2015 NCWIT Summit – NCWIT Flash Tank

JEFFREY FORBES: Morning. [audience applauding] Come on in. So good morning, hi, I’m Jeff Forbes. I teach computer science at Duke University and I also, previously, worked at the National Science Foundation where I had the pleasure of working a lot with NCWIT. And one of the things I really liked doing with NCWIT is being here for the Flash Talks which are a wonderful NCWIT tradition. And for more than 10 years, NCWIT has depended on members’ ideas to create the most useful research tools and platforms to support community efforts to increase the meaningful participation of girls and women in computing. The Flash Tank is a fun way to ferret out more ideas. Structurally, this is a combination of our favorite NCWIT pastimes, Flash Talks and the TV show the Shark Tank. [audience laughing] So, it’s OK, that’s a great combination. So what we’re gonna have today is five very bold and very brave members of the NCWIT community, are going to spend five minutes each giving a flash talk on new things NCWIT could do to help our change leader community advance girls, women, and computing. A panel of experts, or sharks, will moderate a five-minute discussion after each talk to allow the presenter to expand upon his or her idea. At least one innovative idea will be considered for ideation and possible implementation by NCWIT. The sharks, or judges, I guess, will convene after the session and deliberate on the winning pitch. We will announce the winning idea after the final plenary of the day, right before we head to tonight’s reception. The winning presenter will also receive a Surface Pro 3, compliments of Microsoft. So they get their idea Implemented, potentially, and a free Surface Pro. And thanks go to the Royal Bank of Canada and NCWIT Board of Directors for funding the Flash Talk Ideation. And now, our esteemed judges. Colin Bodell, Colin was named Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Time, Incorporated in January, 2014. In this role, he was responsible for shaping the company’s overall strategic technology direction, including the oversight of day-to-day Information Technology operations in acquiring and leveraging best-in-breed technology Welcome, Colin. [audience applauding] Next, our next shark or judge is Ileana Rivera. Ileana is the Senior Director of IT for Computing and Client Productivity Services for Cisco Systems. She leads the teams responsible for computing, mobility, hardware and software, mobility applications, e-store,

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Whew!

JEFFREY FORBES: mail messaging, and cloud productivity for Cisco’s very large global workforce of over 70,000. She manages a budget of over $70 million and a team of 125 employees, so she’s well-prepared to do this [laughs]. Let’s welcome Ileana. [audience applauding] And last, and certainly not least, Jeremy Sonnenburg. Jeremy is a managing director in RBC’s Capital Markets Technology Division. He is the US Regional Head of Capital Markets Technology and has global responsibility for equities, commodities, and futures and clearing technology. And, in addition, I have to add, he also helped come up with this whole idea, so let’s welcome him. [audience applauding] Well, thanks for being here. Thanks to our judges. So let’s get started. Our first Flash Talk is Career Planning Tools, A Roadblock to Computing Careers, presented Linda Ott.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Woo hoo! [audience applauding and cheering]

LINDA M. OTT: Good morning. Before I begin, I want to tell you one thing about myself. I had my first programming course back in the late ’60s when I was still in high school and that has always been something I’ve been grateful for because it got me into this great career in computer science. So the question I have for many of you, those, in particular, in academics, how often have you heard someone say, “I like programming, “but I’m not sure I want to do it for the rest of my life”? And often when students have said this to me, they end up over at the Career Center and they take a career planning assessment. Very often, they come back and they tell me, “You know, I think I need to change majors “because what I learned from the tool is “that computer science isn’t for me. “There’s some other career.” And this got me concerned because often what they told me they were good at, I thought, would be good in computer science. So I got to questioning, how effective are these for encouraging students to go into computer science? I decided to do a case study. Easiest way to do a case study is to take the test myself. So I went over to the Career Planning Center and managed, took up the opportunity to take the test our students take. The particular test I took comes in four parts. I took the four parts, and then I went through a typical counseling session to find out what I should be in. OK, well, the first thing, the first part of the test is a personality test, Myers-Briggs. I’m an INFP, OK. For those of you who are not familiar with Myers-Briggs, there are certain characteristics that go along with an INFP and they include, I’m good at concentrating, I’m independent, motivated, grasp the big picture, and good under pressure. Hmm, to me, those sound like excellent attributes for a software engineer. But, in fact, having done Myers-Briggs before, I knew that’s not the kind of careers they would recommend for me. Instead, I should be a psychiatrist, an audiologist, or an architect. OK, well, so much for personality tests. So the second test is focused more on interests. OK, my interest, top area, investigative. I like to acquire knowledge. I’m great at thinking about achievement, challenges, smart, curious, analytical. Hmm, those sound like good traits. Secondary interest, artistic, interested in aesthetics, style, creative, original, and imaginative. To me, those are an excellent combination for maybe somebody interested in the software engineering. So what did the test tell me? I should be an anthropologist, a political scientist, or a medical scientist. [audience laughing] OK. Well, so much for that part. OK, the third part of the test was skills. OK, so what are my skills? Well, it turns out my top skill is computing, thank goodness, [audience laughing] followed by mathematics, engineering, architecture. OK, so at this point, I am certain when I flip the page to see what job careers go with this, I should see something related to computing, but no. Physicist, biochemist, and surgeon. All right, well, there’s one part of the test left. The last part of the test is associated with what’s important to me in my work life. OK, so what do I value in work? Achievement, I like to use my abilities. Independence, I value creativity. And relationships, I want to provide something for others. OK, now, again, I’m fairly certain that this was a software engineer, perhaps. But, by now, we know better. [audience laughing] Archeologist, farm and home management advisor, or a soil and plant scientist. OK, what could I say? So finally, all four of the tests are put together and a composite comes out and in the composite anthropologist, sociologist, and medical scientist are some of my top career choices. OK, now, it does give you a full list of 93 possible careers and computer science faculty member did show up on that list in position 61, which would be the fourth page, if you actually clicked that far, which nobody ever does. So my question was, OK, am I an oddball? I went and I asked some of my students, “Have you ever taken these tests, like in high school?” A third of my student who, and this isn’t a formal sample, but a third of the students said, yes, they had taken the tests, and computer science, anything related to computing, was not in anywhere related to the top areas that they would consider. The only reason they had gone into computing was because they had taken a programming course. So what I would like NCWIT to do is to get involved in this field, to perhaps do some research, perhaps work with the people who develop these tests, to look at the broad range of careers that are currently available to computing graduates and to identify the skills necessary so that we can break this cycle and develop the, you know, get the information out to counselors and the test developers to break this cycle and get more information out there about the diversity of fields available to computer graduates. [audience applauding and cheering]

COLIN BODELL: That was excellent.

LINDA M OTT: Oh, thank you [laughs].

COLIN BODELL: And what’s so, what’s wrong with being a farm advisor? [audience laughing]

LINDA M OTT: Nothing, I have a garden [laughs].

COLIN BODELL: I’m kidding. And, by the way, I’m still trying to figure out whether I’m the left shark or the right shark, remember that. [women laughing] So one question I had just about the research you did going through this, which I think is amazing, I’m so pleased you did it, because we spend so much time fighting to keep women in technology and here’s a system, probably computerized, I would imagine–

LINDA M. OTT: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

COLIN BODELL: hat is trying to sell, oh not just women, trying to sell men out of the industry which is, you know, insane. Do you know how old the test was that you took? How long had it been around?

LINDA M. OTT: I don’t know. I know it’s the one our university currently uses and they’re, seem to be very satisfied with it. And I had talked to the person who does it and they do, I know it’s involved with, I don’t know, 150,000 cases or something. So supposedly there’s a huge data set behind it, but I don’t know how current it is.

COLIN BODELL: Yeah, I would suspect it’s probably from the steam age of computing, given that it was so far down.

LINDA M. OTT: Well, so, yeah, right. In fact, there’s one place where you can sort of match your skills with careers and it was like the computing careers were not, you know, I didn’t see mobile web developer there or mobile developer or web apps developer.

COLIN BODELL: So there’s just computer scientist?

LINDA M. OTT: No, it was like systems analyst

COLIN BODELL: OK.

LINDA M. OTT: And a couple other things like that, yeah.

COLIN BODELL: Gotcha, all right.

LINDA M. OTT: Yeah, so but I don’t think this is atypical because I looked at a few online, too, and it was very similar.

COLIN BODELL: Yeah, I’m sad to say I’m actually not surprised because a lot of these tools do lack. You know, the industry moves so fast.

LINDA M. OTT: Right, right.

COLIN BODELL: So being able to keep up and, of course, I’m sure if we looked at a lot of this stuff, it’s hard coded. It’s been in place for years and years. So a mechanism or system that can be rapidly updated to keep track of what’s going on in the industry would be awesome.

LINDA M. OTT: Right.

COLIN BODELL: All right.

LINDA M. OTT: Yeah.

COLIN BODELL: All right, we’ll I’ll let the rest of these guys have some questions, sorry. [Linda laughing]

ILEANA RIVERA: Thank you for giving us some of the five minutes.

COLIN BODELL: I’m sorry.

ILEANA RIVERA: So, first, I love that you actually took the test. You know, the first, I think that in order for you to know the user experience, right, you have of go through this. So that was fantastic. Second, I believe that this can only be for, let’s say, students that are ready to go into computer science. But for girls, right, if we can actually,

LINDA M. OTT: Right.

ILEANA RIVERA: this can be scalable to go back and really design something that girls can take, right?

LINDA M. OTT: Right, well, yeah, because this was done, typically these are done for high school kids who take these tests, right.

ILEANA RIVERA: Right, right. So it can go across,

LINDA M. OTT: Right.

ILEANA RIVERA: from little ones to old ones. Now, my question is, where would you see this going first? Did you actually went to an area that computer science degrees were lower or areas where computer science degrees were higher? Do you think that this is more taking on, what kind of audience are you going after?

LINDA M. OTT: I’m not sure I understand the question in terms of lower and higher.

ILEANA RIVERA: Yeah, so let’s say when you were doing this study, is it university or the high school, where what you saw, that not many people were going into computer science degrees?

LINDA M. OTT: So I would say, and a lot of the students, like the students that I talked to were–

ILEANA RIVERA: They were already on computer science?

LINDA M. OTT: They were already in computer science, but they had taken the test when they were in high school. And had they followed the recommendation of the test, they would not have been in computer science. But in almost all of the cases where they ended up in computer science, it was because they had had a programming course in high school and enjoyed the programming. So there’s a lot of students in high school who would have taken the test not having had a programming course and never realizing that they had the skills and the interests to go into a computing career.

ILEANA RIVERA: OK. These stakes are now, we’re just wondering whether a high population of computer degree programs, like, went through the same system, whether the situation would be different. But I think it’s not.

LINDA M. OTT: Oh.

ILEANA RIVERA: I think it’s probably based on the experience that they go through, OK.

LINDA M. OTT: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ILEANA RIVERA: OK, good job. Excellent.

LINDA M. OTT: Thank you.

JEREMY SONNENBURG: Yeah, and it’s a fascinating observation and, yeah, once I think about it I, again, I’m not surprised at the result either, but I’ve never thought about it. So, you know, it’s great that you’ve been through this. One question I had for you is, beyond kind of helping with funding of this, what can corporations do to help this space?

LINDA M. OTT: Hmm, I haven’t thought about that. I think, you know, getting information, well, even in terms of getting information out about the actual kinds of skills that are, and talents that match up with different kinds of careers, so that it’s more, a lot of things are more about, well, one of the things I noticed is it seems like, for instance, the people skills that I have were not directing me towards computing.

JEREMY SONNENBURG: Yeah.

LINDA M. OTT: And so, in any way that industry can show that the people skills and things like that are valued, I think can help attract people to the field.

JEREMY SONNENBURG: Yeah, I mean, and I think the point was was raised earlier, but I thought it was a have very good one of these, it’s so dynamic

LINDA M. OTT: Right.

JEREMY SONNENBURG: and new careers are created so fluidly,

LINDA M. OTT: Right.

JEREMY SONNENBURG: that I think, you know, if corporations and industry can kind of help and, almost in real time, to shed light on here’s the career tracks that are out there and how quickly they evolve, that that could be another angle.

COLIN BODELL: Yeah, I think, I mean,

LINDA M. OTT: Yeah.

COLIN BODELL: those attributes are really important because a lot of the questions, since they ignored the social aspect of it, it was almost like a reflection of IT 20 or 30 years ago,

LINDA M. OTT: Exactly.

COLIN BODELL: not the fact that software developers are now, are at the forefront of innovation and product design.

LINDA M. OTT: Right.

COLIN BODELL: So, yeah, getting involved industry to help understand,

LINDA M. OTT: That’s right.

COLIN BODELL: minute by minute how those attributes are evolving, I think, would be super.

LINDA M. OTT: Yeah, yeah.

COLIN BODELL: Very.

LINDA M. OTT: Yeah, I agree.

JEREMY SONNENBURG: Thanks so much. That was great.

LINDA M. OTT: OK.

COLIN BODELL: Very good.

LINDA M. OTT: Thank you. [audience applauding and cheering]

JEFFREY FORBES: Revelation one. Thank you for those comments. That was an excellent job of leading things off. So next up, we have Building Communities.

WOMAN: Okay, I think [drowned out].

JEFFREY FORBES: Developing Empathy, Walking in Your Shoes, presented by Owen Astrachan.

JEFFREY FORBES: You look shocked, to say the least. [Owen laughing]

WOMAN: Thank you, my throat got so dry.

OWEN ASTRACHAN: We label each other, and we label ourselves, but we have to build a resource, I think, that would help us label the students in our class and our daughters and everybody else that’s important to us. We need to be empathic in how we apply these labels and walk in each other’s shoes. NCWIT has tremendous resources. You can have computer science in a box, a guidance counselor in a box, but the boxes are constraining a little bit. They’re boxes and they have labels on them that we use to help find those boxes. We use those same labels to identify ourselves in the silos in which we work. We’re entrepreneurs. We’re students. But by labeling ourselves in a silo, we restrict kind of our ability to work across different venues. So we can build a resource with NCWIT’s help that allow us to apply these labels that we wear here at NCWIT, not just a single alliance, not just at K-12 Alliance, but other alliances that we can use. And this resource will help us help girls and women find their own labels. As Atticus told Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, “You never really understand a person “until you consider things from his point of view, “until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” And if we label ourselves together, we can help understand ourselves and make forward progress. So I would like you to see me, not just as you see me, but as I see myself. I want to you to listen to me. I want you to use these lyrics from The Who to help us build a resource together, with NCWIT’s help, that will be labeltogether.org, so that you’ll be able to tell a story using an idea that I got from Roadtrip Nation, so that all those stories can be used together so that people can find them and then find a label that applies to themselves and make forward progress to a career. These are my shoes. I hope that some of you have been scuba divers, some of you have worn a tuxedo or an evening gown, some of you go on hikes. By sharing our stories and our shoes, I will help you understand me and I will understand you as we try to make, again, progress. I had the greatest math teacher in the world for four years. 35 years later, she’s still a great math teacher and she helped me find labels that allowed me to be where I am today. I would like us to continue to do that together. Labels can also be problematic. Are you a co-ed? I had a third grade teacher in the community in which I lived who is not gonna be there next year because he read a story about gay love to his students. It’s really a story about love. It’s a way for his students to be able to succeed. He was a teacher. Does he look like these teachers? When we look at labels that others apply, that Google applies for us, we’re a little limited by not just what we put to ourselves, by what the community puts to us. I believe I’m a professor, too, not just a teacher, but I’ve got to believe that there’s some professors in the room that don’t look like what we see here [audience laughing] and that the resource that we can create can help apply labels that aren’t as limiting. If you were a software engineer because you took a test that told you to be there, would you look like what these people look like? Maybe we should have Black Girls Who Code come to the table as well and not restrict the labels to be something that universe we live in applies. So we’re gonna share this journey together so that we can help other people get there by sharing the stories of how we got to where we are, by putting them together on labeltogether.org so that girls and women can help find their own path to success. We are very lucky here at NCWIT to have so many role models that will help us succeed, that we use their labels, we help them find, help find our own labels with us. And I think NCWIT can help everybody, not just the people in the room. We also look to the people that have provided NCWIT with so much support, and us as well. And without their partnership, we would not be where we are today. They, too, can help us find stories that we put on labeltogether.org to help us succeed. These are people I went to high school with, that always ask me, why are you doing what you’re doing? Are they a UX engineer at Google or a Spotify software engineer or someone that goes to Burning Man? No these are just my peers, my role models, from long ago that would have helped me escape a box of labeling myself a certain way. So we look beyond the box. NCWIT can help us build this resource so that we can tell stories and help people find their way. This is the last class I taught last semester, a group of 18 men and women who labeled each other throughout the course of the semester, listened with empathy and compassion to each other so that we could get new labels and understand the labels we had for each other. So like all these other great resources that NCWIT has, we can create labeltogether.org, collect stories, and allow others to find their labels together. [audience applauding and cheering]

ILEANA RIVERA: Okay, I’m gonna start because if, this is very close home, right? You search Latinas in Google, the first thing you find is a lot of swimsuit, right? There is no other labels for Latina, so this is close to home. Now, my question is, so instead of creating a dot org, have you considered working with the big Googles to actually fix their search engine and actually help promote a little bit more of that search, so when we search our labels, you don’t, you know, those labels will start changing from the ground up? Have you considered?

OWEN ASTRACHAN: I think that’s a great thing that we can do. You notice that Google’s one of the partners here and by having this whole idea

ILEANA RIVERA: Sorry.

OWEN ASTRACHAN: about labels– [audience and panel laughing] Everybody, I think, would be amenable to understanding, when you search, are you applying a label? And what should that mean? And how do we make the search results be something that are as empowering, rather than, really, this is what we are? So I think

ILEANA RIVERA: Right.

OWEN ASTRACHAN: that we could do that, NCWIT will help us, with labeltogether.org, we can make that approach. We can make that pitch.

ILEANA RIVERA: It can be a combination of both, yes, OK.

COLIN BODELL: So I have a, given that we have a, I guess, some technologists in the room, you know, you think about the taxonomy for this. How would it go around thinking about, what is that the taxonomy of labels and how to apply it?

OWEN ASTRACHAN: I think that’s a tough question, but one of the things we do is crowdsource it. So if you start telling stories on a site where people are collecting them, say, what labels do these bring out in you? And you’d hashtag ’em, hashtag, hashtag, hashtag. And the ones that get more labels, you realize maybe that story is about this label. I think you’d have to build some technology in there to make sure that the labels aren’t limiting in the way that we’ve seen before

COLIN BODELL: Right.

OWEN ASTRACHAN: but that they represent what the community sense of, is for each of these stories and each of these labels that are there.

COLIN BODELL: Yeah, and I suppose if you’re reaching a very targeted audience of people that have got diversity well in the forefront of their mind. Of course, when you’re dealing with Google, you’re dealing with everybody in the world and, of course, it’s just a reflection of those biases that we’ve lived with forever. So something that is very targeted to the specific audience we’re going after, as that grows, then that so begins to influence the search engines and other systems as well.

OWEN ASTRACHAN: Absolutely.

COLIN BODELL: Very good.

JEREMY SONNENBURG: So, I think it’s a great idea. I guess, as you were presenting, I was trying to apply it to my own situation. So I have a daughter who’s 10, entering very formidable years of her life. And I guess, if you maybe could talk through how you would see this dot org really helping to influence her, you know, in the way that you’re describing.

OWEN ASTRACHAN: So, this idea came a resource that Roadtrip Nation has. So you can go and say, which of these characteristics am I interested in or whose story am I interested in? And you can hear the stories. So you can see a picture of someone and read about what they’ve done and you can kind of take, oh, I’m interested in this or I’m interested in these techniques. This is what I like to do in my spare time. And you put together something that ends up not being just one label, but that kind of rainbow that I was trying to represent.

JEREMY SONNENBURG: Oh, OK.

OWEN ASTRACHAN: So by going and seeing people and their stories, you find them, and then their labels, then, can become your labels, thing that you can try on. Because, as a ten-year-old, it might be a label that you try for a minute or an hour or a week or a year, but you’re gonna need to go back when you’re older and maybe find new stories. So you find them and then you put those labels on yourself, wear ’em around, try them, and then continue.

COLIN BODELL: So that’s an interesting nuance. It’s, yeah, go and find a set or even a single label and then hear or see a video of somebody and decide whether, you know, are they like you? Do they have a similar background? Or, even if they have a different background, can you at least identify with them on certain levels? OK, then.

OWEN ASTRACHAN: That’s right, absolutely.

COLIN BODELL: Yeah, that’s very good.

ILEANA RIVERA: And if I can offer just a suggestion, would you consider, maybe instead of labels, labeltogether.org, maybe something more appealing for the little girls like be myself, superstar.org or something like that?

OWEN ASTRACHAN: That would be a much, all these things could go to the same website, too.

ILEANA RIVERA: OK. [audience laughing]

OWEN ASTRACHAN: I think, absolutely a good idea.

JEREMY SONNENBURG: I guess the other question would be, so the website sounds great and it’s effective if you can get the girls to go and look at it, right? How would you kind of drive traffic to the site or kind of–

OWEN ASTRACHAN: Well, since we now have Google as a high level partner, when you Google Latina [panel laughing] or teacher or professor, maybe it would say, are you looking for labels? You know how you have image search? You have something search, label search.

ILEANA RIVERA: Ah.

COLIN BODELL: Or, you tie it into the career planning tool, do both of those.

OWEN ASTRACHAN: Absolutely.

COLIN BODELL: And then, it’s just a natural stepping stone.

ILEANA RIVERA: Look at that.

OWEN ASTRACHAN: Perfect, sounds like a great idea.

COLIN BODELL: Yeah.

OWEN ASTRACHAN: Well, thank you very much.

COLIN BODELL: Thank you very much, that’s great.

OWEN ASTRACHAN: Thank you. [audience applauding and cheering]

JEFFREY FORBES: Thank you, Owen. All right, so next up, we have NCWIT K-12 Ambassadors by Leslie Aaronson.

Whew! [audience applauding and cheering]

LESLIE AARONSON: Look at my Aspirations in Computing winners. This year, we had a national winner for the second year in a row. In fact, we’ve had a national winner for two years, ever since we learned about the awards two years ago, and started encouraging our girls to apply. But I want to increase those numbers. I want to inspire and engage more under-represented students to enter the computer science field. Consider NCWIT Ambassadors, people’s would promote and create opportunities, real world opportunities, outside the classroom to help happen inside the classroom. I’m a high-school teacher in South Los Angeles at Foshay Learning Center. I tech low-income students. I have 168 of them, 41% female, 100% underrepresented in the computer science field. I have my students for three years in a row, from 10th grade to 12th grade. And, of course, we build their computer science skills. We teach problem-solving a programming, but it’s not enough. The academic component is not enough. I also have to build confidence. I have to engage my students. I have to teach them not only the skills for a job, but the skills to get a job. They have to communicate with professionals. They have to learn to network. And I have to teach them how and why networking’s important. Look at Ana, my national winner. She join our robotics team–

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Woo hoo!

LESLIE AARONSON: We don’t have enough time. She joined our robotics team in the eighth grade and she said that is where her protective shield of shyness got cracked. She is now a professional young woman who’s an inspiration to my other students. She knows how to introduce herself to others and network and does not wait for somebody to notice her in the corner and then ask her 20 questions to try to get some information out which is the nature of most of my very humble students. Ana is an amazing inspiration to Lilly, my 10th grader who applied last year even though she told me she didn’t think she was good enough. Lilly’s from a very troubled home life and her life is not easy, but she knows that her computer science skills are her path to a better life. Lilly has been a great inspiration to my other students. She’s encouraging more girls to apply next year and she knows the networking that she’s been doing in my class has made a difference. She has a web design internship this coming summer and she’s telling everybody they must take advantage of this opportunity. I’m trying desperately to break down the four walls of my classroom and teach my students that what we do here has a direct relation to what you do in the world. Every semester, we update our resumes, we update our portfolios, and I try to put as many opportunities as possible in their path. Consider what an NCWIT Ambassador could do. Somebody who can reach out and help give tricks and tips to teachers and students to help create these opportunities. Last year, actually this year, my Juniors all went on informational interviews where they met in twos and threes to talk to professionals and they finally learned how people got the job and that it turns out people don’t always know what they want to be when they grow up and that they often learn the job on the job. This gave my students a whole new perspective. Because it’s scary going into computer science and feeling like you’re supposed to be an expert right away. An NCWIT K-12 Ambassador is somebody who would also need to communicate with companies and help them find easy, low-commitment ways to make a great intimate impact with students. It is possible to do virtual mentoring, to look at resumes, to look at portfolios, to read cover letters, and give feedback. It’s possible to invite students to your company, not for a very organized field trip, but to just have them talk to your IT department, you know, to the HR department. How did you get a job? What are you looking for? Plus, if they don’t have those networks, how do they even get the job in the first place? Who’s recommending them? Who’s telling them about the job? An NCWIT K-12 Ambassador is somebody who can show students what it is to dream, to show them what the real world looks like. It’s hard to dream something that you’ve never seen before. It’s hard to know how to enter a field where you don’t know anybody already in the field. [clearing throat] Sorry. So we are looking for encouraging more people to break down the walls of the classroom, to invite people into the classroom, to communicate with the students because teaching them how to get a job, to teach them that cultural collateral, is something that, if you’re not born with, how do you develop? It is something that is often a blind spot in education and from professionals. They interview people and say, “They don’t have the skills we’re looking for,” but they’ve never developed or seen those skills in the first place. We are looking for people to reach out and teach those students this cultural collateral that maybe they weren’t born with. An NCWIT Ambassador can help make that happen. Thank you. [audience applauding and cheering]

JEREMY SONNENBURG: So I think it’s a great concept. I was curious, how do you think about going about identifying and recruiting ambassadors into the program?

LESLIE AARONSON: So, NCWIT alread has these educators who win the awards who’ve done a great job of getting their girls to apply, so that must they’re aware of real world opportunities. And I also think these big companies now have diversity programs. I think there would be a great networking between the company’s diversity program and the educators, too, and then be a transient job, you know, where you go in and out, too. Like I have the classroom experience, I’m talking to companies, I’m going back.

COLIN BODELL: And would you see, so for your school, for example, would you want sort of a rotating group of ambassadors to come in and/or to have one ambassador that kind of almost adopts your school, your classroom, your students, and has repeated touchpoints, even though they may bring in other ambassadors to share different skills sets?

LESLIE AARONSON: Well, I think the ambassador is more of a regional person who works with a bunch of schools. I think this is something that’s very easy to do inside the classroom. And example is, we just learned this year of the Apple Developers Conference and the student scholarships. Like, if somebody were to promote that to a bunch of schools, you would have a lot more underrepresented students applying for the opportunity. So it’s not like and all-day every day job. It’s really giving strategies to teachers of how to, you can do a similar programming project that you probably already do, but do it for the Verizon App Challenge, you know, where’s there’s award at the end or you have your students build apps and your invite a panel of judges to critique the apps at the end of it, you know, easy ways that it would take you two hours to come to my class. My students would be working for six months and the quality of the outcome is so much greater when you’re the judge, versus when I’m like, two points off, you know?

COLIN BODELL: Right. [audience laughing] No, that’s good. And then, one other thing that really resonated is you talked about sort of low effort, low cost to be able to do this. Because I know, when you’re dealing with the type of people you would like to have come in, those, that type of people are typically very busy,

LESLIE AARONSON: Right.

COLIN BODELL: so you’ve got this conflict. With things like Lync Skype on Google Hangouts, doing things electronically is, of course, much easier for us. From a technology in the classroom perspective, because I’ve, it’s been a while since my kids graduated at that grade, what sort of technology exists? Does the technology exist generally to be able to support that?

LESLIE AARONSON: We’ve done Skype and Google Hangout. You know, my students all put their work on portfolios, so I could easily send you 10 links to portfolios and say you have a month or your have three weeks to read their cover letters and write back,

COLIN BODELL: Sounds great.

LESLIE AARONSON: so you can do it from the comfort of your office. It’s very easy to do. And I think one of the hangups is people are like, they need a mentor. And like, talking to you for 20 minutes is just as impactful and maybe even more so than having a mentor come in once a month which is really hard and time-consuming. So I think there’s really like simple, simple ways to make this happen. Because I’ve been talking to professors who were saying like, we’re just not getting the girls. But if you were already accepted to the college and you already have an idea, it’s really hard to bring them over. And if you’re a high school kid with no experience and you get into the college, you’re not coming with that idea. So you really have to start it young and give them these tools. Like, my students, they just don’t ask questions. They’re in their head, you know, and I think you have to teach them it’s OK to ask. That’s how you network.

ILEANA RIVERA: Yeah.

LESLIE AARONSON: You know, you don’t have to fawn all over people, but you have to come up with the courage to take the risk to say hello and shake a hand.

ILEANA RIVERA: Can I just say that I just love your passion?

LESLIE AARONSON: Thank you so much.

ILEANA RIVERA: It’s fantastic. [audience applauding and cheering] And so my question is, you know, in corporate America, we are so busy. We have requests for mentors for people all over, right, and we only have a certain amount of time to do our job and promote and participate in things like this. So have you thought about how you’re gonna sell this, also, to the mentor, to the ambassador? What’s in there for us to participate in this?

LESLIE AARONSON: Well, I think you can’t, throwing money at a problem is amazing, but it doesn’t inspire the people to actually make a change and do something with their life. And I know that most companies have a community service focus. And, again, this is low-commitment, like maybe just holding the employees accountable to an hour a month, you know, or three hours a year where they’re, you can’t complain that you’re not getting the quality of employees or the diversity of employees that you’re looking for if you’re not doing anything to encourage those people to enter. So I think– [audience applauding and cheering] Jane Margolis has a great term of building potential.

ILEANA RIVERA: Right.

LESLIE AARONSON: You know, we can’t just be, the awards are amazing, here’s the award, come get it. You have to sort of get behind the kids and going, go to the award, try it, take a risk.

ILEANA: Perfect, thank you.

COLIN BODELL: Yeah, well I was just–

LESLIE AARONSON: OK, thank you so much.

COLIN BODELL: I just want to make one last comment which is, I wonder how many people in this room are now thinking, I’m gonna go back and I’m gonna go contact my local high school and go and see what I can do to help them out, right, because that’s what that passion delivers to everybody. Cheers.

LESLIE AARONSON: Yeah, thanks.

LESLIE AARONSON: I have a lot of those kids. [audience applauding and cheering]

COLIN BODELL: Great job.

LESLIE AARONSON: Thanks.

JEFFREY FORBES: Relax, there you go. Thank you so much, thank you, Leslie. Next we hear from Alberto Roca on Increasing Ethnic and Gender Diversity in Open Source. [audience applauding]

ALBERTO ROCA: Thank you, thank you. Open source software is ubiquitous. For example, WordPress runs 60 million websites and Linux runs a third of our servers. We depend upon open source. And the skills of open source are making one competitive for the job market. According to this survey, companies are looking towards open source community for hiring talent, so students and professionals need to know how to get involved, how to practice these skills. But there are challenges. The open source community is quite dispersed, running anywhere from industry professionals to volunteers around the world. Projects are also around the world. So for someone who’s new to this, it could be confusing and intimidating to join. More importantly, [audience laughing] is the community inclusive? As you can see from this example for the Linux community, not necessarily. This leader, Linus Torvalds, has a reputation for being harsh. Is this becoming another old boys club? At the individual level, can people, though, afford to take on a volunteer activity? This is especially germane to people of color, may not be able to afford to be cheap labor. So it’s no surprise, then, that the open source community is not diverse. According to this survey, only about 10% of participants are females. So then, without any information on ethnicity that I could find, what could we do about it? I attended the Open Source Bridge Conference. There, I created a diversity Birds of a Feather session to discuss these issues and meet other people. And there I met Shauna and Marina. I’d like to tell you about their projects. So OpenHatch, run by Shauna, brings on-campus free workshops to teach students about open source skills. They match students to projects according to their skill level and they help them find mentors. In a complimentary way, Outreachy creates paid internships, similar to Google Summer of Code, but they try to be more inclusive. So the projects, the students are, they outreach to women. You don’t necessarily have to be a student. And they help them find projects. But they were both finding difficulty finding people of color, so I brought these projects to the Tapia Conference where our activities were proactively outreaching to people of color and disability computer science students. You can learn about these activities in the articles that I publish on DiverseScholar. And you can follow me on social media with the handle @minoritypostdoc. In fact, at this conference, I’ve been publishing and historifying your tweets. So what are the next steps? We’re gonna go back to the Open Source Bridge Conference and let them know about these effective strategies and, in particular, try to outreach to individual open source projects to let them know about how to diversify their communities. But we need to reach a broader audience than just computer science students, so we’re going to the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos Native Americans in Science. This conference is four times larger than Tapia, and here we’ll be able to reach both students and professionals who have analytical skills. So my first call to action for NCWIT is to conduct a study of the open source community, both from a perspective of gender and ethnicity. And we’ll need proactive methods to find underrepresented minorities to participate. Let’s look at the US demographics to see why this is so important. On the left you see Hispanics and on the right you see African-Americans. But our nation is changing. The Latino population is growing, growing, growing, so by 2040s, Latinos will tip our nation to be minority-majority. In its particular, the Latino population will be 1/3 of our nation. We need minorities to participate in the tech community and in open source. So my second call to action to recruit specific minorities is to create diversity financial aid for minorities to participate in open source conferences. And this applicant pool will be available for our surveys as well as for mentoring. It is similar to something that I’ve already done with the Science Writers community. And we can make this project sustainable by using the same community for recruiting, as I’ve done with faculty diversity efforts with my Doctoral CV Database through my nonprofit. So with this partnership with NCWIT, it will allow us to create more minorities who are coders and a particular passion of mine, more Latinas. Think about it. By 2040 we’re going to have 100 million Latinos in our nation. But but we need to create our leaders today. So I’d be happy to answer any questions, but after I acknowledge those people whose work I’m building upon, in particular, Jennifer Arguello, Ashe Dryden, and Alex Bailey. Thank you. [audience applauding]

ILEANA RIVERA: So, question, why–

COLIN BODELL: We knew who was going to go first. [panel laughing]

ILEANA RIVERA: You have a hint. So what really motivates you to do this? I know, I totally understand the growth population. I do believe that in the Latino community, there is an education problem that we have to address, role models and et cetera, but what really motivates you to do this? What do you think the value will be to have something like this?

ALBERTO ROCA: Well, my personal motivation is seeing all of my cousins who have not gone on to college and see the challenges that they have, not only their education, but also their workforce. I’m the oldest of 16 grandchildren, first generation from Lima, Peru, and I’m one of the few people who have gone to higher ed, especially with a doctoral degree. So we need more people and role models who are in our faculty positions throughout the nation and maybe as tech industry leaders also, to be the role models and the advocates for this growing Latino population who not only represent my family, but also the community. The future of the nation is at stake.

COLIN BODELL: Yeah, one thing, you know, I hire a lot of software engineers and I’ll travel and go wherever I can possibly get them and it’s tough to find talent now. And, of course, the challenge is when you do at an interview, you’re interviewing somebody for half an hour, an hour. What can you truly learn about them? So I have a lot of positive experiences using the content of open source projects to assess somebody, not only the quality of their code, that’s important, but also how they interact with the community in regards to bugs, requests for enhancements, just general discussions. You can look at people and discern how they are as well-rounded individuals. So I think it’s incredibly valuable to do it, so I applaud what you’re intending to do. Then the practical aspect is, how do you get that broad a diverse community engaged in those projects? And are they, do you see them more getting involved and having diverse groups or would you see teams of individuals stepping up that come from a particular gender background or an ethnic background? How would you see that? What would you expect, or what forward you like to see in that regard?

ALBERTO ROCA: So my experience in doing these diversity issues is based upon my 10 years of work in the broader STEM community. So in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields, especially in the biological sciences, we’ve been doing diversity work for decades. And so I believe the tech world, which is kind of coming onboard with this, can learn a lot for these initiatives. And so we have sort of a multiple approach. Sure, we need to have discipline and diversity-specific mentoring and education, much like SACNAS and Tapia and NCWIT provide. But then, we also need to have especially underrepresented minorities practice their bicultural skills to know how to work in the majority environment, so that they’ll interact with communities. And what’s interested me, from my perspective, I’m a biochemist by training learning about what’s happening in tech, is that was open source has become more important, what we’re doing is creating, now, this expectation of an internship. And so, what we need to do then, is sort of bring the open source community up to speed in how we practice diversity issues. And it’s really a small change. We just need to sensitize the open source communities who are already bringing people together for professional development and mentoring and so on that are already happening at our conferences, that are already happening in our work groups in corporations, but we just need to let them know the skills about how to do diversity. And first, for the big pipeline issue that does exist in tech is bring minorities into the pipeline. From the students, teach them open source skills, to the public, maybe first start with editing a Wikipedia article which is one step away from maybe editing documentation in a larger project. But we’ve just got to bring them in.

JEREMY SONNENBURG: So I thought it was fascinating, the concept of using open source to attack the problem that we’re all here discussing, right. And the impact of open source is obviously very large, as you pointed out. I guess what I was, as I kind of thought through your suggestions, the first suggestion was a study, which I think is a good idea. But I think we all kind of fear that we know what the conclusions of that would generally be. Then it’s the, what do we do about it? And you had some ideas there around equitable tech and some financial aid there. But I guess, I thought the points you highlighted in the beginning about, some of these open source communities can be very, very harsh and very elitist, right, and do we need to do more in terms of creating open source projects that are managed in a more inclusive way? I’d be interested in your thoughts on that.

ALBERTO ROCA: So, again, based upon my general experience from the larger STEM community, we need a multiple approach. One, we need to increase the diversity of the community so that then people can be aware of what it takes to be inclusive. Two, we need to sensitize the current leaders on how they could be more diverse, how they could be more inclusive. People aren’t necessarily evil, but they can fall into easy modes of behavior, as we’ve heard from last night. And they may not be aware of these things until they’re exposed to other people, other ways of thought. And open source has a particular challenge in that so much of it is happening just behind a computer. You’re not actually meeting. But there is a very unique challenge of the power that’s happening because, since these projects are distributed, Mr. Torvalds, for instance, is not working for any one company. He’s working sort of for a community of volunteers and the foundations don’t necessarily have power over them to institute the standard type of HR policies we would have for sensitizing people. So there, we do have to address the power issue, but that really comes with the community having a voice. So, for instance, Linux has changed. Just recently, they have introduced sort of a code of conduct. And Linus with his power, the reason he has so much power is that he’s the one that commits all of the push requests. He has accepted that code of conduct. So change is happening, a little slowly, but NCWIT

ALBERTO ROCA: and DiverseScholar can make it happen.

JEREMY SONNENBURG: Great.

COLIN BODELL: Very good.

ILEANA RIVERA: Good, thank you.

ALBERTO ROCA: Very good, thank you. [audience applauding]

JEFFREY FORBES: Thank you Alberto. Our last speaker is Amy Gurley, who’s going to be speaking about Aspirations in Computing, Recognizing Mid-Career Women.

AMY GURLEY: Thank you. [audience applauding and cheering] Hi. Hi, I’m Amy Gurley and I’m so excited to be here today to share an idea that, quite honestly, almost hit me out of the blue. I want to talk about how we can keep more mid-career technical women in the overall IT pipeline. We’re all extremely familiar with this pipeline challenge. It really is at the heart of NCWIT’s mission. It’s how can we bring more talent into that pipeline, the early piece of it, as well as retain them at that mid-career point? And that’s what I really want to talk about today. Data from the US Department of Labor shows that we were at 26% last year, in 2014, for women who made up those IT professional-related positions. That fell from a high of 36% in 1991. There are challenges with retaining this technical talent. 74% of women actually report, technical women, report loving their work. And then, we see they’re leaving at 56% mid-career. That’s twice the quit rate for men. NCWIT’s done a lot to help us understand the challenges behind that: unconscious bias, isolation, support for competing priorities. So we understand the challenges. Let’s do something about it, right? If we could just interveve and reduce that attrition rate for mid-career by 1/4, it would mean another 200,000 employees in that technical talent pipeline. So I’ve been involved with NCWIT, my fourth summit here, using these resources, using the programs, and really seeing how we can help retain, attract, at all of that, the entire pipeline. So I started thinking, you know, there are lots of things that I’ve been involved with that worked. Aspirations is a great example of that and it works because there’s support. It works because there’s recognition. And it works because of the sense of community. Why don’t we try to leverage that? Think about it. Look at these numbers. They’re absolutely amazing, what we’ve done on the early part of the pipeline over the last eight years. We cover middle school now, we cover high school, and it goes into the college pipeline, now, as we saw yesterday with the award. What if we included mid-career technical women in that, if we expand the Aspirations program so that it really is the entire pipeline, not just the early piece, it goes, all the way into career? I’m proposing the Award for Excellence in Computing. Let’s add a new category, a fifth item that would be up there. It would be for women in that 10 to 20 year of experience. Eligibility, the participant, we’d want them to actually work for an employer that’s part of the Workforce Alliance or the Entrepreneurial Alliance, have that 10 to 20 years experience, and have made some sort of significant contribution either at their companies or in the industry as a whole. The program would involve three components: recognition, learning and, again, that sense of community that’s such a part of Aspirations. I want to talk about each of those in a little bit more detail, now. The recognition piece, we would recognize a cohort of women at the summit annually. They would receive their award. They would also receive that recognition in their companies where they are every day, and externally through NCWIT. Learning would really revolve around three primary components: technical training, leadership development, as well as business acumen, how they’re applying that technology in their workforce. And we’ve got some amazing resources through the NCWIT Alliances we could leverage. Community would really be face-to-face as well as virtually. The first chance for the cohort would be here at the summit. I think we could leverage things like Grace Hopper, where they would be coming already as well. And then, they’re part of being champions for the whole program. The result is absolutely amazing. Think about it. How connected these women are gonna be over time as the cohort grows. I just get so excited thinking about it. And then we come back to the idea of the vision for the future. We know we’re doing a lot on the early pipeline piece. We then actually do it on the the latter piece as well, and we see women’s full participation really increasing in that Companies also benefit from this. I mean, the research that we all know, it means more efficiency, it means more innovation, it means better bottom lines, so it’s a win-win all the way around. I’ve personally been involved with Aspirations for the last four years and it’s great to meet the girls. This quote, I think, is just a great way to end today because I really think this could be a huge springboard for us and the entire pipeline. Thank you so much. [audience applauding and cheering]

JEREMY SONNENBURG: So, you know, I’d first compliment you, we were having dinner last night and I was talking to several of the women that I work with who are software engineers for us, and, you know, we were talking about how do we actually solve the problem of women in their mid-career, one, staying with the company, two, having advancement? And, you know, you talk and you kind of conclude it’s easy to talk about; it’s hard to do something about it, so I compliment you

AMY GURLEY: Yeah.

JEREMY SONNENBURG: for having a very real idea in this space. In terms of how you would see members of the Workforce Alliance implementing this, do you see it as kind of each group maybe has an internal selection process to put forth their best candidate? And then each Workforce Alliance, I’m trying to kind of think through implementation and interested in your thoughts on that.

AMY GURLEY: Yeah, I think we could do that. I think each company could potentially say, hey, let’s only nominate a certain number. I don’t know that I’d start it that way. I think I’d have it wide open from the beginning and you just need to work for a company because it’s a great way for NCWIT and that partnership to really continue. I think that just the act of applying and really stopping and getting quiet and thinking about, hey, I’ve made this really significant contribution and I want others to know about it. So I don’t think I would limit it within a company to start.

COLIN BODELL: Yeah, and I think one of the things you mentioned is that, you know, in terms of attributes or things you’d look at in regards to the winners, but the community aspect of it, it’s great to have people that have done things within a particular role, effectively what they’re paid to do. It’s the degree to which they influence other folks inside the organization. It may be that somebody’s been through a mid-career change, maybe they’ve taken time off, they’ve had kids, they’ve figured out the right way or what works for them to be able to come back to work and have had support from other people, passing that on and mentoring, paying it forward or paying it backwards, mentoring other people, I think, it’d be a huge part of it. And I would have, you know, almost give that a greater weighting

AMY GURLEY: Right.

COLIN BODELL: because it’s how you make it self-sustaining, I think, is incredibly important. Just talk for a couple of seconds about, in an organization, how you go about getting that organized in terms of senior sponsorship and making sure that folks at all levels are engaged in it because the danger is if it’s aimed at mid-career, are that the people earlier on in their journey of their career not included in it? How would you go about setting that up?

AMY GURLEY: Yeah, well, I think that it’s gonna be all about how we pitch it. And then I think, so I think working with NCWIT to develop what those criteria would be and then going through the Workforce Alliance, through the Entrepreneurial Alliance and really sharing that. I mean, so many companies, I know we do, we have a women’s network. And so I think that the communication really goes through those groups, you know, leveraging the Workforce Alliance, the Entrepreneurial Alliance, using those networks to inform folks. And it really is about, I think, telling those stories and having those role models that we can look up to. So I think that that’s where we’ve really struggled. We’ve done so much on how do we attract more talent, how do we look at job ads? And, I mean, it’s great stuff and it’s really on that part where people have been with a company for a while and they maybe kind of feel stuck or they feel like they’re not getting that recognition and this is recognition in their company and beyond. And what really gave me the idea was there’s some really neat stuff out there with virtual ways of mentoring and networking and things like that, and it just doesn’t seem authentic, to me. There’s still something about that face-to-face interaction, combined with the online and I think that’s why Aspirations is so successful, especially at the national level. We support the national award. And to see what happens, the bonding that happens with these young women when they’re with us for three days in a row. And then that continues and it’s sustained through those online communities and things like that. So that was kind of the thought behind the idea. Let’s not just do that for early. Let’s do that for, really, those mid-career women and that fights the isolation, that fights the support for competing priorities, you know, all those challenges that we know are there.

ILEANA RIVERA: Yeah, I love that you’re talking about this topic, right, because, again, I, there’s many organizations and, again, it’s important. Each step is very important, but I think that we cannot oversee that we’re losing them at some point. And we can bring ’em, we can motivate ’em, we can just have ’em do computer science degrees, but if we cannot maintain them, that’s 50% of the problem, like you mentioned.

AMY GURLEY: Yeah.

ILEANA RIVERA: So this is great. Now, and I also think that some of these women can actually be these K-12 Ambassadors, you know, when we want advice.

AMY GURLEY: Yes, yes!

COLIN BODELL: Maybe we can–

AMY GURLEY: Tie it all together

COLIN BODELL: Maybe we can combine.

AMY GURLEY: with a red bow.

COLIN BODELL: We like these connections.

ILEANA RIVERA: We love to tie things up. But then, you know, tell me a little bit more about, I’m a woman 10 to 20 years in career, how is this program really gonna help me, right? I’m going through struggles. I don’t know if I really want to stay here. What are some, maybe one or two things in particular that you have thought that we can do to make sure that they see the motivation back again, that that woman feel that, yes, this is what I want, to stay, and I’m not alone and I can continue?

AMY GURLEY: Right, right.

ILEANA RIVERA: What will be some of those things?

AMY GURLEY: So, you know, I mean, that’s where I think those three components are so critical. So it’s that recognition piece, that, hey, somebody really does get what I’m doing and the importance of of what I’m doing. And then, I’m thinking of the learning piece again. We continue to hear, I’m just, there’s so much cool new technology out there or, you know, thinking about how we apply that to what we do and I just don’t have time to kind of get quiet enough to go off and learn something new. So that’s where I think a great partnership with the Academic Alliance is, you know, let’s take the cohort and leverage some of what’s going on in the classrooms and in the universities and really help bring them up that way. And then, that sense of community I really think is key where folks are able to have that peer-to-peer conversation with each other and there’s not that fear of, well, I can’t say this to the person in my company because it might come back on me and end the wrong way. And it’s kind of, what happens in the cohort stays in the cohort, is kind of the idea. And it would build over time. I mean, because there’s no silver bullet and I think that’s the bottom line is that we’ve been trying to attack this problem for quite a while. And if you can look back at Aspirations, the eight years, and it’s amazing now, you know, just from an idea and it took time. And so that’s kind of the idea with this. Let’s expand that. And then you’ve also got, on this end, those women that are able to go back and to coach and to encourage the early part of the pipeline, so it really is full and it’s not just the early piece.

ILEANA RIVERA: Great.

COLIN BODELL: Excellent. Thank you, very much.

AMY GURLEY: Thank you very much.

JEREMY SONNENBURG: That was great.

AMY GURLEY: Thank you so much, appreciate it. [audience cheering] [audience applauding]

JEFFREY FORBES: Thank you, Amy, and let’s hear it for all of our participants. You guys, stand up, stand up, all of our speakers. [audience applauding and cheering] And let’s also hear it for our judges who did a great job. [audience applauding and cheering] So the judges will deliberate and we’ll announce the winner at the end of this afternoon’s plenary. So I think you guys are dismissed. [audience laughing] They are. You guys aren’t dismissed yet [laughs]. Thank you so much. [audience applauding and cheering] Thank you. Thank you.

BOBBY SCHNABEL: We now come to a great culmination of the day, which is the announcement of the winner from this morning’s Flash Tank. The first thing I’d like to do, though, is to thank all five of the presenters, all three of the judges, and our great facilitator Jeff Forbes for a really stimulating set of presentations and discussions. Allegedly, they were all supposed to be up in the front row. I don’t see that, but if those people are anywhere in the room, could you please stand up so that we can thank all of you? [audience applauding] Now, I’m told that the judges convened and actually met for quite a while and had a very tough time choosing a winner. And, in the end, they did because we felt, they felt, it was very important that we have one project that we can immediately say that NCWIT is going to continue to work with and try to move forward as we had committed. But, but on the other hand, they were so taken by all five ideas that they have committed to convening the five presenters, all five of them along with the judges, so that they can discuss all of the ideas and see if there’s ways that they can make all of them move forward. If they can do that in person, they’re gonna try to do that at Cisco sometime. [audience applauding] Good. So the details is, if they can do that in person at Cisco, they will. And if not, allegedly, we all know how to use technology to do that sort of thing. [audience laughing] So the next thing I’d like to do is to, one more time, thank our three judges for a great service to us. [audience applauding] So now we come to the Hollywood part of this and Lucy and, we’re getting there [laughs]. And Lucy and I were saying that this would have really been great because tomorrow we have a couple Hollywood people. If we would have just set the timing different, but instead, we’re going to do our best. So the first thing is that Rane Johnson of Microsoft is going to join me and present a Surface Pro 3 to the winner. Rane is known to many of you, I think. Microsoft, as I’ve already said here, has been a wonderful supporter. But Rane has been a wonderful full supporter herself of so much that we do, so thank you, Rane, so much. [audience applauding] Now, Lucy made the mistake of telling me that she had all, actually thought of maybe she should have an evening gown and gloves to do this because Lucy is going to come with the envelope. So that stimulated me, we don’t have that, but we have a new moniker for you. So this is Lovely Lucy.

[fans cheering, clapping, and whistling]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Back it up! [fans cheering, clapping, and whistling]

BOBBY SCHNABEL: With a decidedly non-Hollywood way to have the envelope.

LUCY SANDERS: It’s on a silver tray, right? Bobby.

BOBBY SCHNABEL: So, OK.

LUCY SANDERS: OK, open the envelope.

BOBBY SCHNABEL: So here we go. We’re gonna do this together.

LUCY SANDERS: Oh, wait, we’ve got to hold on.

LUCY SANDERS: OK, Rane, here we go.

BOBBY SCHNABEL: And the winner is [Rane gasping]

ALL: Linda Ott. [audience applauding]

ALL: Yay! [audience applauding and cheering]

LINDA M. OTT: Thank you.

LUCY SANDERS: Congratulations.

LINDA M. OTT: Thank you.

BOBBY SCHNABEL: Congratulations.

LINDA M. OTT: Thank you.

LUCY SANDERS: Well done.

LUCY SANDERS: All right, now the hard work begins, right?

LINDA M. OTT: Yeah. [audience laughing]

BOBBY SCHNABEL: And if you didn’t remember it, Linda’s presentation was, Career Planning Tools, A Roadblock to Computing Careers? with a question mark. [audience applauding and cheering]

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