Bringing a Baby to GHC12

As you saw in my first post about GHC12, I brought my baby to the conference.  My husband came as well to help out with baby things and because he's in computer science as well.  It was a positive experience for everyone, including other attendees!

We road tripped to get there because Baltimore was driving distance, driving three people is much cheaper than flying them, and I'm terrified of flying with a baby.  Nobody wants to be the parent with a screaming kid.  We made sure not to drive more than 5 hours a day because we figured that's all the baby would be able to handle.

Once at the conference, we were able to take advantage of the free childcare.  Grace Hopper is an opportunity for all women to get together, even if they've recently had babies or have older kids.  The childcare is a big part of making that happen.  Better still, the quality was very good, so we felt that Molly was very safe there.  It was still hard to leave her, of course.  After all, she's never been in the care of anyone other than her parents and grandparents! But other than being upset when Mommy and Daddy left, she did really well and all the childcare ladies loved her.

I also took her to one of the sessions on balancing academic life and family.  It seemed appropriate. ;)  She was mostly quiet, but if she got a bit noisier, my husband just brought her out into the hall for a bit.  A few people later commented how happy they were to see her there, and how cute she was.  I was able to be a good role model for others thinking of having kids during grad school.

I'm really glad that we took the opportunity to travel to GHC together, as it may not come up again for some time.  I hope that other conferences eventually follow suit and offer some childcare options (even if they can't be totally free).  It would make attending so much easier for parents like me.

Grace Hopper Celebration of Women and Computing Posts on My Blog

I wrote a few posts about this year's Grace Hopper Celebration on my personal blog that I'd like to share with you all:

• The Road to GHC12 is a picture-filled post about our road trip through Vermont and Connecticut on our way to Baltimore.
• Lili Cheng: Creativity, Learning, and Social Software (GHC12) is about a really cool group at Microsoft Research called FUSE Labs (they make Kodu!).
• Go Lean, Go Agile: Are We There Yet? (GHC12) is my take on the discussion about agile software development.
• NSF Funding Opportunities and Effective Proposal Writing Strategies (GHC12) offers what the title says; I also talk about how the advice relates to one of my own projects.

There were many, many more interesting sessions, and other bloggers and note takers covered a lot of them. You can find notes and links to blogs on the conference wiki.

Carleton at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2012

This year, I attended the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing for the fourth time. I find that there is always something new to get out of this conference and I am always glad I went.  This year, it was an especially special trip: being driving distance to Baltimore, I travelled there with my husband and 9-month-old baby girl.

My baby and I on our way to Grace Hopper.

I had been organizing a group of Carleton students to attend each year (see our posts from 2008, 2009, and 2010).  But, last year, I was too pregnant to fly to Portland, so I didn't go, and so I didn't organize anyone else, either.  This year I was on leave until September, so no other Carletonites at the conference this time, either.  (I did get to reunite with some past travel buddies who used to attend Carleton, though!)

I strongly believe that having a large Carleton presence at the conference is very good for us.  We usually go with our CU-WISE t-shirts and wear them together one of the conference days.  We also often try to get the executive members to attend so they can bond, making working together over the next year much more effective.  We always get excellent insights and ideas from how to run CU-WISE to neat outreach activities we can do (for example, Snap Circuits came from Grace Hopper!).  And, best of all, we get to promote Carleton University as an amazing place to study science and engineering as a woman.

I'll be posting about my experience over the next little while, and if you think this is something you want to experience next year in Minneapolis, get in touch with me via wise@carleton.ca.  The process starts early in the year, since we ask all attendees to apply for scholarships and/or volunteer positions to help cover costs.  Hope to see you there!