The good thing about day 3 was that Grace Hopper event coordinators finally figured out they should put some passing time in between lightening sessions and provide more snacks for the 12K women who were getting their daily cardio in at the conference center. It didn’t seem so panicked and fast paced, we finally knew our way around the convention center, and all the recruiters were tired but mellowed out, practically throwing their swag at anyone who passed by.
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- Awesome Earbuds
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- Laptop Stickers
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- Variety of ridiculous sunglasses
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- always check for the semicolon, Box!
It was also a great time to relax, walk around the career fair and simply network with some of the coolest people at the conference: The Speakers
On day 2, I attended a session by Elizabeth Royalty AKA @TheQueenOfCode, Senior Project Developer at Building Robotics. The subject was about how her company takes legacy hardware and connects it all through a more efficient, updated software and better analytical interface for enterprises. She also wrote about 75% of the code for Amazon’s front page, and most of it still there. Clearly, I think she is one awesome and smart lady. So on Day 3, I’m taking pictures at Facebook’s booth when I turn around and there she is, @TheQueenOfCode, herself! Without losing a beat, I introduce myself and tell her I attended her lightening session on IoT and absolutely loved it. We chat a little bit more about her company, what other directions of service it is taking, where it is based out of, etc. We might not have ended our discussion had I not excused myself to move on and not keep her busy, we found it funny that she was pitching for Building Robotics at Facebook’s booth and they might not like that. She gave me her card as we parted and I plan on keeping in touch! She asked me for a resume too, alas, I didn’t have any more for the last day!
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- Instagram Display
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- Cisco’s demo
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- Waiting to meet with the group
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- Facebook Lunch
Since I’m not graduating immediately, applying for jobs or internships outside of STL was not my priority. Initially, I felt that I wouldn’t be able to take full advantage of the career building opportunities GHC provides, but talking to different companies, learning about what they do, what they expect from us, and just exploring the different careers and what they had to offer was extremely eye-opening. I went to a lot of companies just to ask about them, the ones that stand out the most and I hope to be a part of someday are Fast Enterprise, Palantir, Thomson-Reuters, AppDynamics, and Amazon. And not entirely in that order! Perhaps the best feeling and greatest confidence boost is going up to people with no intention of giving a pitch and handing a resume, but impressing them enough that ask for it, hand you their personal business card, and immediately add you on LinkedIn. Suffice to say, my network has grown tremendously these last few days.
This entire conference has been a great learning experience, I went in curious to learn more about BigData and Cybersecurity, and ended up learning more about (and loving) IoT, social media virality, and the Cloud. Most students don’t get to explore all the things their degree and the skills can do in the real world. When in reality, there are so many more nuances to Information Systems/Technology and Computer Science than what we are fed in text books. This conference and all the lectures, speakers, and companies together became the perfect smorgasbord from where to sample each flavor of these fields. And I savored every moment of it.
Thank you so much to all the sponsors who helped make this trip possible, I’ll be paying your generosity forward in a few years!
