Planning, Organizing, and Holding Regional Celebrations of Women in Computing

From Anita Borg Institute Wiki

PLANNING, ORGANIZING, AND HOLDING REGIONAL CELEBRATIONS OF WOMEN IN COMPUTING

Location: Torreys Peak III

Presenters: Gloria Townsend (DePauw University), Bettina Bair (Ohio State University), Lecia Barker (NCWIT), Tracy Camp (Colorado School of Mines), J McGrath Cohoon (NCWIT), Laura K. Dillon (Michigan State University), Catherine Lang (Swinburne University of Technology), Khadija Stewart (DePauw University), Ellen Walker (Hiram College)

The presenters will discuss their experiences in planning, financing, organizing, running and assessing regional events for women. The presenters will also discuss barriers that they have overcome in accomplishing their goals, as well as practices that accelerate goal achievement. In addition, results of the international Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference will be briefly presented. Finally, we will emphasize a surprising side-effect we have discovered.

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There was a wealth of information presented at this panel: administrative details, things to consider, stats on past conferences. We're working on getting the slides up, which contain lots of useful bits. File:GHCRegional CelebrationsSlides.pdf --- Supplementary notes:

J. Cohoon "Assessment Results"

"National Center for Women & Information Technology" Measuring their perceptions.

Tremendously positive survey results.

More than half "solidified computing career intentions," more than half increased confidence and intention to complete degree.

Don't know about the long term impact because this is only post-event, but results are very encouraging.

Lecia Barker

Process of evaluation---think about how you're going to evaluate from the very beginning because it can help you shape your goals.

"What are you trying to accomplish?" Sure, increase motivation. But what does that look like?

Then find processes for accomplishing the goals.

71% graduate students, 50% of attendees are students.

Have lots of friends.

General Chair - oversees the others, final budget.

Publicity Char

Site & Logistics

Sponsorship (single point of contact)

Program (reviews, schedule, call for proposals)

Registration (collect registrations, verify payments, scholarships)

Budget (collect payments, pay vendors)

Webmaster

Administrative (scheduling, communication, copying)

Figure out what your local area has and pitch it that way to get the quality keynote speakers. Ask early. Tracy asked Helen year and half before the conference.

They had academic and industrial keynote. CRA-W has funding for this kind of talk.

Money was a scary aspect, but worked out okay.

Promised industry they could have a luncheon to meet the students. Next panic---very few students registered.

Go personally encourage students to come.

Copied a lot from other regional conferences.

Things they would do differently

- invite technical speakers from local area (faculty, industry)

- will do it earlier (Feb rather than April) because of the timing for internships

- Lost a lot of people on the Saturday, so thinking of Thur/Fri

- Changing name to broaden focus (Rocky Mountain rather than Colorado Celebration)

Q: Suggestion to include industry

A: Absolutely. Found industry women were starving for events like this.

Q: Include middle school and high school?

A: Had a high school track, only one high school student. But it was still well-attended. Pushing it more this year.

A2: Sponsored high school teachers to come. Really beneficial.

A3: Ohio not done much yet. Worried about spreading too thin.

A4: Logistics for underage students daunting (overnight, remote).

Q: Slides? Resources?

A: Will be posted on the wiki.

Q: Pulling students in. How?

A: Hard. Phone calls and email individual faculty in Colorado. Follow up again and again, example emails to students, importance to sending individual. Have all faculty personally encourage attendees. Kept track of what universities didn't do as good a job so that next year can contact the Deans to find the proper channels.

A2: Have a coordinator at each of the school.

A3: Personal contact hugely important. The extra help stigma---individuals need to be told that it's not aids because you can't do it, it's to build support networks.

Q: What does the call for proposals look like? What types of papers?

A: Check it out. But we'd rather have posters than papers because of the time.

Q2: Thinking of not having papers.

A: Have to have papers to get academic funding.

A2: Could use just poster promotion.

A3: Check out the websites to see how it's been done.

Q: What can a young person contribute? How does a young person benefit?

A: Got a job. Was rewarding, wonderful experience.

Q: Everyone's overnight. Could it be effective over one day?

A: Can totally work.

A2: The evening time is very valuable. Student energy goes up.

Q: What kind of time commitment?

A: Didn't track time.

A2: Need to be flexible, went for the "no frills" route.

A3: It's enjoyable.

A4: If you have a good team, it's spread out.

A5: Built a sense of community.

Q: Is there a national forum for coordinating this? Would want to help, not take it all on.

A: No high-tech way.