My vGHC’22 experience

It was my first Grace Hopper Celebration experience. I have always read about the conference and have wanted to be a part of it. I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship for vGHC 2022 by WICS at the University of California, Irvine. There are a lot of takeaways from the event and being a student, I think there are a lot of opportunities available.

It was a four-day event and had a lot of self-paced learning materials for the virtual attendees. Also, I really liked the open-source day, which was organized on Friday, before the week of the event. There were a lot of prominent speakers and working sessions on open-source which I personally think was very informative.

The key highlight for me is the networking opportunities during the event. Although I attended the event virtually, I think there were a lot of opportunities to book 1:1 sessions with recruiters and industry professionals from different fields.

While I could get information about the recruitment process and timeline from the recruiters, I think it was a great opportunity to learn about the company, and the role, and build a connection with industry professionals. My interest aligns with the data field and I had great conversations with Data Scientists in various industries. I think it’s very important to build connections in your field of interest and this was my key takeaway from the event.

The group sessions were also very helpful. It was very interactive and people got the chance to interact with the panelists. As there were a lot of them available throughout the event, it helped to shortlist the events prior to the registration date to best manage the time.

Although I believe attending the event in person has networking leverage, the in-person social organized by WICS for vGHC attendees at UCI was really helpful. I got to meet students who have attended the event before and we all got to learn something from each other.

There were also a lot of job openings available on the event website and there were resume drops for the attendees during group sessions. The sponsor list was huge and I think it’s a great opportunity for someone actively looking for a career in the industry.

I think as a student, learning about open source, and networking with industry professionals was very useful. I surely look forward to attending this event in the future as a working professional.