Grace Hopper Celebration 2015: Photo courtesy of the Anita Borg Institute

New to the Grace Hopper Celebration? GHC16 Top Tips

If you are headed to the 2016 Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) in Houston, Texas, you are in great company. Intuit and about 15,000 students, employees and executives are expected to be in attendance this year. It’s an amazing, high-energy and sometimes overwhelming experience with hundreds of session options. If you are a GHC first-timer or just haven’t been in a while, I’ve gathered some tips for you to make the most out of your time before, during and after the conference.

Before the conference

Create a game plan ahead of time

• Plan your schedule before arriving in Houston. Certain sessions require advanced registration and the convention center itself is quite large. You’ll want to plan time to get from session to session.
• Consider a healthy balance of technical sessions combined with soft skill/career sessions. Also consider balancing advanced sessions that focus on where you have expertise today with beginner sessions that cover new skills that will advance you professionally and personally.
• Leave wiggle room for changes on site — some of the best sessions, after-parties or other networking events may come through a new connection you make at the conference.
• Look into your caffeine options as there is only one Starbucks in the convention center.

Pack smart

• Wear comfortable clothing and shoes — GHC is not the time for high fashion or high heels — except maybe at an after-party.
• Download the GHC app (agenda, map, etc.) so you can find your way around even without a signal.
• Bring your pedometer — plan to hit your step goals for sure.
• Be sure to pack chargers.
• Stay light, stay mobile — skip the laptop if you can; less to lug.
• Be prepared for more schwag (marketing term for giveaways) than you’ll ever need — leave some extra space in your case for the return trip home. And if you don’t want any of what you collect, there are bins throughout the convention center where you can unload unwanted schwag.

Update your professional profile and pitch ahead of time

• Update your online profiles and rehearse your elevator pitch — the 10–15 second introduction of yourself.
• Bring along your business cards — Wi-Fi and cell coverage can be spotty, so don’t rely only on tech tools to connect with others.
• Make a list of networking targets and opening lines (e.g., What types of opportunities interest you most? What are you looking for in an employer?)

(Komal and colleagues demonstrate Intuit’s engineering culture on the Intuit Careers site.)

Looking for a new opportunity? Plan in advance.

• Research your target companies in advance — BTW, Intuit is looking for interns, early career and mid-career candidates this year! Check out Intuit Careers.
• Make sure your resume is refreshed and up-to-date.
• Prepare some questions to ask recruiters (e.g., What types of career growth opportunities does your company offer? What percentage of your engineering organization is new grads or early career and how do you help them succeed?)

While at the conference

Network with purpose

• Use lunches, coffee breaks … all opportunities to start up a conversation and make a new contact.
• Take a few moments to talk to presenters after their sessions.
• Take pictures and notes throughout that will help you share about GHC16 via social channels.
• Establish a contact with an employee at the companies you’re interested in and follow up to schedule a campus tour.
• Provide feedback throughout the event: Which speakers are your favorites so far? What kind of projects do you work on at your company? What sessions are you planning on attending tomorrow?
• Use apps to capture your new contacts with notes to follow up. Events of this size can become overwhelming and you’ll want to make sure you can recall all the important connections you make.

After the conference

• Follow up after the conference with your new contacts within a week or so using LinkedIn connections and personal email.
• Write a LinkedIn Pulse article (with photos) about your experience; post to Medium and other community sites to make yourself discoverable within the Grace Hopper community.
• Give feedback! Be sure to participate in conference surveys because your feedback is used to inform future events.

Find out more about the conference on the official GHC website. And finally … enjoy every moment of being part of this awesome community of women in tech!

Komal Bhatia is a senior software engineer at Intuit. She focuses on front-end engineering for the QuickBooks product line. While coding is her passion, she also loves shoe shopping, surfing and the occasional marathon. This year will be Komal’s third year at Grace Hopper and her first year presenting at the conference. She will be speaking about Demystifying Modern Web Development on October 20 from 9–9:20am in GRB General Assembly A. Follow her @komalbhatia10.