Men should attend the Grace Hopper Conference

Last year (2016) I attended the Grace Hopper Conference (GHC) for the first time. In case you are not familiar with it, it’s a conference primarily for women in Computer Science. It’s a great event and quite an interesting experience to attend as a man.

Back then I was still at Microsoft Research.  I’ve always been involved in diversity efforts and one of the initiatives at the time was to give managers the opportunity to attend the conference. Being a software engineering manager and interested in diversity, I quickly signed up and this turned out to be a great experience

The experience started on the flight, on the way to the conference. With 15,000+ people attending you can imagine the flights going to Houston that day were mostly women. Even the flight attendants were asking, ‘what’s going on?’. And there was a lot of enthusiasm and excitement in the air.

The first day I was a bit apprehensive to be part of the < 5% of men attending. I got on the bus from the hotel and sure enough, I was the only guy! I felt everyone was staring at me, although in retrospect that was probably just in my head :). Once there it became apparent this was different from your typical conference in a good way. Most tech or academic conferences I’ve been to are focused on the technical content. People are there to look smart. GHC was different: it was clear we were there to help each other. This came through in the keynotes, the content, the hallway conversations, the social events, everywhere; and it was very refreshing.

The sessions

The content of the sessions was great and very diverse. There were plenty to technical talks, career advise and discussion panels. For me the highlight of the conference was a panel titled Should I Stay or Should I Go?, featuring some amazing women leaders. This was a discussion about identifying when it’s time to make a change. Perhaps this resonated a lot with me because at the time I was in the process of exploring my next career move. I was particularly inspired and impressed, by Rebecca Norlander, who has an amazing story of technical achievement and overcoming obstacles. She is also very entertaining so I highly recommend listening to her speak if you get a chance.

Something I really enjoyed was attending sessions where we could discuss career challenges not typically discussed among men. Things like balancing work and family: I’m a dad and my wife is a scientist working full time. Even though we split the house chores and care of the kids pretty evenly, it can be very challenging with both of us working. I’m also an introvert and I’ve had to work on being more assertive, a topic that came up in a few sessions. It was great to have these conversations and  I feel like they need to be happen among everyone, not just women.

Recruiting

As part of the Microsoft team I also spent time at the recruiting booth. This is something I really enjoy doing and it was particularly great at GHC. It was fun to share experiences, give encouragement and advice and to represent Microsoft Research. I was amazed by the quality of the students that stopped by the booth. Most of the students attending the conference were very passionate and driven. In many cases they were attending because they had won a grant or award, so we got to meet some top talent.

The social

Being from Mexico I’m technically a minority in the US computer software industry. But to be honest, I’ve never really felt this significantly, perhaps because the industry (and Seattle) is very ethnically diverse. But GHC was a great glimpse of what it feels like to be in the minority, gender wise. You are faced with situations where you ask yourself, ‘do I belong here?’. For example, there was a lunch event called “Latinas in Computing”. I’m not a LatinA, but I’m a LatinO, should I attend? This may sound silly, but these thoughts crossed my mind and it took some mental effort to go past them. The same happened with the big party at the end of the conference. I almost didn’t go because I thought I would feel out of place, but I was lucky that my friend and neighbor was there and she convinced me to go. In both instances, like in all of GHC, I felt nothing but welcome. But the experience made me more aware of how these factors can influence your confidence and perception, to and from others.

I missed GHC17 but I’m planning on attending next year. I’d love to connect so ping me if you are attending as well. And if you are a guy and you also believe in the value of having a diverse and inclusive tech industry, I highly encourage you to attend. We need to be part of the conversation to drive and support change.

P.S. If you do decide to attend, you’ll get to experience what happens in a huge event with 95% women: most of the men’s bathrooms get designated as gender-neutral, and even in the few that remain for men, women feel free to go in. At first it feels funny when you run into women in the bathroom, but then you just smile at each other as you realize this will be ‘normal’ for the next three days :).