This year SAP joined the largest Women in Tech Conference in full force. The Grace Hopper Conference, with over 15,000 attendees - mostly women, was held in Houston, Texas, on October 19-21. For the first time, SAP invested in a Platinum Sponsorship, which provided us with the largest presence at the conference we have ever had. As a first timer myself, I was very impressed with the event: the quality of the speakers was truly Grade A, featuring Ginny Rometty, President and CEO of IBM, Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, and the amazing Megan Smith, Chief Technology Officer of the USA - to name only a few. The shared energy of female power was truly inspirational, the great number of technical and diversity sessions phenomenal, and the eager and very bright young women I talked to at the booth painted a bright future as they might be potential new hires for SAP.
I truly felt that I was part of a larger movement at the event.
Opening Keynote Session at the Toyota Center
SAP had some great successes at the conference:
- SAP, SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglas and Concur had almost 90 attendees, 14 speakers/presenters at GHC this year!
- SAP was named as a Top Company for Women Technologists in the Leadership Index category – out of 60 participating companies, 13 were chosen to be in the first category: Leadership Index, for their above mean results in women metrics
- Very special congratulations to Harini Gunabalan, from the HCP Analytics and Metering team in Björn Goerke’s organization, Germany, for winning third place at the student research competition for grad students. She was actually on stage during the closing keynote!
- We shared our power and celebrated our achievements at our very own SAP Happy Hour, which was kicked off by Helen Arnold herself.
SAP Celebration and Networking Happy Hour with official welcome from Helen Arnold
- We had 14 amazing speakers with very successful sessions: one example Turning your Snakes into Ladders – A Career Exploration Journey, workshop by Uma Rani T M, Krithika G and Shylaja Sabbani with over 500 attendees was voted one of the best sessions at GHC via Twitter.
- Our amazing recruiting team and two hiring managers ran interviews practically non-stop during all three days and we registered many many potential new candidates into our talent community: 35 interviews and 4 offers made so far.
But don't take my word for it - see what some of our attendees said about the conference:
"As a first time attendee and Speaker at GHC, I was thrilled to be at the conference surrounded by thousands of extremely smart and talented women in technology."
"GHC is a great event for female technologists, and, in my opinion, SAP should further strengthen our presence there to both recruit eager, young female technologists, and inspire, teach, and motivate our existing workforce. We were all proud to see SAP named as a Top Company for Women Technologists..."
"it was a great pleasure to attend this awesome event. I feel really inspired to look even more across the different business value adds within technology and which benefits are possible by connecting different products."
"I enjoyed the camaraderie and networking of the event immensely, both women I met for a few minutes in sessions and my own colleagues."
To get more of an idea of the energy at the conference you can view more photos on the GHC Website.