Ever since my university days I have observed that be it college, open source communities or the workplace, the ratio of men to women is significantly skewed. There are a couple of factors that contribute to this. Apart from lack of awareness about the opportunities available and how to make best use of them, cultural fabrics and mindsets also play an important role. All these and much more were the centre of discussion at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in computing conference held in Phoenix, Arizyyona from 4th to 10 October this year. As a speaker and an attendee, I consider myself fortunate to be able to see perspectives from a much closer level and do my bit to improve the situation.

The Conference started off on the sunny morning of the 8th October 2014. It saw a variety of talks ranging from technical topics like Molecular Biophysics, Data Science, DevOps, Networks to more generic skill-building ones like Parenting in the tech world, Interview Strategies, how to make your resume stand out and many that delved into the everyday lives of a developer , quality analyst, business analyst etc.

As a mentor in the student opportunity lab, I met many enthusiastic young women. Being a follower of the Free Software Movement and the Open Source world, I wanted to share my learning with the larger community out there. The format of my talk was different from the usual style presentation, with an intimate audience of ten people at a time. We did multiple such sessions , each spanning about 20 minutes or so.

Initial butterflies were soon taken over by healthy discussions at my table as i told attendees about the concept of FOSS , its importance, community structure and how it was relevant for them to know about it and contribute as a student. Having so many energetic women around with a zeal to make a change and listening to their stories definitely filled me up with a lot of positive energy!

Among the multiple sessions that happened on that day, I got a plethora of questions .. Ranging from “what exactly is open source ?”, “Oh! I thought its something on github!” to “Do we need to pay for getting an open source licence?”. Answering these and clearing many similar mind blocks regarding the specifics of open source world was a very rewarding experience.

The rest of the conference was mostly spent at the ThoughtWorks booth. We talked to a huge number of people , telling them about ThoughtWorks, what we do and what are our practices. Our “I am the next grace hopper” frame was the centre of attraction, and the polaroid was always busy. We also managed to get in a whopping number of people into our review and interview system. Yippee :)

Will be attaching a few memories of the lovely time spent with my ThoughtWorker buddies soon! :)