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 …

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, …

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 …

I am looking forward to running at the San Jose Rock and Roll 1/2 marathon on 02 October 2011. This day is also the birth anniversary of Gandhiji!

This is the first time in 4 odd years that I will not be flying back on a Saturday from the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing, driving from the airport to downtown San Jose to get my bib/chip from the marathon expo. Then run a 1/2 marathon the next day, early morning. The GHC conference is at Portland in November this year and does not coincide with this race.

The U.S State Department organized the  TechWomen program in response to President Barack Obama’s call in his June 2009 speech in Cairo for greater collaboration with Muslim communities around the world. TechWomen is a professional mentorship and exchange program bringing together technical women leaders from the Middle East & North Africa and from leading companies in Silicon Valley. Several mentees and cultural and technical mentors shared technical expertise and fostered international, long-term relationships to create business opportunities for women in their countries.

I was one of the 20 Technical mentors in the first TechWomen program. I spent the month of June 2011 …