Confessions of a first time GHC speaker

What if no one shows up to my session? Is my content worth it? I was filled with self-doubt a week leading up to GHC. Yes, imposter syndrome is real. I decided to shove all the negative thoughts aside, do my best and just show up.

Here is my experience submitting a proposal for the first time and presenting at GHC. This was also my first time attending GHC.

About GHC

Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) is the world’s largest gathering of women technologists. In 2020, due to the pandemic, GHC became completely virtual (#vGHC2020, #vGHC). 39,000 attendees from 115+ countries attended this year’s celebration. It is a 5 day conference from 29-Sep to 3-Oct with 250+ speakers and 200+ sessions.

Proposal submission

GHC offers a wide variety of tracks and multiple formats. First step is to figure out the track, a topic and the format in which you want to deliver the content. GHC provides you with templates for each of the formats.  The templates are detailed, and they also provide you some examples from prior submissions.

When I embarked on this journey, I was not sure about the format nor the track. I explored a few different topics and talked to a few of my colleagues to see if they would be interested in doing a workshop or a panel but due to varying schedules, that did not pan out. Submissions were due end of March and it was before the global pandemic. I was losing time trying to find trying to find other people who were interested and decided to just go with an individual submission.

I am an introvert + shy and I was not comfortable with speaking in front of hundreds of people and so chose the mentoring circles format. The in-person mentor circle format was supposed to be a round table with 10 participants for 20 minutes and with 3 rounds. I settled on the format and chose a topic that was close to my heart which was “Introverted Program Manager” (My proposal was based on this content which I later decided to publish on my blog). When I shared the topic with one of my colleagues who spoke at GHC last year, she brought up a great point that TPMs are a minority at GHC and so the target audience is too narrow. Based on her feedback, I made the content generic and submitted a proposal on “Smartcuts for Introverts to advance their career” which was based on my personal experience and some research.

Important pointers:

1. Pick a topic that you are passionate about and are experienced in.
2. Pick a format (workshop/presentation/mentor circles etc.) that you would be comfortable with.
3. Make the abstract attention grabbing.
4. Determine who your target audience are – students or early/mid/senior career
5. Document 3 key points that the participants would walk away with after attending your session.
6. Add references to show that your proposal is backed up by research.
7. In the bio, mention why you would be a good person to speak about that topic.
8. Ensure there are no typos and grammatical mistakes.
9. Adhere to the template, format and word limit specified in the template. Here is an example that GHC provided.
10. Get your proposal reviewed by atleast one person who has experience as a GHC speaker. This is a must. Thanks to my colleague who reviewed it and provided feedback. I rewrote the proposal based on her feedback.
11. All this takes time and so plan ahead. Submit before the due date.

Proposal acceptance

Lot has changed from the proposal submission time to the time when decisions were due – COVID-19, civil and racial unrest, massive unemployment. GHC was thoughtful and proactively changed it to virtual format. On 1-Jul got an email that my proposal was “provisionally accepted” and that all the participants have been asked to ensure that the content was still relevant and represents sensitivity and knowledge of inclusive culture. We were asked to submit updated proposals by 16-Jul. I spent the time revising the proposal, though my topic was generic enough and did not need many changes. When I logged into the portal to resubmit my proposal, I actually didn’t have to submit any updated proposal but just had to add abstract, speaker bio etc. So, the communication was a bit confusing that we were supposed to update the proposal but did not actually have to submit any updated proposal. Finally got confirmation on 28-Jul that my proposal has been accepted.

Mentor circles format

Since GHC pivoted to virtual format, mentoring circles format has changed. We were supposed to do 3 rounds, 15 minutes each round, with 5 minutes break in between rounds. Each round limited to 20 participants. We had a choice of creating a presentation + Q&A or live script + Q&A. It was up to the speaker. GHC provided us with templates for creating the presentation and pointers on how to run these sessions.

My session

My topic was for professionals in their early stages of their career.

GHC provided us with zoom links for each of our sessions with instructions that we would need to admit the first 20 participants. I tried logging in the night before the session and my login didn’t work. We had a slack channel for all the mentors and GHC was very prompt in responding to these technical issues.

Considering it was for introverts (who typically tend to be quiet in meetings and might not ask questions), I created slides and content to cover for ~8 minutes + Q&A. I had back up slides in case there were not enough questions. I rehearsed with 3 of my introverted colleagues and incorporated their feedback.

Mentor circles was first come first served and there was no additional sign up process and there was no predicting how many people would actually show up. I was prepared for the eventuality that no one might show up.

I logged in at 10:00AM for my session that was supposed to start at 10:45AM just to ensure I had plenty of time to troubleshoot any technical issues. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that there were 5 attendees already waiting at 10:00AM! There were 29 attendees at 10:43 AM and I admitted the first 20 attendees. I presented the ~8 minutes of content that I prepared and used the remaining time for Q&A. 15 minutes flew by so fast.

Next round there were ~40 attendees waiting and I admitted 20 attendees again. The last round there were ~50 attendees and since it was the last round, I admitted them all. Few others joined the waiting room after I started but I did not want to lose focus and so continued with the session without admitting them. Since it was all virtual, the number of people in the session did not make me nervous. If it was in-person I would have totally freaked out if I had to speak in front of so many people.

One hour went by so fast and lot of people messaged me that the session was helpful. There were so many wonderful sessions in parallel and I was grateful that ~90 people chose to spend their time listening to me. It was a gratifying experience.

Lessons learnt

While the session itself went well, there are a few things I would do differently if I had to do it all over again:

1. It was a lot of co-ordination doing a mentoring session virtually where I had to admit attendees, limit it to 20, remove attendees from the meeting after the round, monitor chat, and present. I would highly recommend having a co-mentor/co-host so that you can take turns with some of these responsibilities.
2. After the last round there were still some attendees in the waiting room. I should have admitted them and did another round with them. I was following the rules of 3 rounds and ending on time but in hindsight it would have been perfectly fine if I did another round. There were other mentors who did that. It would have been a better experience for these attendees.
3. I should have checked my zoom login info the day it was provided, instead of waiting until the night before. Last minute issues caused some unnecessary stress which was totally my fault.

Feedback for GHC

GHC team did a fantastic job in pivoting to a virtual format, dealing with several challenges along the way and providing rich content to the attendees. They were super prompt and helpful in resolving our issues. Some feedback for future:

1. 15 minutes was too short for mentor circles. GHC should consider extending the mentor circles to ~25 minutes.
2. It would be great to add speaker bios, target audience info, topic abstract details for each of the topics so that the participants can make better decisions on which sessions would be more suited for them.

Summary

I am not going to lie – this whole process took a lot of time and effort. However, it was a very rewarding experience. Am grateful to GHC for the opportunity and to all the attendees that joined my session. It was encouraging and in the end made it all worth it.

If you are looking to submit a proposal for next year, here are details about the timeline to give you a perspective on how long this whole process would take.

Finalize topic and track	Feb 2020
Research and submit a proposal	30-Mar-2020
Decision	Due to pandemic, postponed from 17-Jun-2020 to 30-Jun-2020
Deadline for updating proposal for relevance	16-Jul-2020
Confirmation that proposal has been accepted	28-Jul-2020
Mentoring circles session date	2-Oct-2020
Total time from start to finish	~8 months!!

Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks to Madhumita Mantri for brainstorming the topic and reviewing my proposal; to Selina Zhang, Marianna Shvartsapel, Tanner Wortham for reviewing the presentation and providing their candid feedback. My deepest gratitude to Neetu Jain and other #mentoringcirclesghc2020 committee that made this happen.

Slides

Here are the slides that I presented.

Here is some additional slides that I presented in the last round as I miscalculated the ending time 🙂

I wanted to start off with these slides but it too much content to present in a short amount of time and so decided not to cover them.