Colorado: Grace Hopper

This year, I organized a trip funded by my department to take seven of our women students to the grace hopper conference in Keystone, Colorado. Every year, this conference gets more impressive. It's really a "celebration" of women in computing. This year, I think there were 1400+ attendees (even some men who think promoting women in computing is an important venture). There are a few technical talks, but a lot of the conference program is on a variety of not-so-technical subjects (like how to navigate the tenure process, how to build a solid outreach program, etc.) and many sessions dedicated for students (how to get started in research, how to handle issues like maternity leave as a graduate student, etc.). It's especially cool for the students because they get to "network," and meet all kinds of people in academia and industry. It was also great for two other reasons: they provide day care (yay!) and Jamie was there. Here are some photos of our visit:

Aren't They Cute?

ACL Pics

We had a great time at ACL last weekend. Perhaps in a future post we'll give you a run down of the bands we saw and who we loved, but for now you'll have to be satisfied with just some photos...

Here's the traditional self-picture of Tim and me:

Our friend Bryan flew in with some other friends for the weekend. It was great to see him:

We were supposed to be attending with James and Laura. They punked out, but Laura attended for Saturday only. We also hung out a lot with their (now our) friend Betsey:

It was really dry, and 60,000+ people will turn a dry field into a dust bowl. I insisted on a mask the last day. I think Bryan might have really been making fun of me, but I don't care:

My ACL Schedule

Richard wants to know...

My friend Richard wants you to waste a small amount of your time on the following ridiculous question. (Why he can't post to his own blog is a good question, but I'm guessing Jamie does the posting...). Be sure you craft your OWN answer before looking in the comments at everyone else's.

"What are the 2nd-to-last 4 digits of the sequence: 123456789."

Thanks to Jaydee...

Who doesn't have her own blog, so we'll make her a regular contributor. She sent this conversation between Bartlett and Obama.

Growin' On Up

Maya's got a new step stool. (Actually, two of them!) Boy do we all like them!