The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is a series of conferences designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront - A program of the Anita Borg Institute. It is the largest technical conference for women in computing and results in collaborative proposals, networking and mentoring for junior women and increased visibility for the contributions of women in computing.It is co-founded by Dr. Anita Borg and Dr. Telle Whitney in 1994 and inspired by the legacy of Admiral Grace Murray Hopper.

I was first introduced to GHC by “Bangladeshi Women in Computer Science & Engineering, BWCSE”. I was confused whether I would be able to grab this opportunity in the very first year of university. But I thought of giving a try as I was highly inspired by my seniors Samia apu and Raisa apu (who attended GHC 2014). In every step of my scholarship application, they have guided me like mentors. When I finally got the scholarship I could not believe my eyes. This has been only because of BWCSE. My very Special thanks to my adviser sir, Dr. Md. Shohrab Hossain, who recommended me for the scholarship. My gratitude to the kind application reviewers who paved me the way to GHC !

Then finally I got an identity of a GHC Scholar along with Anika Tabassum Apu with around 455 scholars. This year’s GHC was grand with around 12,000 people in Houston,Texas for 14th-16th Oct,2015. All the three days offered a great series of sessions, workshops, career talks, presentations etc in technical, career-oriented, open source and many other tracks. It was like a powerful crowd of which one will always want to be a part of!

14th October:

At the very first day, we first collected our badges, swag bags and meal card from registration booth. There was a series of “Wednesday keynote Session” where Telle Whitney & Hilary Mason’s Keynote was extraordinarily entertaining! There was “Student Opportunity Lab” where different tables had discussions on different topics. There is an overview of “SOL” in this video. There was super amazing “GHC Scholars Lunch” sponsored by Apple. After a dive to the world of Virtual Reality in “Oculus” booth we roamed over the career fair as well as community fair (New edition of GHC’15). The  Career Fair was full of opportunities and diversity. My trip to career fair started from Intel and got over with LeanIn.org. I also won a small raffle draw there and got some cool stuffs from LeanIn.org ,whoowhoo !

 As the career fair was 3 days long, we tried to visit it almost everyday and got to meet recruiters from awesome companies like Google, Apple, Intel, Intuit, Microsoft, Ericsson, LeanIn and also many universities! There was opportunity to schedule on-spot interview. We interacted with the recruiters and collected some awesome swags.

15th October:

Like the first day, we started with the Thursday Keynote session. After roaming over the fair, we headed to the Lunch Time Table Talk of “Bangladeshi Women in Computing” and it was an amazing meet up with the alumni of my university. We(me and Anika Apu) had a great time with Fariba Apu, Zalia Shams Apu, Nova Apu, Moushumi Apu, Ambreen Siraj Apu and Selina Apu. A big thanks goes to Nova Apu who arranged this table topic.

 That day, we had our lunch at “WomenTechMakers party” sponsored by Chromecast and we got a cool Chromecast Audio by Google. Later on the two consecutive nights(14th & 15th), there were hangouts ( kind of parties ! ) in Nova Apu’s room with the senior apus and they were of great fun. Spending time with them was the most amazing part of our trip.

16th October:

Finally, It was the last day of GHC. Attending the keynote session of Sheryl Sandberg, we attended a session on Data Science along with Monica Apu & it went quite good. Then after roaming a little over the fair, I headed to “Systers Lunch” sponsored by Prudential. This meetup helped me to connect with great ladies there!  After the sessions and fair being closed, the most awaited Friday night celebration came! It was held in the “Minute Maid Park” near to the convention center, sponsored by Google ,Expedia and Microsoft. The people there didn’t give any rest to the dance floor till midnight, including us! Me, Bushra Apu, Mihika Apu, Sabrina Apu, Nazifa Apu, Anika Apu literally had a lot of fun with our random dance-steps. Thus the Record breaking Grace Hopper Celebration 2015 ended with the splendid Friday night celebration.

The most important thing that I learnt from GHC is how to connect with people and interact with them. It’s not just about sitting beside them, but talking to them and broadening your network. This experience will always remain as a very special memory throughout my life.