It's almost time for GHC!

In a few days I'll be traveling to Colorado to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC). The only other time I've been able to attend was in 2006, so it's great to be returning! The picture above is from that trip, during Sponsor Night, where we gets lots of free stuff from companies, and basically spend the evening having fun!

GHC is a conference primarily for women in computing, although men are welcome to attend as well (only a handful do each year). There are many goals of the conference: bring women together, support women in computing, share tips on finding success, and share research results. It's a fun conference, although many serious topics are discussed. One of the most exciting reasons to attend is to see so many women in one place that all have careers (or future careers) in computing!

I'm participating in the ACM Student Research Competition this year, and I think I have a good shot to at least make it to the next round at GHC. My research is solid, my poster is beautiful (although the poster printer did mess up a subtitle that's fine in the file I printed from...), and I think I've figured out how to describe 3 years worth of work in 5 minutes. We'll see if the judges agree, but I'm ready to be there and go for it! The poster session is Wednesday night (I really hope I don't get a migraine from flying), and everyone who is chosen to move on will give a 10 minute oral presentation Thursday evening.

I met a lot of great women at GHC 2006, so I hope to reconnect with them as well as make some new acquaintances. There's even this new CONNECT project, that allows participants to scan their badges when they meet someone new, and then they'll each get an e-mail with the other person's contact information! It's supposed to make it easier so that you don't have to use business cards. I've still got my business cards ready though, do you?