As day one of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing came to a close, members of the GroundTruth Project, who spent the day reporting for theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media’s team, joined host Rebecca Knight (@knightrm) to speak about their takeaways of the day.

Tori Bedford, associate producer at WGBH; Karis Hustad, reporter at Chicago Inno; and Pooja Sivaraman Women in Tech fellow, each covered various topics at the conference and recounted what they learned while scouring the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, TX, for people to interview.

A battle cry to continue the effort

Bedford began the discussion by noting that the conference has 15,000 men and women in attendance. While 14,000 are women, the number of men increased over the years with about 1,000 joining the conference that celebrates diversity in technology.

She discussed her interview with Dr. Rebecca Parsons, the CTO of ThoughtWorks Inc., who received an award from the Anita Borg Institute for being the most diverse and welcoming company to women.

“It’s based upon the recruitment, the retaining and the advancement of not just getting in and not just keeping women in, because you may just be keeping them in the same positions, but also advancing them and moving them up in their careers,” explained Bedford.

She was taken with Parsons acceptance speech, because the message was to celebrate but continue to do hard work to move forward.

The top talent

Hustad reported that the expo hall was packed with recruiters and noted that this is the busiest recruiting event she has seen in her life, with companies like Facebook, Snapchat and Google all vying for the most qualified people.

As she spoke to recruiters about why they were at Grace Hopper, they disclosed the need always to be looking for most qualified candidates, and because there is great talent at the event, they have to bring their A-Game if they want the top women technology talent.

A battle of the sexes in approaching jobs

While traversing the conference floor, Sivaraman chatted with a top executive at a gaming company about the importance of an event like Grace Hopper. This recruiter pointed out that at most career fairs, women tend to ask for internships while men go after the entry-level positions. The Grace Hopper conference levels the playing field, and the onus is on the recruiter to focus on quieter and less extroverted candidates.

The fellows have a long to-do list for day two. Stay tuned to find out more about what they uncover.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Anita Borg Institute’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Photo by SiliconANGLE