GHCI 2017 - What is your access modifier?

While I am attending GHCI 2017, I am off-work, but the “nerdy” side of me is never off-programming. So, today I decided to apply Object Oriented Principals, not to Java code for a change - but to my experience at GHCI.

I have information classified into 3 abstraction layers.

1. Public:

Print “Hello, World!”. Yes, the entire world, this is for you - you can know about my GHCI experience here at - https://keshashah.blogspot.in/2017/11/ghci-2017-day-1.html

2. Protected:

This layer comes with a twist. For you to access this information, unlike OOPs, you do not need to inherit me ( I don’t really mind inheriting you, until I get a place in your will ;) ) You can have access to this information if we all inherit from same parent class “Morgan Stanley” \m/

If you are authorized to view, you can drop in a request/email id to view it when you open the link below.

Khufiya Khazzana: Postmortem of booths:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x4dsNOlJ9fvem3vvuFhdz1Hrxcfi55-d2OE7OAX3Vvk/edit?usp=sharing

3. Private:

You can add - static, final, abstract, singleton, volatile or whatever keyword that you can think of, coz the information is only with “I, Me and Myself” :P
$chmod 700.

Please don’t ask for information link here, because I don’t have any - oh, you had wished that reader!

If you really wanna know #3, I don’t mind some chocolates or cookies. India is corrupted and I have no plans to eradicate bribery ;)

If you like the articles above, I don’t mind you sending an email to my boss saying how awesome I am - just kidding! You can following me on either of the follow to get more updates about women in tech, the cool things that I am a part of or random musings.

1. LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/keshashah
2. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kesha.shah
3. Blog: https://keshashah.blogspot.in

GHCI 2017

On 16th of November 2017, more that 3000 women technologist made their way to BIEC, Bangalore to arrive at THE largest celebration of diversity and inclusion - none other than Grace Hopper Conference India. This is not a "feminist movement"- no grudges against Men In Tech - Its just that a bunch of people come together on these days to find solutions to the much ignored problems around women. I started from Whitefield at 7 am and reached the venue around 9 am- That's true 2hrs of travelling within Bengaluru (which is just 2x I do everyday!)

The location this year was a well-selected destination, spacious and ventilated - especially for the career fair exhibition centre. After registrations, I headed towards the key-note speaker where Pankajam Sridevi, MD at ANZ, had some great tips for Women In Tech. I am a secret admirer of this lady, from the time I met her during the roadshow for GHCI at ANZ, till today. Co-incidentally I heard that "right" words from her, during the "right" time. I wish to meet her today and have a mentor-mentee bond throughout life! She is how I would see myself in coming year - my #roleModel

"Be the change, don’t wait for someone else to help. Carry your own power." - Pankajam Sridevi

"Learn Listen Link" says Geetha Kannan

The volunteers and staff that make #GHCI17 happen:

After that, I headed towards Morgan Stanley booth area, where I represented the firm MS, explained people visiting the booth about the work that MS does, my work, learnt about their interests and connected them to right resource for opportunities here. There were about 1030+ women - from both campus and co-orporate world. It was so amazing to hear their experiences - each one had a different story to tell. 

              

Not all faces from a huge crowd looked new - there were some old faces as well. We had like a mini-reunion of DA-IICT folks - though not all!

It is almost like a ritual that I meet Geetha Kannan , Kamala Srinivisasan, Telle Whitney and some great leaders at GHC every year now.

I did get a chance to pull out some time and head towards conference centre, where there were posters, lectures and sessions, where my friend Heena was presenting her poster.

After lunch, I moved around different booths at career fair - to get a flavour of work they were doing. I also got a chance to visit Red Hat Booth, the open source organisation that I am closely associated with. They immediately recognised me and warmly welcomed me. For readers who are not aware, I was awarded the first-ever Women In Open Source Award in 2015 and was also invited to their annual Red Hat Summit in San Francisco, California. That was my first-ever to States.

I also did get a chance to meet Suswar Ganu, at Deutsche Bank. When I interned in Morgan Stanley, I worked on the application which was written by him a couple of years back. Now, when I am working as FTE, mostly on credit valuation adjustments of swaps - he was the one of the "first" ones to work on Interest Rate Swaps with RBI about 10 years ago. Such a co-incidence, that my work has always been in the same domain as his..

There are some amazing stories of meeting other inspirational folks as well, but the post is running too long, so I will conclude it here. It was an amazing experience to be part of GHCI at Day 1. Looking forward to DAY2 - I am writing this as I am on my way to the venue :)

Technophilia - 1st Prize - Why am I not happy?

Technophilia is a techno-innovation challenge at Morgan Stanley. This year, we came together and created a Robo- Venture Capitalist. The valuation of pre-revenue(startup) companies is very difficult, due to lack of publicly available financial statements and negative cashflows. The private equity investor often undervalue(Hotmail) or overvalue(Flipkart) the true value of the company, either for PE or IPO or M&A. Through this challenge, a team of 5 grads came together for a month and built a POC which gives the credit rating of a startup and its valuation with good probability. The proprietary algorithm evaluated the startups based on various parameters in these 6 categories: Leadership, Market Competition, Product Innovation, Financials, Social Media and Branding and Transparency. The app was made using R-Shiny framework

Out of 80+ ideas that were submitted to Technophilia across all locations in India, 17 got selected for implementation. All teams were provided 1 month of implementation time. The ideas were then presented to ED across Mumbai and Bangalore, out of which 6 teams made it to the finals. The final judging panel were MDs of Morgan Stanley and each team were given 5 minutes for presentation and demo and 5 minutes for audience+judge's Q&A.

Robo-Venture Capitalist secured 1st place amongst all ideas and implementation that were done this year. It was well -received by the panelist and the audience. We are planning to make the POC into a prod-like product with several inputs from IBD division.

The winners were promised an Ipad over email. So, after winning the challenge, we were all excited to receive much-awaited Ipads. But, we keep waiting for the much awaited Ipad for 1.5 months after the final event, until which we had no clue about the product. On enquiring with the organising team about the version, they answered diplomatically  that they weren't sure, but would make sure its "latest" one. Finally, after abt 2 months, we received our prizes - BUT IT WAS A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT FOR ME.

My father asked in an excited voice - "Beta, is it 64 GB or 128 GB?". I down-counted him and replied in a low voice, shaming over the pride I had for my firm " Its 32 GB and just Wifi (no cellular connectivity)". Who calls such a thing "latest" to the "developers" who had put their blood and sweat to develop an innovative challenge POC beyond their daily work?

The management should realise that developer needs BETTER CONFIGURATION. Just spending about 5k per participant, i.e. increasing the budget by 25k, they could have provided everyone with 128 GB. Or atleast 2k*5 = 10k, it would have been upgraded to 64GB atleast.

PS: My phone has 64 GB RAM and I do run out of space on it !!

Showcase - Show you talent - 1st Prize

All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy - I am sure you might have known this sexist (:P) English proverb, but the same extends for Girls too :)

The university days, are ofcourse filled with fun, activities, cultural events, movie nights, etc every other day. But, gone are those days when you enter the professional world!

Showcase is a theme based act/skit performance challenge, organised annually.

2016: Theme: Anti-Itching Lotion Act

(PS: You can find me at 06:20- 07:30 in the video)

Though, we did not win the competition, we did learn a lot from our mistakes and promised to make a rocking entry back again the following year.

Fastforward....

2017: Theme: The Unreality of Reality Show Act

(PS: You can find me at 03:55-04:40 and again from 06:12-07:15 in the video)

This year, we had a bang-on performance with securing 1st place amongst 6 teams that participated.. :woot: :woot:

Work hard, party harder... \m/

Stay tuned for more updates of Showcase next year ;)