I have attended my first Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) in 2019. I was really excited to go. It is the biggest conference for women in tech fields, named after Grace Hopper: computer scientist, admiral, inventor of the first compiler and a lot of other contributions to the fields of computing. GHC has been running since 1994, starting out with 500 attendees. In 2019, this number grew to 26000.
I was very happy to have a chance to go, but conferences are out of my usual comfort zone and GHC is the busiest conference I ever attended. I try to plan out every conference I go to, but for GHC my planning has been more in depth. There were many things to consider with multiple tracks, busy halls, meeting people, taking notes… I am going to share things I recommend considering.
Getting tickets
This is the hard part! The registration date and time is made available in advance. Be ready at that time, set an alarm. Make sure you have your credit card on hand. Check the social media pages too. After the website became unresponsive this year, direct links to registration were posted on Twitter.
Preparation
Take some time to consider your goals for attending GHC; what do you want to get out of it? Is it learning about particular topic? Expanding a certain skill set? Attending a workshop? Making new connections? Looking for a new job or internship? Keep your goals in mind as you plan as this will help with managing scheduling conflicts.
GHC offers session sign-up in advance of the conference. Be ready to register for sessions if there is something you particularly want to attend as this will guarantee your spot. The guidance is to arrive at least 10 mins before the talk starts. I also attended multiple sessions I did not register for — anyone can queue up and event staff will let you know what are your chances of getting in. I was able to get in to every single one I tried, but this may vary for very busy sessions.
Do not to fill every single gap in your schedule with sessions. I made sure to allow some unstructured time for visiting the careers hall, talking to people, attending some poster sessions and tech showcases. Sessions might also be far away from each other, so you will need time to get from one to another (or wear running shoes, I suppose?). It might be hard to do two sessions right after each other. Some of the popular session have repeat slots, check for these.
Look at the schedule again closer to the conference. I have reassessed my schedule before each day, so I knew where I needed to be and could add additional notes or drop some sessions if the content seemed too similar to another session I had already attended.
Networking
You will meet a lot of amazing people and there are many ways to connect and keep in touch after the conference. I have been connecting with people on LinkedIn and Twitter, and the official app also allows you to find other attendees.
Following Twitter hashtags helped me to find some people to follow, as well as seeing what was going on around the conference and getting some additional tips from talks I did not get a chance to attend.
Things to take with you
Something for note-taking. This can be laptop, phone, notebook, etc. You can share this with your team or entire internet later (use the hashtags).
Your phone. GHC was full of amazing photo opportunities and many women helping each other with taking pictures. It also lets you connect with other attendees right away. I did not take my laptop, as it gets heavy to carry it for an entire day, but my phone worked as a schedule, a note-taking app, a networking tool, etc..
External battery! There were several of charging spots around, which is pretty great, but it does attach you to specific spot. Bringing a portable version helps.
Hoodie or a jacket. Conference halls were the same as in every conference — on the chilly side.
Practice self-care
Drink water. There were water fountains throughout the conference halls, it’s important!
Bring some snacks. Companies were giving out a lot of candy and there were some snacks provided, which is nice. However, I find that bringing something non-sugary helps me to concentrate in the sessions better.
Take breaks. A full day of talks and meeting new people is exhausting, even going outside for 10 mins helps.
Get enough sleep. Being well rested makes it much easier to learn new things!
Wear comfortable shoes. You will walk a lot. Some talks are in completely different buildings, so you will get a lot of steps in.
Other advice
If you are there a day or two early and can pick up your badge before the conference starts, make sure to do it. I picked mine up in about 2 minutes with no queue at all the day before. On the first day, the queues were at least an hour long.
After the registration, it’s the keynotes queues that are the longest. In search of the end of the queue on the first morning, I accidentally found the Keynote Overflow Room. The same keynote projected on a big screen away from the biggest crowds. It might lack some of the atmosphere of being in the main keynote presentation, but to me it was worth it :)
There is pressure to try to do everything, and I had some fear of missing out. In a conference the size of GHC it is normal to miss some things — it would not be possible to attend every talk and go to every party. That’s just fine! I still had a great time even though I am sure I missed some interesting things too. I’ll just have to go again in the next couple of years!
Useful resources
I read these guides before going to GHC and found them very useful for my preparation:
- A First-Timer’s Guide to Attending Grace Hopper Celebration
- A Guide to Navigating Grace Hopper
- The Ultimate Grace Hopper 2019 Guide
I hope you found this useful. I really enjoyed attending the conference, learned a lot and found inspiration. It was great being in the same place as 26000 other tech women, that’s the experience I will never forget!
Notes
This post has been previously published in Medium.