In October 2014 I had the opportunity to travel to Phoenix, Arizona to attend the 14th edition of the Grace Hopper Women in Computing (GHC) Conference.
I received a sponsorship from the company Thomson Reuters, which is a multinational mass media company. I was very grateful for the opportunity that they gave me.
After two flights with two stops, one in Lima and another in Atlanta I arrived at Phoenix Arizona.
When I showed up at the hotel I met my roommate who was from Argentina. For me, she was very impressive because she had done an internship at Google. That was amazing I never thought I would meet someone that had worked at Google. Until that time all I knew about Google is that it was the biggest technology company in the world and I couldn't believe that I was so close to someone that had worked there, even if it was an internship. I thought it was a great opportunity to ask about the company and learn more about how was the experience working there. So before the conference had started I already was starting to meet interesting and smart women in technology. From that moment I knew that I could connect with different women of the world and learn about companies that I thought were unreachable at that moment.
FIRST DAY OF THE CONFERENCE
I was very excited and I had a lot of expectations and it was incredible to see 8000 attendees with 94% of them being women.
While I was walking to the conference I asked myself: What do I have in common with these other women? Because they have different cultures, religions, and come from different countries such as India, China, France, etc. While I spoke with them I noticed that we shared a common denominator: Enthusiasm to learn and passion to contribute solutions using technology while also encouraging other women to follow our steps.
During the morning I attended different sessions. The first session was called: “The successful leadership” it was presented by Kathryn McKinley, a Microsoft researcher. This session was for sharing tips of how to be a successful leader. She went into detail about when to say “no” and described potential solutions to handle different situations that one might encounter in leadership positions. The principal leadership lessons that I got from this session is to be an effective advocate for what you think is right or wrong and to be an authentic leader always being true to yourself.
In the Afternoon I attended a workshop from Microsoft called: “Microsoft Disaster Game”. In this workshop, the goal was to develop a prototype application using a dataset related to a typhoon that occurred in the Phillippines. My team and I designed a prototype application that contained a map with pins that would show places that required immediate attention after the typhoon went through. The pins shown in the map would also have different priority types specifying whether it was children, women or elderly people on danger.
In the night, I presented my poster, called: "TECHMIN: Technology and Mining". The lesson I learned from presenting was to focus on the objective of the project and to continue doing research.
SECOND DAY OF THE CONFERENCE
In the second day, there was a keynote presentation about technology and women given by Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft. After the keynote, the interviewer Maria Klave asked Satya the following question "What is your advice for women who are not comfortable with asking for a salary increase?" He answered: “It’s not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raises as you go along,” adding that such patience was “good karma”. That answer caused some controversy since a multitude of women started to comment about Satya's statement and it became trending content in the social networks. Afterward, Satya had to rectify about what he said, ensuring that men and women should receive the same salary for the same job.
LAST DAY AT THE CONFERENCE
In the last day, I attended a session about Startups. In it, I learned how founders were innovating and applying entrepreneurship and different kinds of technologies to solve problems which then they used to launch a startup.
Also, I participated in a job fair. For me, this was an amazing experience because I got to meet employees from different technology companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel, and Yahoo. I never thought I would be able to meet so many people from all these companies since most of these don't have representation in Peru.
Finally, I attended the closing party of the conference. It was full of happy women filled with the enthusiasm for growing up as women in technology.
After the conference, I increased my network of women in technology. Now I have some new friends with which I can share experiences, culture, and other tech-related activities.
Attending this event changed my life and my perspective of the world. After meeting so many smart and passionate women in technology and science it encouraged me to also make my mark in technology and to inspire other women in my field.
