any help I can get, especially from women in software and systems engineering, on what panels and sessions I should be shooting for. I've never been to Grace Hopper before but I'm told by co-workers that it will be fantastic. :)