How I went from zero to two proposals in two weeks

Tonight, I submitted two proposals to this year's Grace Hopper Celebration. This is a big achievement for me.

Up till a month ago, I had never considered submitting to a conference as I haven't done any 'serious' computer science research. But here's how I managed to author two submissions - a Birds of a Feather on starting Women in Computing groups and a panel on teaching testing.

I started working on the BOF about three weeks ago, based on the work my friend and I have done at Stanford and Harvey Mudd respectively. Since I wanted the BOF to comprise student panelists, I asked professors I knew to put me in touch with the leaders of their local ACM-W chapter.

For the panel, I wanted to investigate approaches to teaching testing and how they prepare (or fail to prepare) students for industry careers that involve testing. As I hoped to find both education researchers and experienced testers, I expected that finding panelists would be more difficult.

To my surprise, I found four panelists from different organizations in two days! After nailing down the panel, writing the proposal was straightforward as the panel had complementary expertise :-) To find them, I used all of these strategies:

• Asking professors for referrals
• Asking alumni friends for referrals
• Searching on LinkedIn within my network
• Cold-contacting professors with relevant research

From this experience, I would give the following advice to would-be proposers:

• Start early! As early as possible. I wish I had come up with my ideas earlier.
• Attend the Q&A sessions on Facebook, they helped clarify my small questions about submissions.
• On a similar note, talking to my professors really helped direct my thought process.
• When finding panelists, use different strategies.
• It's okay if you're not an expert - a good panel will leverage diverse perspectives.