Many young girls (and young boys) are perplexed about what they should study when they go to the university and what kind of opportunities exist beyond, when they graduate. There is a new book that details the high tech careers for women and provides good insights from several successful women. I was interviewed and profiled in the book “Bit by Bit: A Young Woman’s Guide to Entering and Succeeding in High Tech Careers”.

Bit by Bit: A Young Woman's Guide to Entering and Succeeding in High Tech Career

I learned a lot from other women in technology, several of whom I have met in the last few years. My son, who is a studying Computer Science, found some of the advice valuable. You can find the book on Amazon here . The authors Mala Devlin and Trina Alexson decided to donate proceeds from the book to the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology to support their programs and scholarships. I hope you will find the book interesting too.

I am attending the LISA (Large Installation System Administration) Conference in Boston. There are technical presentations on Oracle Solaris 11 and the technology within it, including, IPS, Install, ZFS, Virtualization, Security and others. All presentations, by the experts themselves are part of Solaris Day.

Later in the afternoon we have a presentation on Oracle Solaris Cluster. I am very excited about this first release of Solaris Cluster 4.0 providing High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities for Oracle Solaris 11!

More details of Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.0 can be seen here. The team has put in a lot of effort to release this product, so close to the Oracle Solaris 11 release. Very proud of working with such a talented team!

This year’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference was attended by a record-breaking 34 Oracle employees, making Oracle the top 7th organization by registration, ahead of Facebook, IBM and SAP. In total almost 3000 people from 34 countries attended the conference, which was held Nov. 9 - 11 in Portland, OR. Oracle was a Silver Sponsor and Oracle employees were organizers, speakers and committee members of the conference.

Keynote speakers at the conference were Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, and the Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who currently serves on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Highlights of Dr. Jackson’s talk is featured here . Sheryl speech about “Why we need more women engineers” can be heard here .

There were many interesting technical talks. I found a talk on “Expressive Electronics: Introduction to E-Textiles” from MIT Media Lab fascinating.

We had a booth and were actively recruiting at the conference. We interviewed potential candidates during the conference’s career fair.

An Oracle employee was interviewed at Hopper by an NBC local affiliate.

The GHC conference was referenced extensively by the media including New York Times , Forbes , NPR

I attended a wonderful leadership development workshop by Jo Miller, called ‘Building your brand’ at Grace Hopper Conference . It was attended by 850 women! I was unsure how a workshop with so many participants would turn out to be. It was thought provoking. I spoke to a lot of other women who like it too. I will write notes about it in the next weeks. But here is what stuck with me:

- Key to finding your brand/career? Knowing where your passion, skills & value to others meet.
- Consider brands that evolve as your career does - entry level, mid-level, senior level.
- Promoting yourself and your accomplishments are a business necessity. Figure out which way works for you, then do it consistently.

There were a steady stream of visitors at the Oracle booth today. Several engineers interested in starting a career. I interviewed a few prospective candidates. Here are a few of us at the booth in disguise! Only at Grace Hopper!

Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing is an annual event bringing together thousands of technical women in computing and at different stages of their career. Attendees include women in the industry, professors, researchers, recruiters, undergraduates in Computer Science or considering CS as a major, graduate students choosing their research topic, recent graduates looking for a job. It is a diverse, exciting, inspiring, and nurturing environment of two thousand women, all of whom are smart, brilliant, beautiful, and unique in their own right

This is my fifth time at the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing, the first time when I am not a speaker or on a panel. It feels a little different this time but I intend to attend the sessions without any stress of preparing for my own session. I first heard about Grace Hopper Celebration from colleagues when I was with Sun Microsystems. I attended my first event in San Diego and have attended them ever since. I learn a lot from the sessions, technical and non-technical. I make new contacts and renew older contacts/friendship. The keynote sessions are special and very inspiring! I look forward to hearing Sandy Sandberg and attending the Senior Women’s Summit this time.