Namaste🙏...
This article talks in detail about the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) 2023 which I attended in person in Florida during Sept 2023 as a Scholarship Recipient. I will talk about my story, my experience, my learning, some tips for first-timers, and how to maximize your opportunities at GHC, Read both the article parts to get a whole understanding of the event. This article has been structured in the format of the movie. Hope you enjoy the movie. So, the movie begins in 3,2,1...
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Mandatory Little Flashback at the first:
I still remember very vividly when I first got in inbox an email titled: "We are NOW ACCEPTING Computer Science Scholarship Applications from CS and SE students to attend the 2023 Grace Hopper Conference (GHC) Sept. 26 to Sept. 29" in my School Email ID.
I was very intrigued when the email popped up as it was highlighted as the largest gathering of women and technologists. So, I initially ignored the mail stereotyping it for women audiences. Later on, I started thinking about it and started doing research about the conference. I realized the importance of GHC by visiting its website, studying previous conference experiences, and the impact it carried out in one's professional and personal life.
I had then decided, that I would apply for it but I was having that anxiety that since I am a man, I wouldn't be handed out a scholarship as the conference has a different target audience. But as it is said, it's never a NO till they explicitly say it as NO. So, I emailed the CS department and I got their prompt response that men are also eligible for scholarships.
I applied for it and then waited for its results patiently with my fingers crossed.✌
The Plot Twist:
Later in August end, the results were out and I was one of 11 people who received the scholarship from The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), Computer Science Department to represent UTD on this big stage and be a part of it in person at Orlando!
My whole life was turned upside down with people from all over UTD congratulating me, and wishing me good luck. It was something I had not even anticipated a bit and was completely blank on how to react to it.
The news brought a lot of stress, such as
- Booking Airline Ticket
- Booking Hotel Accommodation
- Preparing Resumes
- Preparing Business Card
- Preparing Portfolio
- Preparing Companies List to Visit
- Shopping for Professional Attire
Once, I was done with all of this, the stress didn't stop as something called GHC Checklist came into the picture. This is like an unofficial checklist that I have created which might be helpful for students preparing for future GHCs. First-timers please take note of it especially
This website is wherein you will book 1-1 or group slots virtually or in-person for GHC, It is like KBC (i.e. Who wants to be a millionaire), fastest finger first. This website gets dissolved after a month so be aware and bookmark it for later use hence, the link right now is only pointing towards the Online Instruction Page due to the reason stated earlier.
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| Image Credit |
There will be many group or one-to-one virtual sessions available on the GHC Career Fair portal. On the day of the registration for the meetings, have all the tabs necessary tabs open. Please open the website earlier and pre-filled your details. Also, I would say give your login ID and password to your friends or family and tell them to be online during this process. First, concentrate on booking all the one-to-one slots (in-person at the conference) if possible, as you will be meeting them there. Then on the other tabs, it should be one-on-one virtual and then later on the group session. Remember as I said earlier, that these portal slots will get filled in milli-seconds. Imagine 30K+ students trying to get their luck and hoping to get at least one slot so be aware of the competition you might get. Also, keep checking the website again after the registration is done as some slots might open late, people might cancel and you might get a chance to register for it (I got two slots for one-to-one virtual) in a similar fashion. For Example, after around 3 days when I randomly checked the website and got another slot.
Tip: Keep everything in 1 calendar (I choose Outlook) so I get a notification that this event is going to start and I would sit in a corner at the convention center and attend the session. Remember for that, to have noise-cancelling headphones with you all the time. Also, Wi-Fi is bad at some spots in the convention center so it's better to have a 5G plan equipped.
It is a website wherein you create a free account initially and maintain your profile. Many companies have jobs that are specifically catered for GHC attending students and you need to apply to them through this website. The key is the earlier you apply, the earlier your chance to get a reply back or an interview call or a technical assessment setup. People also apply here like crazy and then contact companies and recruiters on LinkedIn. Depending on how smart you are, you can make optimum use of the opportunity.
This is a pretty new thing that started in the GHC 23 session. I think it was a hit and they might continue it for future years as well. As the name suggests it is like a date but between like-minded brains. For people who want to talk about a particular topic or people who just want to navigate a particular phase of their professional/personal life and seek guidance, a braindate is for them. I would suggest reading the topic of the Braindate very importantly and also, you can even create your own brain date as well for a topic you would like to discuss. I think it's better to keep this professional only.
Follow the AnitaB.Org page and all the hashtags respective to your GHC conference. There would be a lot of posts of people, companies, and recruiters, who might be coming to GHC and hence you need to be well aware. For recruiters, you can always message them and ask for an interview slot, or at least a meetup at the booth for exchanging resumes.
This was also about the GHC unofficial Checklist which I had created for you guys to keep in mind. It might be overwhelming but everything should fall into the correct places if you are vigilant enough. I would also suggest reviewing other latest articles and YouTube videos which might be able to explain it more deeply and give you more insights.
I will be now discussing more about the experience in detail. So let's go.
The MOVIE Trailer:
The GHC 2023 started with something called the Open Source Day. It was on 22nd Sept 2023, the Friday before the main event. It was a remote event.
To explain, GHC 23 Open Source Day (OSD) is an exciting all-day virtual hackathon! Collaborate with peers and experienced mentors to make meaningful contributions to projects. Level up your open-source skills and gain valuable insights from workshops designed to empower you in the open-source community. Experience a full day of learning at our event! Attendees have the flexibility to choose between the AM and PM blocks, both providing a complete experience.
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| Open Source Day Opening Ceremony |
The OSD comprises different workshops and hands-on experience which are described below:
Workshops that I attended:
This workshop was a quick crash course on using Natural Language Processing in Python. It started with NLP concepts such as methods for embedding text into numerical vectors: Bag-of-words, TF-IDF, Word2Vec, GloVe, etc.; use cases of NLP in real life, Code walkthrough for Text to Numerical Vector Representation; introduction of NLTK & spaCY library and complex transformer models like Transformer and Large Language Models like ChatGPT. Humor for thought: I remember a meme about the crash course and how students use it in their studies and it was absolutely true here as well!😂
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| Image Credit |
This workshop provided an introduction to KERAS and its ecosystem. Then it explained how can you build a Keras model. The application part was in Google Collab, hence it needed to have a Google Collab account created. Then we went to create a generative AI model in Google Collab using Keras NLP. It also talked about the concept of stable diffusion. Intriguing subjects like Prompt-to-prompt, which is when you give a prompt and it should just alter that specific area of the image that you supplied the prompt, were also discussed. Addressing textual inversion as well, textual inversion is a method of training that allows you to customize picture creation models by giving them a small sample of the kind of images you want them to understand.
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Imp Links :
This was a pretty awesome workshop with a rudimentary understanding of the actual working mechanism but it definitely did a great job in creating a lot of curiosity and an easy-to-follow hands-on session.
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Projects that I had a hands-on at OSD:
- Open Source Day Project: KServe
- Open Source Day Project: AI Fairness 360
This Project was quite interesting as this is something that has been quite a hot topic now due to the advent of AI in the world. Since I have already drafted a research paper in the field of Explainable AI and hence it was a bit of a recap for me but it also did mention in detail, a lot of new concepts as well. After the seminar, we were given a GitHub repo to develop an error and told to contribute to it as it was open source and make them work.
Finally, there was a closing ceremony with a speech and officially welcomed the entire GHC attended to the GHC Celebration the next week 26th - 29th Sept 2023.
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| Open Source Day Closing Ceremony |
Tips to make full utilization of GHC OSD:
- Skip School or Job Work if possible.
- Have previous knowledge of GitHub such as pulling, cloning, branching, forking, merging, and approving.
- Pre-determine your go-to-seminar (A schedule will be available on the GHC Website)
- The seminar workshops might be overlapping so prioritize the one which you desire the most. (If you have friends attending the other seminar then you guys can co-ordinate and share notes.
- Also in OSD 2023, the same seminars were carried out 2 times a day and hence, you can choose which ones to attend first and which ones later on.
- Remember it's impossible to drink entire water from the ocean and hence prioritizing is important for attending overlapping seminars.
With the end of this, I was all set to the mood of GHC and ready to hop onto my flight on Tuesday.
The next part of this story covers the GHC 2023 experiences, tips, guidelines, and fun stories.
Let's hope on to the movie at Part 2: My Experience at Grace Hopper Celebration 2023 as a Man - Part 2 (The Conference)
Finally, by ending the article if you stayed till this long then Dhanyavaad 🙏.
Please feel free to use the comments to give your suggestions about the article.
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