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Well, it's certainly been a very long time since I posted anything here, so here we go...

For the last 3 days, Microsoft hosted a "Women's Conference."  Well, to say that it hosted it might imply that women from other companies attended, which isn't the case.  But women from other companies did speak.  I attended because, of course, I am female, and a female dev manager once recommended it to me (about two years ago, in fact).  Oddly, in past years I've always missed out because the event was (in my opinion) very poorly advertised. 

In case you're wondering, no, there were no sessions on makeup or fashion; the topics fell in the categories of "leadership", "professional development", "the whole you", and "inspiration/innovation".  The most well-known speakers I saw were Lisa Brummel (head of HR), Bill Gates (duh), and Margaret Spellings (Secretary of Education).  The conference, by the way, allowed men to attend if they wished to.  I won't attempt to address the issue of why a conference such as this is a good idea; I will just say that I think that it is very valuable and worthwhile and describe a bit about it and my experience at it.

I didn't attend every session; first of all, at any given time, 5 sessions are run concurrently.  Secondly, I didn't feel I could quite justify spending an entire 3 days at the conference; instead I spent about 1.5 days there. 

Overall, I would say that the sessions I found most valuable were the ones that were presented by Microsoft employees; the others may have been inspirational and reminded me of things I already knew (the way going to church does), but the information that was truly new and interesting to me was what I saw at the sessions given by employees.  This included: "The Architect Career Ladder at Microsoft", a panel discussion with Chris Anderson, Clemens Szyperski, and Melissa Dunn, "Leadership without authority", with Sabina Nawaz, and "Your Technical Career" with Rebecca Norlander (GM of system protection technologies - firewall, anti-virus, etc.), who I came to respect and admire for her attitude and achievements.

Here are some interesting factoids that I took away from the conference:

  1. In some rural regions of India, the ratio of males to females is 752:1000 due to selective abortion.
  2. Women earn 1/10 the world's income, own 1% of the property, and work 2/3 of the working hours.
  3. Bill Gates, who touts the fact that in this decade Microsoft will help change the way we watch TV, says that he doesn't watch TV.  Hm....
  4. Margaret Spellings really is "subtle as a jalapeno".  I like her.
  5. In high school AP Computer Science classes, 85% of students are male.
  6. Only 6 of the CEO's in the Fortune 500 are female.
  7. Women who have the greatest wealth are not the ones who are the highest earners.
  8. Symmetric body position shows a lack of confidence
  9. Confidence is a major issue for women in IT.
  10. Channel 9 is doing a series on women in technology. 
  11. "Fit matters" - work with a team you like.

Well, that's it for now!

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