The Ohio Celebration of Women in Computing inspired, intrigued and informed 175 amazing women on February 18-19, 2011 at its fourth biennial conference held at the Mohican Resort in Perrysville, Ohio. Students and faculty from 26 universities and colleges, and industry representatives from 10 companies, traveled from as far as Texas to share their career paths and research, gain new knowledge and perspectives, and celebrate the different experiences
they bring to the field of computing. In a field were women are underrepresented, OCWIC empowers women to see that they are the diversity that will create the next generation of technology.

Featured speakers included: Sharon Nunes, Vice President of Big Green Innovations in IBM Systems & Technology Group; Maria Klawe, President, Harvey Mudd College and former Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton; Casey Moran, Chief Technology Officer responsible for Client Services at General Electric; Jennifer Marsman, Microsoft Developer Evangelist; Joanne McGrath-Cohoon, Senior Research Scientist, National Center for Women & Information Technology; and Kimberly McLeod, Program Manager, Anita Borg Institute.

Other sessions included resume reviews, a career fair, panels on graduate school and industry careers, student poster contests (in which the winners received all-expense-paid scholarships to the national Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference), and presentations and lightning talks given by graduate students and faculty on their research and outreach activities. Breakout sessions included Acing the Microsoft Interview, Crushing Gender Stereotypes and College Life Balance. A new addition this year was a Recruiting Women into Your Computing Major workshop specifically for faculty.

OCWIC thanks its generous sponsors who made this conference possible. Industry sponsors included: (gold sponsors) General Electric, Microsoft Research, Cardinal Health, Anita Borg
Institute; (silver sponsor) Eaton; and (bronze sponsors) AK Steel, and the Cleveland Clinic. University sponsors included: (gold sponsors) School of Engineering and Applied Science at Miami University, University of Dayton; (silver sponsors) The Ohio State University, Bowling Green State University, Franklin University, Computer Science and Software Engineering Department at Miami University; and (bronze sponsors) University of Akron, and Wright State University. If you would like to get involved with the Ohio Celebration of Women in Computing, we encourage you join in on the excitement by contacting us and getting on our mailing list.

The complete program, resources for participants, and contact information are available on the OCWIC website http://www.ocwic.org/. Keep checking that site over time for
announcements about OCWIC 2013.

OCWiC General Chair
Ms. Rachelle Kristof Hippler, BGSU Firelands
rkristo@bgsu.edu

Thanks to your support, the Ohio Celebration of Women in Computing 2011 will be lots bigger and more awesome than we expected.

Six months ago when we started planning the conference, our sponsors showed their generosity and support by pledging enough funds to cover our conference logistics, food and accommodations for our attendees. Because of them we were able to create budgets and move forward with our planning.

Four months ago we were so honored to have three wonderfully accomplished technical women agree to be featured speakers for the program: Sharon Nunes, IBM, Casey Moran, GE and Maria Klawe, Harvey Mudd College.

And when our CFP closed in December, we were again overwhelmed by the response. There were more papers, panels and talk program proposals than ever before. So, in addition to the featured speakers, the program will have eight faculty technical talks, six graduate student technical presentations, five lightning talks, two career panels, three workshops and a variety of BoF and posters.

And recently, when registration for OCWiC 2011 closed at 5pm on Friday, January 13th, we were astonished that the number of people wanting to attend the conference was so far beyond our wildest expectations. In fact, the number of professionals, faculty, grad and undergrad students increased nearly 70% over the past.

So these have been nice problems to have: too many friends, too many interesting sessions to attend, too much love and support.

The OCWiC2011 Planning Committee thanks the Ohio universities, colleges and industries, professionals, faculty, administrators, and students for their generous support and encouragement. We look forward to a conference on February 18-19th that is has more women, more technology and more celebration than ever.

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Bettina Bair
OCWiC2011 Planning Committee
http://www.ocwic.org/committee2011