Planning my Grace Hopper Trip

Early in May, Professor Alistair Moffat sent an email around informing postgraduate and later year students of a conference opportunity in San Diego for women in computing. This conference is The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Google was offering a Global Community Scholarship to help students outside of the US attend the event. I thought this is something that I could potentially apply for.

The application was due on 1st June 2006 and I remembered to re-read Alistair’s email on the night of 27th May. I of course, was leaving the country at 5am on the morning of 29th May for Infoscale ’06. So instead of preparing for my presentation, I spent 28th May writing an essay about myself. This seemed to pay off as early in August, I was notified of being awarded a full scholarship to attend the 2006 Grace Hopper
Celebration of Women in Computing. Woo. 83 full scholarships were awarded out of 550 applicants. The odds weren’t bad but it’s still exciting to be accepted. Plus, I’ve never been to the states before so I’m fully excited. Yes, I just used the word, “fully”.

After the initial shock and making this face O_O, I realised that I now needed to book flights to the states. I’ve never had to plan a trip like this for myself before so the organisation itself was a learning experience.

I emailed the organisers of the event and received an email back informing me that I required a Visa. This was a bit worrying. Then I received an email asking if I was flying from China because another scholarship recipient was travelling from the China and wanted to know if I wanted to be her travel buddy. This was more worrying. Turns out they knew I was born in China and thought I might be in China right now. I guess I could have been.

After the initial confusion and reading fine print, I do not need a visa and I have no travel buddy. But at least I know the name of a girl who was born in the same country as me and has an interested in computer science. I look forward to meeting her in October.

I am leaving Australia on 28th September and returning 9th October. I will spend my time before the conference in Oakland, California, visiting a David Sun, very good friend at UC Berkeley. He is currently studying towards his PhD in Computer Science at Berkeley and is a very smart cookie. I’ve known him since I was 10 and he used to hate me because I use to channel surf too much when we watched TV together. Hopefully he is over how annoying I used to be and won’t mind too much that I will be hanging around him for the weekend.

I will fly into San Diego on the evening of 2nd October and spend the 3rd October in Tijuana. This decision is based on the fact that San Diego’s main attractions are the zoo and sea world. Shopping for a day in Mexico seems to be more appealing to me. I haven’t told my parents yet but I’m sure they will see the photos after I come back from Mexico.

The 4th-7th October will be dedicated to the conference. I look forward to meeting some awesome women of computing from around the world. It will definitely be an invaluable experience that I will never forget. I especially look forward to the ideas that will be presented to me by the various presenters.

Right after the conference, I will board a flight on the 7th October and arrive back in Melbourne on the 9th. I have tutorials that I have to teach on the 10th.

It is two weeks before I go and everything seems to be organised. I have my travel insurance, I’ve booked my accommodation and my flights have been paid for and confirmed. I have all the receipts I need for reimbursement at the conference. I hope I haven’t forgotten anything. I guess I’ll know in 2-3 weeks time.