Grace Hopper Conference 2016 (Houston, Texas)


October 19 - 21, 2016

General Tips
  • Some forums/ talks are very popular so try to go earlier. 
    • The picture below is the queue that goes all the way to the back. Unfortunately, the room can only accommodate 600 people so I did not get in.
  • Have some time to walk from one room to another - they are not all close to each other.

Queue for a 600-room that goes all the way back


October 18, 2016 - Google Kick Off Party 

Discovery Green, right across Hilton

What else to expect out of  a Google Party? Free Food & Booze, Great Music, Loads of Fun with S'mores, Movie @the park, Photo Booths etc etc.











October 19, 2016 - Keynote


How Technology impacts humans and dictates our civic future

Latanya Sweeney, Ph.D
Tidbits: In 2001, she received her PhD in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she became the first African American woman to earn a PhD in computer science


We live in a technocracy
Every Value is up for grabs
We can harness technology for public interest
You can save the world

Interesting: Mom wired her kid to record the bus driver’s abuses to his kids.  When presented to police, she was arrested instead. It is basically not legal to record video of “legal officers” doing their duty

Adopting outside rules/ stereotypes in technology e.g. searching for Latanya had “Latanya arrested? Ads” because it was a common African-American Name.

Help the Helpers: Advocates, Regulators, Journalists
e.g.
  • Finding Fraudalent Websites Using Twitter Streams (Daniel Rothchild)
  • Price Discrimination in the Princeton Review’s Online SAT Tutoring Service (possibly zip code or “Asian Families” paying a premium price)
  • A Hedonic pricing model to quantify racial bias against Asian Americans (airbnb.com)

ABIE Award Honoring Women’s significant contributions in Technology

Category: Technical Leadership ABIE Award Winner
Anna Patterson, VP for Google, 


October 19, 2016 - 

Secret Sauce for Moonshots

Astro Teller, Captain of Google Moonshots X
GRB Hall E
"Astro Teller is the Captain of Moonshots at X -- a “moonshot factory” at Alphabet that incubates new breakthroughs in science or technology that could solve huge problems that affect millions of people. Astro will share the secrets that X has accumulated in years of work on audacious projects like self-driving cars and balloon-powered Internet, because these secrets can be applied to anyone’s dream or team. He’ll explain how to shift your mindset to celebrate your mistakes and failures; to think in wacky and weird ways to help you unlock 10x-better solutions to problems; and to build teams that, counter-intuitively, become strong by being vulnerable." (GHC)



Definition of what X is
  • Tidbits
    • Goal of a manager is to AMPLIFY the people around them
    • Mantra at X: Run at the hardest part of the problems first
      • if it doesn't work, we want to know it now.
      • e.g. Sea water to methanol - possible but the energy consumption was too much
    • Philosophy on FAILED projects
      • Doing the right thingg and it did NOT work - we celebrated it!
        • if you want people to be honest and move on - we have to reward her emotionally and financially
    • We do PRE-mortems in X
      • we are so eager to know FAILURES
        • Write why we think we are going to fail.
          • Fix the project faster or kill it earlier
    • Inclusive Innovation
      • welcoming culture/place that it is OK to be different or to go against
    • Mantra – getting contact to the physical world as fast as we can.  
      • Self Driving
        • You cannot write down unit test for self driving cars
          • e.g. Duck to get off the road
          • Make us have the push that we need to try as soon as possible
    • Cognitive Diversity
      • Fashion Industry is now in Loon – lead person designing the loon to know how thin the fabric is, test and failure, etc.
      • How do you know that there is equitable?
        • Cultural Alchemist - full time job to solve those issues.
          • Not a LIP service, but create a SAFE culture
    • make a LEARNING list
      • we can do from most learning to least learning
      • do the top 2
        • and then remake the important list
        • If you couch failure as an experiment, then you will not fail. "Test the hypotheses" because it doesn't matter.
    • Think of last project that you work on
      • How long would it take you to rebuild that you have built already?
        • People normally say 10%
        • So where is 90% - LEARNING! Innovation!
    • MANTRA: if you get to work for half an hour


October 20, 2016 - Thursday

Progressive Web Apps: "Pre-chopped Onions" Approach to Building Web Apps

Margaret Mary Kearney (Google), GRB General Assembly A

Deck here...




From Impostor to Hero: How being a Mentor Can Grow Your Career 

GRB Grand Ballroom B, Peggy Lee, Sargun Kaur (Google), Carmen Badea, Dioselin Gonzalez, Iris Cheung


Mentoring is about:  Investment - Connection - Role Modeling



Technology for Inclusion 

GRB 360A; Stephanie Ludi, Rosale Wolfe, Adrian Compagnoni

How is it inclusive?

  • Project goals
  • Multiple disciplines
  • Environment
  • Leadership
Trivia: Deaf who got a PhD in computer sciene


Trans Issues in TECH 

Hilton Lanier Grand Ballroom C, Hazel Havard (Workday)

Company Policies: Hiring Practice, Inclusion and anti-harrasment policies, putting it into practice

Trans Inclusion:
  • Dismantling gender binaries - forms need not to be just male/female
  • Bathrooms - Gender Neutral 
  • Benefits 

Resources



Why we updated our Brand and Refocused on diversity in Events

Hilton Lanier Grand Ballroom C-F, Jennifer Betka, Chief Marketing Officer, StubHub

Most companies take unconscious bias but also, consider this for external facing perceptions for our clients and customers.

Expands the brands to diversity....

Our global brand


Disrupt 2.0 Filipina Women: Daring to Lead


ABI Booth in the Exhibit hall,  Elizabeth Bautista, Rosario Robinson, Marily Mondejar
*** This was a VC with authors of the book

Twitter @FilipinasIC

FIC is a sister organization of ABI.

14th Filipina Leadership Global Summit
Toronto Canda, October 19-22 2017

Talk about authors of the book Disrupt 1.0/2.0.  Successful Filipinas and how they overcame "racial and sexual" discrimination.  One of them was actually part of Rogue One: Star Wars Movie.




October 21, 2016 - 

Disability is a Design Problem

Elise Livingston, Elise.Livingston@gmail.com, 
Accessibility Driver



Inclusive Design

  • accessible by "Broad range of people"
  • Not all in one solution but OPTIONs
  • Not all disability is "apparent"

Disability - definition of disability has changed!



Disability is a SPECTRUM!
  1. Permanent - one arm
  2. Temporary - arm injury
  3. Situational - one parent holding a child
When we design for disability - this will work for others too like those in temporary and situational disability

Innovation Begins with Disability
  • typewriter --> email --> Skype Translator
Case Study: ASSIST
How can we allow people to ask for assistance quickly?

Strategies and tool

  • Who might be excluded (or included) from using my feature?
  • How will my feature work with assistive technologies?
  • Accessibility Test Plan
    • Screen - Test your High Contract / Magnification Tools
    • Keyboard

Key Take aways
  • Disability is a mismatch between the abilities of a person and the capabilitiy of a product
  • Inclusive innovation often comes from desinging permanent disability in mind
  • Always ask
    • who might be excluded
    • how will my feature work with assistive technologies

Practical Design Thinking

EL Fox
elfox.art@gmail.com

other names: Participatory Design

Stanford's thinking of how this academic body applicable to normal people
Design is not a TOOL, not an END goal.

Case Study: Tripit Signed-in Home Page
Design Sprint



Keynote
Where Women Belong

Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce
  • What is the specific outcome you want to achieve? What do YOU want? e.g. Martin Luther "I had a dream"
  • What is really important to you? What are your values? Prioritize.

Advice - you better decide what kind of company and what values you want or fight for?


Hidden Figures  - sneak peak!
about African American mathematicians who help put the first man in the orbit



Executive Product of Hidden Figures
Dr Jeanette, Astronaut, class 2009 (20th class of Astronaut), space station in 2018
Christina, electrical engineer in NASA


Megan Smith, CTO, Washington
First woman CTO of USA

"Women have always been an equal part of the past.  We just haven't been a part of history." - Gloria Steinem

Women's Suffrage Parade of 1913









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