The Carolinas Women in Computing Conference is back! The event – geared towards college women in computing – takes place at IT-oLogy on Friday, February 17 and Saturday, February 18. This is a do-not-miss event for all college women interested in IT and computing! Visit www.carolinaswic.org for more information. We are introducing a top 10 List for CWIC 2012…Here are #10-6! Stay tuned for #5-1!

Top 10 Reasons to Attend CWIC 2012:

#10 Available Scholarships!

There are lots of student scholarships available through the Grace Hopper Regional Consortium with funds from the NSF (http://ghregionalconsortium.org/upcoming.cfm). These scholarships are made available to students so that money will not be a hindrance to attending CWIC 2012. Faculty may also request funding for overnight hotel stay. In awarding scholarships, we will give first priority to poster and lightning talk presenters. Apply now: http://www.carolinaswic.org/registrationscholarships.html

#9.  A great environment to present a poster! 

If you’ve conducted research, you probably have a research poster. Submit an abstract for your poster to the conference web site: http://www.carolinaswic.org/call-for-participation.html

If you have not conducted research, there are still lots of ways to participate. Ethical issues, social issues and curricular issues of computing are sources of natural topics. At a recent similar regional conference in Chicago, poster titles included: “Attracting Girls to Programming through Alice”, “Asynchronous Access to Friends in a Social Network”, “Fusing Computer Science and the Fine Arts”, “Creating Community for the Technology Good”, “Comparison of CS Education in Russia and the USA” and “A Computer Science Circle”. These titles help one to see how easy it is to create a poster. We can provide poster boards at the conference, if you bring some printouts. Let us know if you need them.

Every student who participates in the poster sessions will acquire a nice supplement for her resume.

Consider pairing up or even tripling up to design a poster. The Web site contains hints for poster preparation. 

In addition, the top graduate student poster winner and the top undergraduate student poster winner will each receive a scholarship that will fully find their attendance at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing next fall in Baltimore, Maryland. 

We would be happy to call you to help you brainstorm poster ideas!

#8 Opportunity to give a Lightning Talk!

Lightning Talks are very short (probably no more than 5 minutes) talks. We’ll know the exact length, after we see how many proposals come in. As in the case of Posters (see #9), there are two tracks for Lightning Talks:  Research and Ethical/Societal/Curricular Issues. The Indiana WIC in 2008 had Lightning Talks with these titles:  “Socialization in an Online World”, “5 Ideas in 5 Minutes for Women in CS Organizations”, “Appealing to Different Learning Styles in Computer Science”, “One Laptop Per Child”, “Gender Differences in the use of Social Networking Sites”, “Collaborative Learning Environments: Reducing Dropouts in Public Schools in Chennai, India”, “Variations on Matrix Multiplication Algorithms:  Summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates”, “Inner Peace in Outer Space: An HCId approach to habitability in a high stress environment” and “Self-Healing Database Management Systems”.  Occasionally, two women share a Lightning Talk.

Submit a proposal for a Lightning Talk today:  http://www.carolinaswic.org/call-for-participation.html

#7:  Boost Your Resume

We’ve talked about two ways to participate in CWIC in #8 and #9. You can include the poster or Lightning Talk presentations in your resume. (Feel free to submit more than one proposal too!) Having a presentation in your resume demonstrates initiative, motivation and academic competence.   Developing and giving the presentation provide you with benefits too:  confidence, encouragement and an introduction to the professional world. Brainstorm ideas for proposals with your advisers and friends. Remember that you can share a presentation with a friend. 

Also remember that the undergraduate and graduate poster winners will be given a full-ride trip to the Grace Hopper Celebration next fall in Baltimore,Md. If you have not been to a Grace Hopper before find out about it at http://gracehopper.org/

#6 Opportunities to join a discussion of a topic that you care about in “Birds of a Feather” Sessions

BIRDS-of-FEATHER or BoF sessions are informal discussion groups on specific topics of interest. Suitable topics for discussion include (but are not limited to) careers, education, challenges, student organizations or any other topic related to computing. BoF sessions may be organized by one or more students, faculty, and industry professionals. Submit a brief proposal now http://www.carolinaswic.org/call-for-participation.html

Do we have you hooked yet? Go register today: www.carolinaswic.org!