SWE Conference--Sessions and Friends

My second day at conference was relaxing after the uncertainty about my session. I kicked off the morning with a plenary panel on Engineering in the year 20/20. It ended up being a bit different than I expected, but I still gleaned some useful information.

From the panel it was off to another session--this one about raising daughters to succeed in the workforce. I thought it would be interesting from an outreach standpoint, and it was. Plus the moderator was the professor of Product Development I had met the day before, so it was a good chance to say hi again.

After the panel, I grabbed my boxed lunch and joined the other women from my region who were at conference. We were a good sized mob and the meal was full of boisterous conversation, laughter, and catching up with old friends.

SWE Conference--My Big Day!

The main events of the conference kicked off the day after the iScream Social. I started the day off bright and early with the Keynote Breakfast. The topic of the speech was on getting recognized and being visible. The most interesting example was her point of "using the right currency". In other words, you need to frame up your requests in a way that is relevant and interesting to other people. Get in their shoes. Think from their perspective. It's something that I think most of us know, intuitively, but fail to implement.

From the breakfast I was off and running. I caught one session before lunch, one after, and then hopped over to the room where I would be presenting!

SWE Conference--Making Connections

The theme of this year's conference was "making connections". So it was only right that the first official events of conference were full of exactly that. Each each conference starts with an ice cream social. This year they decided to take it up a notch by making it the iScream social--complete with a costume contest. I'll admit, I cringed when I read the announcement. After all, as a group of professionals, is that really what we want to come up on google when people search for "Society of Women Engineers"? A bunch of people in costumes? And the conference organizers were making sure it would come up--they had a social media friendly photo booth at the ready and were encouraging liberal use of a conference specific hashtag on Twitter and facebook.

I still have mixed feelings on the costume contest, but I will say this. The costumes people chose? Were pretty cool. One woman had a cardboard Bumblebee costume which she could kneel and lay forward in and it actually formed a car. That was some stellar costume engineering! As you can see in the photo above another woman made a Beaker costume. There was a group which did a 20+ person ensemble costume with characters from the Wizard of Oz. Kimberly Clark, a group of probably 30+ people, dressed up as their Brand/Division superheros with coordinating shirts and capes. So there were Huggies superheros and Kleenex superheros. And our SWE president was a suffragette.

As the iScream social was winding down one of the women I'd met on the food tour invited me to the "Over the Hill Suite". Now this is something of a secret club. I'd heard rumors of it before, but never been invited. It's a group of older SWE members, many past presidents of the national organization, who reserve a large suite, provide drinks, and invite people in to chat, catch up, and make new friends. I had a lovely time and was able to connect with a woman who may be providing leadership coaching for our section next year.

It made for a long day (I didn't leave their suite until after 11), but it was well worth it.

SWE Conference--Food Tour

After getting set up in my hotel room, I took a nice stroll down to the Baltimore Conference Center. It's funny how much closer it seems when you aren't handling eleventy zillion bags. I took my sweet time and some pictures.

Once I arrived at the conference center I met up with my group to tour Little Italy and we hopped on a bus. After aimlessly driving in circles through Little Italy, our tour guide flagged us down and showed our driver where to park. And with that, our adventure began!

SWE Conference--Getting to Baltimore

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Conference is always a highlight of my year. I've been attending, whenever I am able, since 2005, with the last one being in 2010. Conference is full of entirely much too much to pack into one blog entry, so we'll break it into pieces.

The day the conference kicked off, I woke up entirely too early, got ready and was heading out the door when Jack knocked a plate off the counter. I swept up the big pieces, alerted a still sleeping hubby to the potential for impalement and ran out the door. By the time I made it to my gate everyone was already boarded and they were greeting me by name. Oops.

Posing Penguins in Chattanooga

You know what's better than a penguin hamming it up for you camera? Watching him then zip back and forth in the tank before literally springing out of the water, landing on his feet next to a couple of friends and being all "oh hey, what's up?".

Absolutely amazing!

We had the chance earlier this month to visit the Aquarium in Chattanooga. We only made it through the (smaller) half, the ocean exhibit, but we were educated and entertained the entire time we were there. I would go back in a heartbeat.