Thousands help celebrate women in tech
‘Women have helped drive every era of technology,’ IBM leader tells conference
The largest gathering of women technologists in the world kicks off in the Bayou City for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Technology.
IBM CEO Ginni Rometty stood in the Toyota Center with thousands of other female technologists and highlighted women’s contributions to the industry’s past, present and future.
At the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, she paid homage to Rear Adm. Grace Murray Hopper, who created the compiler that translates English instructions into information a computer understands, and other pioneers such as Ada Lovelace, cited as the world’s first computer programmer. Then she turned toward the younger attendees and talked of opportunities to be seized and lessons that can help them.
“Women have helped drive every era of technology,” she said.
Women hold 21.7 percent of technical roles at 60 companies employing more than 1.4 million U.S. employees, according to a report released Wednesday by the Palo Alto, Calif.-
based Anita Borg Institute. That’s up 0.9 percent from last year. More women held jobs at every level — entry, mid, senior and executive — but representation in the higher positions continues lagging entry level.
“There are a lot of challenges that women run into in terms of rising up in their careers,” said Elizabeth Ames, senior vice president of marketing, alliances and programs for the Anita Borg Institute, which co-presented the event with the Association for Computing Machinery.
Ames said companies address this promotion gap in different ways. Google is reminding women to nominate themselves for promotions. Intel gave managers a list of employees that consistently were highly rated but not promoted. This list was predominantly women and has led to more promotions.
Increased attendance at the three-day Grace Hopper Celebration filled many speakers with hope. The first event in 1994 had 500 people. This year, it’s expected to attract more than 15,000.
“You know and I know that something is happening around the world,” said Telle Whitney, president and CEO of the Anita Borg Institute. “You are proof that organizations today value and recognize the power and value of having women at the table creating technology.”
As more people attend the conference, Ames said, there are only so many cities and convention centers that can house it. Houston has hosted the event two years in a row, but the conference will move next year.
Latanya Sweeney was excited by the turnout Wednesday morning. Professor of government and technology in residence at Harvard University and director of the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard, Sweeney recalled being the only African-American and the only woman in her computer science classes.
Her comments during the keynote presentation largely centered on data privacy and how technology is dictating the civic future.
“We live in a technocra- cy,” she said. “That is, the technology design is really going to determine how we live our lives.”
She gave a few examples. With the creation of the first cameras came a debate on photographing people in public without their permission. The first phones prompted a discussion on recording phone calls without consent. And camcorders, originally designed with a mute button, brought up the legality of recording video and audio of public officials. People were once arrested for recording law enforcement officers. Now, such videos are legal and commonplace, and smartphones don’t have a mute button for video.
“Technology design is the new policymaker,” Sweeney said.
A large part of her focus is helping students use technology to improve society, and she teaches a class called Data Science to Save the World.
“I told them I’m very serious about the ‘Save the World’ part,” she said.
Helping students and entry-level technologists is an important part of the Grace Hopper Celebration. An expo at the George R. Brown Convention Center has booths with representatives from major companies including Fitbit, Facebook, Pinterest, Cisco and Disney. These companies displayed new technologies and met with students seeking internships or entry-level jobs.
Mick Slattery said diversity among employees provides a variety of thoughts and experiences. He is president of the North America division of Avanade, a joint venture between Microsoft Corp. and Accenture that provides digital and cloud services, business solutions and design-led experiences.
“Our clients want to get all the ideas they can,” he said.
Allyson Young, a 20-year-old studying computer science at Northeastern University in Boston, had an internship interview with Apple during the convention. She was excited to be attending an event alongside so many passionate technologists.
“I think computer science is a form of art and expressing yourself,” she said.