 Live from Houston, Texas. Extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE. Covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Now your host, Jeff Brick. Hey, welcome back everybody. We are in Houston, Texas at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2015. 12,000 women and about 1,000 men, I think. Really all gathered in one place to talk about women in computing, computer science, and helping get more women involved in the field that's underrepresented. When I first heard about this conference a year ago, celebration, it's not a summit, it's not a world, it's a celebration. And the fact of the matter is it is a celebration and we're really excited to be joined by really the woman who's running it all, making it happen, Telly Whitney, President and CEO of the Anita Borg Institute. Telly, thank you for stopping by. It's great to be here. I know you're a busy woman. First off, thanks for inviting theCUBE. We did kind of a quick run by last year and we're so excited to come down for the full three days of coverage this year. So thank you to you and the team. Well, we're delighted to have you here. Excellent. So Grace Hopper, I would love to kind of, you know, we hear about Grace Hopper, obviously the name of the event and Anita Borgs. I'd love to dig into who those women were put a little bit of something behind just the name. So tell us a little bit about Grace Hopper and kind of what she represented. Well, Grace Hopper was one of the early computer scientists. She was, she worked on compilers when there really weren't any compilers. She was part of the invention of compilers. She was involved in COBOL creation which is one of the early programming languages. She's probably best known for things like the fact that she invented the term bug because they actually found a bug in the machine because so much of early programming was to taking to switches and connect things up. Right. And it's interesting you bring that up because with the recent passing of Yogi Berra, a lot of conversations about so many of his sayings now we all use. And I don't think that people know that Grace Hopper also had a bunch of sayings that she's famous for that we use all the time. I mean, three of my favorites, I just pulled off the internet. You know, if it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. And I use that one all the time. I love that one. The most dangerous phrase in the languages, we've always done it this way. How powerful. And then of course, not maybe as popular, but you manage things, you lead people. I mean, what a phenomenal woman she was. She was and they're asking for forgiveness is one of my favorite terms. We actually use it on a t-shirt from the Univore Institute a couple of times. There's some great interviews of her if you want to know more about it. There was an interview with David Letterman. Priceless. She's very eloquent. It's priceless. And she just gives Dave a run for his money. He doesn't know what to do, but my favorite line from that is she was talking about being so young in the Navy, or she wasn't so young, all the young girls. And he's like, well, how old were you? And she said I was 37. He goes, well, what are you going in the Navy at 37? She's like, it's 1944, something called World War II, Dave. Maybe you missed that part. I thought that was a terrific one. So then let's shift gears, talk about Anita Borg. I know you started this whole institution with Anita. She's unfortunately no longer with us. Talk about Anita Borg and who she was. So Anita was a very close friend of mine. She was a researcher at Digital Equipment Corporation back when there was a deck. And she was very committed to fault-tolerant computing. But she was always along the way committed to having more women in the computing discipline. In 1987, I remember when she came to me, she says, I think that we should have this online network. She had met a number of women in a bathroom at a conference, and sisters was formed at that point, which is still an active use today. Right, right. She left her research career about 10 years later to found the Institute for Women in Technology. And she was passionate about women having the chance to be at the table. That's awesome. And when did you do the very first show, the very first celebration? The first great offer she and I did together, and that was in 1994 in Washington, D.C. We had about 500 women technologists, a lot of researchers, a lot of faculty. But the thing that was most important about it was that it was a celebration. Everyone was so excited about their work. We weren't talking about the problems about being a woman in technology. Right, right. We cover about 70 events this year, and there's nothing like here. And I'll share a special moment, how meaningful this is. I don't know if you noticed yesterday, there was someone that walked up and said hi to you. And I wasn't listening to the conversation. She walked away. She was so touched by what you're doing. She was crying to her friends who were a little bit away, and they were so supportive of her. I mean, this is such a meaningful and impactful event. And now you're up to 12,000 people. Last year it was 8,000. Where are you going to put everybody next year? So first of all, I have one of the best jobs on the face of the planet. I have regularly, women come up to me and some men saying, this event changed my life. And they actually many times enumerate how it's changed their life. In some cases they've gotten a job. In some cases they've changed their field of study. I mean, it's very impactful. The chance to come together with so many people that you have on them. We are returning to Houston next year. Back to Houston. We are coming back here. All right. You know, we've grown a lot. And one of the consequences of the conference becoming so large is that there's less and less places that we can hold it. Right. Houston has been a great group to work with. And so we will be back again here this next year. Oh, very good. Maybe some of the construction will be done by the time we get back here next year. Well, we're even hoping that one of those, the big hotels will be done. Cause we do expect to continue to grow. So one of the great things about this event is the range of ages. You've obviously got a heavy recruiting thing going on. And a lot of people we've talked to are trying to hire 150 new engineers while they're at this event in three days. Amazing. But then you've got older people and mid-career people and seasoned people. You've got the whole range. And I know that the mission started, it was a lot of it was about the young girls, but we've had a number of people really talking about the progress you're making with kind of early career and mid-career. Talk about that evolution of how you're now serving those populations as well. Well, so we have a lot of students. We have about 35% of our attendees are students. And for them, it's, for many of them it's the first conference they've ever been to. So it's really- You're ruining it for all the other conferences they go to. Yes, I know. They come together to connect. I mean, the sense of isolation can be so profound at many universities. But they also, I mean, they can't come to be recruited. Certainly the chance to understand not only what companies they can go to but what universities. But then also to be inspired by women who are ahead of them in their career. But as we work with organizations to create places where women thrive, they have increasingly brought a large number of their women to the event. I mean, it's important as a retention tool. These women come together once again to connect with not only women at their companies, but women at other places. You know, many companies will have company-specific events where their executives are there to meet with the women that are coming from that company. It's a very profound impact. Yeah, we learn. I'm sorry. Oh, they also come to be inspired. I mean, there's always somebody who's just a little ahead of you in your field that you can find and learn from. Well, we learned from Symantec who said she's been coming for nine years. She's been actively involved for seven years. She was effusive in how excited she's like. Every year, this is kind of my recharge. I come down and I get recharged and I'm ready to go. And I think it's also really great how you're giving leadership roles to the younger gals. We had two of the board members on, the student board members, Natalya and Ashley. Wow, they are unbelievable young women. They are. And they got started. I think Ashley said this was her fifth Grace Hopper. And one of the things she mentioned is that the ability to walk up to anyone on the floor, any of the keynotes, any of the real powerhouses that you bring in to speak, and the accessibility for them to walk up and just talk and ask questions. It's one of the things that we encourage that you walk up to anybody and they will all talk to you. So I think it's really important. It's important to me. I mean, it has become as we've grown, it's increasingly hard for me to talk to every single person that's attending. But this would be my goal. But many of them have come up to me and I love hearing their stories. Yeah, and just the concept of companies sponsoring college students to come. And then how that cycle completes and they end up working for those companies and getting grants from those companies, I think is a really interesting innovation. And like you said, companies bringing hundreds of their own team as an investment in their investment. Because I think it's come up a number of times over the course of the two days. Is it a pipeline problem with women in computer science or is it a retention problem? You're kind of working both ends of that spectrum. It's easy for people to say it's a pipeline problem and it's certainly important to work with organizations that are increasing the pipeline. And many of them are here. I mean, Girls Who Code talked yesterday on the session. We also have Code.org, which is doing a lot on increasing the pipeline and also NC Whit, who has a big presence here. But if you get all these women to join the field and they don't find cultures where they can thrive, they continue to leave at twice the rate of men. And so we also want, it's important to provide, to help companies with their cultures and also to provide inspirational role models from senior leadership, that's really critical. And that was a big part of Sheryl Sandberg's talk last night was with her little lean in circles, right? To build your little community so you're not so isolated. If there is one, great. If there's not, start one, but try to get out of that feeling of isolation. So for me, there's nothing that's been more important to me in my life than to have these circles of peers and get together and talk about the issues and opportunities on a regular basis. In fact, my friend Anita Borg and I was an example of that we were very, we would get together with other women who were also technical and talk about grapple with our career. It was really important. And your timing is perfect, right? Because the tech field is growing. Computer science is everywhere. The range of companies that you have here just validates that every company's a software company. They just happen to wrap that service around a particular product or service, whether it's Target or Walmart or nationwide insurance. As I look down the hall, Goldman Sachs, it's really your timing is perfect. Yes, I do. I mean, right now computing is at the heart of everything that we do. And so more and more companies, as you mentioned, that are not core tech have huge technical workforces. We welcome them to be here and part of this movement. So I'm going to ask you a question. What are some of the little hidden gyms that are going on here over the three days? So there's the keynotes, there's a lot of big stuff that everybody goes to. But is there a couple of smaller things that are kind of off the main track that you like to highlight? Well, so for this year, for the first time, we have an organizational transformation track. These are sessions that are designed to help organizations understand what they can do. And that track was very well received. We also had a male ally session where experts in the field of concluding men spoke to the audience and that session was packed. We also had something called tech nodes, which are very interactive sessions that talk about a particular technical topic and come together with a smaller group of people. So those are some examples. Okay, so I'm going to let you go. I know you're super busy for people that want to register because I think you sold out in like a week this year. So when does registration open for Grace Hopper Celebration 16? Well, we don't yet have a date, but it will probably be either in June or July. And if you sign up for our newsletter, we will make sure you know ahead of time. Okay, very good. And sign up for the newsletter. I had people reaching out to me like a week after registration. I said, Jeff, can you help us get tickets? Can you help us get tickets? I'm like, I can't help. I'm sorry. Yes, so did I. It was really hard. I'm really excited that we have so many people. It was hard to sell out so early. Yeah, well, congratulations again on the growth and the success of the celebration. And again, thank you so much, Telly for inviting us and we really look forward to coming back next year. Great, I look forward to seeing you then. Awesome. Telly Whitney, Anita Borg Institute, we are here at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Computing 2015 in Houston, Texas. Make sure you get on the newsletter. Make sure you get your registration in early next year or you won't be able to come. So we'll be back with our next guest after this short break.