My Experience at GHC 2023
My name is Shalini Bhakta and I am a 3rd-year Informatics major at UC Irvine, and this was my first time attending the annual Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC), a week-long conference hosted by AnitaB.org that celebrates women in the computing industry. This year, it was from Tuesday 9/26 to Friday 9/29. I just recently switched from CS to the Informatics major, and my goal this conference was to learn more about the roles and responsibilities of UI/UX designers in the industry, as well as other topics of my interest, such as extended reality and visual computing.
For about two years now, I’ve been involved with Women in Information & Computer Sciences (WICS), a club at UCI that has welcomed me into their supportive and inclusive community and introduced me to new experiences and knowledge about the tech industry. One of these experiences was GHC, for which I was able to apply for a scholarship hosted by UCI’s Office of Access and Inclusion (OAI) to attend the conference in-person in Orlando, Florida with about 21 other WICS members.
Monday, September 25 — Traveling Day
Many of our fellow scholarship recipients had already left for Orlando earlier that day, but Teresa and I took a 4:45pm flight from LAX for the convenience of taking a nonstop flight.
Unfortunately, that meant we landed in Orlando at the ripe time of 1 AM, and didn’t get to bed until 2 AM. The flight itself was fun, and Teresa and I talked a lot, and I forced her to watch Puss in Boots 2 which was available on Delta’s free movies list (I highly recommend this movie to anyone with good taste). The nerves made it hard to sleep, but I got an hour or two in.
Tuesday, September 26 — OAI Breakfast, Registration, and Expo Preview
The next morning, my roommates, Shannon and Alisa, and I headed to the hotel lobby for breakfast at 9AM with the rest of the OAI scholarship recipients. My plating is a little pathetic but the food was yum! It was cool catching up with other WICS members from over the summer, meeting new people in our group, and learning about everyone’s goals for the conference.
Afterwards, we headed to the Orange County Convention Center which was connected to our hotel by the Skybridge. The close proximity of everything was so nice compared to other GHC attendees I met later on that had to Uber between the convention center and their hotel. We got our registration badges, explored the building, and went outside to take pictures with the iconic GHC letters outside!
Back in our hotel room, we still had four hours to kill before the Expo Preview. My roommates and I took naps and did a little research on companies we wanted to speak to.
GHC is split into three major components: the Career Expo, which is the career fair and consists of company booths and their recruiters, the Connection Zone, where 1:1 networking sessions that were booked beforehand take place, and Sessions, that range from inspiring speakers and panels to new tech informational sessions to level-up workshops that teach you new technical skills. Technically, GHC’s first day was Wednesday 9/27, but the Expo Preview meant that the Career Expo opened for about 2 hours on Tuesday for people to get an early look at the hall and companies in attendance.
Because UC Irvine had a booth inside, we recipients were able to gain early access for a bit and walk around while the hall was still empty. Some companies had amazing set ups, like Disney!
It was cool seeing the empty room because there were SUPER long lines just to get in at 4:30! When we were inside it was soooo crowded! At one point I was stuck between so many people I couldn’t even move for a couple of minutes. Among the chaos, I visited smaller companies first to feel out the expo and gain confidence. I ended up having great conversations with a recruiter from LegalZoom and the creative design lead at Kohl’s!
It was a lot of action for one day on so little sleep, and it was raining so hard outside on the way back to the hotel. Teresa, Ashley, Ella, and I ordered pho from a nearby restaurant (House of Pho) offering buy-1-get-1 free deals, and it was so nice drinking soup while it rained outside. That night I researched some more companies that I wanted to visit the next day, and went to sleep late since I was not accustomed to the time difference yet.
Wednesday 9/27 — GHC Day 1
While I was prepared to take on GHC’s official day 1, I woke up with a massive headache and scratchy throat :( I decided to sleep in, then enjoy the hotel room view and read the new Chainsaw Man chapter to take it easy. With some Tylenol, tea, and Frosted Flakes in my system, I left my room around 11AM to take on the conference.
I spent most of my time at the Career Expo on Wednesday, and had great conversations with Kohl’s (again, since we ran out of time the previous day), Roblox, and more. There were definitely more people today, a few attendees were a little rowdy, and I waited in line for 45 minutes at the PlayStation booth just for our conversation to be meh. It’s easy to forget that recruiters and industry professionals attending GHC are people too, and I could tell both I and the PlayStation representatives were a bit tired. It was lots of fun seeing the cool set ups around the room, such as TikTok’s huge livestream! I lost track of time and was too late for an Extended Reality level-up session at the end of the day that I was hoping to attend, but I went back to the hotel still feeling satisfied with my day because of the great interactions I had with other company reps — learning about their profession and day-to-day about working on what they are passionate about was sooo inspiring.
I went to the hotel lobby to heat up my leftover pho and found Ashley and Ella there doing the same! It was raining again but we sat together and talked about our days and experiences after the first full day of the conference. We ordered some Thai tea and spoke to several other people in our group that we spotted passing by. Tanusree, Mirella, and Teresa joined us with their Shake Shack orders and the six of us had a lot of fun getting to know each other better!
Thursday, 9/28 — GHC Day 2
Today I decided to balance my time with sessions and the Career Expo. At 9AM, I went to the a session hosted by Disney called Engineering the Magic: How Disney Animation Uses Technology to Make Films, which was extremely interesting since I’m interested in visual computing!! It was so refreshing getting to hear from two women software engineers and about their work, the tools they use and build, and more! I took an insane amount of notes. After, I was able to speak with them and learn even more about their responsibilities, and the nuances of the tech they use in the industry.
I also went to a panel session in the Hyatt (another connected hotel) afterwards called Exploring the Cutting Edge: A Panel on the Future of Mixed, Virtual and Augmented Realities, and listened to four women from different professional backgrounds and their use and views on extended reality tech. Once again, it was refreshing to get to sit and learn about their experiences. They used tech in the military, art galleries, journalism, and more, and two of the panelists didn’t even have coding experience! At both sessions, I sat next to company reps and students, and it was nice remembering that GHC is an experience for women in tech at every stage. The Hyatt hotel was less crowded than OCCC, and there were several refreshments stands. I grabbed a bagel for breakfast, and tea whenever I could as my throat was still recovering :)
At the expo, I targeted companies I had prepared to speak to, or just wanted swag from, including lululemon, Duolingo, and Disney. I met the Duolingo owl!! I also spoke with some universities promoting their Master’s programs and talked to student reps. After a quick lunch with Teresa, I headed back out to the expo hall for my UCI boothing shift. Overall, it was a much more relaxing day at the conference, and the sessions were definitely the highlight!!
Mirelle, Shannon, Tanusree, Teresa, and I decided to spend our evening at Disney Springs!
I got back around 11PM, talked with my roommates about our GHC experience so far, packed, and slept. Thursday was my favorite day in Orlando for sure :)
Friday, 9/29 — GHC Day 3 (LAST DAY!!!)
The week had definitely been tiring, but I made sure to still make an effort on my last day at GHC! Every day, GHC’s staff made the conference more organized than the previous day, and today they were letting people into the expo hall in groups. I joined Ella in line at around 10AM, and was able to talk to Nike, a company that had had crazy long lines before today. After, on my mission to get last-minute swag, I actually had an amazing conversation with a designer from H-E-B! She had previously been a UI/UX intern, and gave me several tips for my design portfolio and potential portfolio interviews.
I met up with some other WICS people at the UCI booth, and Teresa decided to join me to a level up session called Getting Started in Game Design for Mixed Reality. However, just a little into the session, I realized that the content were skills I already knew, so she and I left early to join Maya, Kristen, Alisa, and Shannon at a nearby tapas restaurant (Cafe Tu Tu Tango). The food was incredible, my favorite being the ceviche. We also tried wild-caught alligator meat, which I didn’t enjoy as much (as of the time I’m writing this blog, I have been vegetarian ever since. It changed my life HAHA).
We headed back to the hotel because many of our group were heading back to Irvine! Teresa and I hung out in the lobby for a few hours before going to the airport with Nitish, who was on the same flight home as us that afternoon. The airport and our plane was full of people leaving GHC! (You could tell because we all had the same swag LOL). I sat next to a grad student doing her Master’s in Data Science and a mid-career software engineer. We all agreed that it was nice to finally be going home after the long week!
GHC was an incredibly rewarding experience. I recently switched to the Informatics major and my goal this conference was to learn more about UI/UX roles and responsibilities in the industry, as well as the different applications of it towards my interests in extended reality, graphics, and visual computing. I definitely enjoyed my experience more when I was balancing my time between info sessions/ panels and the Career Expo, and I highly recommend that future attendees not overlook the sessions! There were several a day on a wide variety of interesting topics that I really wanted to attend but it didn’t work out since I was at the Career Expo. I also recommend training yourself to get used to the time difference beforehand! I struggled with my sleep schedule during the week, and it took a lot out of me to be energetic in the morning.
I learned more about job opportunities and new tech in the industry, and was able to achieve my goals in learning more about my new major and deciding what niches I wanted to explore within it! I’m so grateful to have gotten the experience to attend GHC in-person with other WICS members, and get to know them better as we all navigated the conferences several opportunities.
The end!
