This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the WE Local San Jose conference hosted by the Society of Women Engineers. It was two days and started off with an inspiring keynote speaker, Marie Hatter, from KeySight technologies.

Day 1

She talked about her journey as an engineer and the potential of Artificial Intelligence especially for sustainable energy solutions. It’s amazing to see female engineers also be strong leaders and as someone who is still very new to the industry I loved learning about her past experiences with AI and what she predicts for the future.

After the keynote speaker (and eating the most delicious cranberry and jam muffin) I had the chance to volunteer at my college’s boutique table. We were selling our own merch and I got the chance to connect with female engineers from all over the west coast. Students and representatives from Colorado to Washington all flew down to attend WE Local.

One of the best things about these conferences is meeting people who you might’ve never met before and talk about their majors and interests. Learning about what brought them to SWE and the projects they’re pursuing is one of my favorite things to talk with other students.

After volunteering a few of us went to the research panels that were there for the undergraduate competition and we had a lot of fun reading them and talking about our own research experiences. I believe that doing research no matter your major is a very important experience and helps you learn how to work on real world problems and collaborate with others.

It increases your skills in general because no matter how many tutorials you watch or textbooks you read, until you attempt something, you won’t truly understand or learn how to do it.

Later on, I attended a session about Gen-AI and the systems behind generative AI. The speaker was a senior principal engineer at Intel and talked about the technology used to create generative AI and the challenges for sustainability in the future. As someone who will be taking classes in machine learning and AI in the coming semesters I was interested in hearing what the process is behind Gen-AI.

And then after I ate a very delicious lunch which consisted of a variety of wraps and salads. And then the MOST mouthwatering cookie EVER. I don’t know a single person who didn’t have at least a few cookies on their plate.

After that I just hung around with a few of my friends and met more people from other colleges and companies. I was looking forward to the 3pm session which was about Advocating for Women’s health. As someone who is very passionate about the FemTech sector, which is using technology to improve women’s health, I was excited to attend this session. The FemTech sector is still relatively new, not even a decade old, so to be able to discuss and meet people also interested in this field was a dream come true.

The speaker, Debra Kimberling, did mostly talk about menopause but it was still interesting to hear about the symptoms and also the challenges of going through menopause in the workplace. And right after I attended a session from a senior from my college.

Neha Washikar talked about her experiences as an intern and how to leave an impact even as an intern no matter what company. This was very helpful to me and I know I will use her tips on talking to the managers and connecting with coworkers and going beyond the initial conversations to make real connections.

And then to end the day off we had our ending event of the day which was a celebration where we had a lot of good snacks and did a raffle. I didn’t win anything but one of my friends won a self-care basket!

Day 2

The next morning we got to go a bit later so I took the chance to sleep in and arrived at 10am! There was a panel on working together as female engineers and once again they gave us some delicious food.

After the panel we were all excited to go to the career fair and talk to all the companies such as Lockheed Martin, Keysight Technologies , Honeywell, Lam Research, and so many more!

I printed my resumes ahead of time and also flyers for my SWE event where we invite industry members to connect with our students. The lines were long but I know a lot of people who waited hours to talk to recruiters. So I’m proud of my fellow SWE members who are opportunistic and dedicated in furthering their career.

I went in and out of a few interesting sessions because they were scheduled at the same time such as lessons learned while building a GPU cloud or semiconductor plans for cybersecurity. And then at 1pm it was lunch and we got the chance to eat those AMAZING cookies once again plus wraps and sandwiches.

And then I hung out near our boutique and talked to different representatives that came to our table to buy merch. Afterwards I attended a session on AI and we finished up the conference with a closing keynote reception on engineering resilience by Ucheonye Maple.

That’s it! This was my first ever conference, and I’m really happy I went. It was a great experience and I’m glad I got to attend alongside my fellow SWE members and that we all had a lot of fun and learned a lot.

If you have the opportunity to go to a WE local conference or any SWE conference, I would totally recommend it! I’m grateful mine was so close to me and that I got the chance to attend.

I would love to hear your experience with conferences especially if you’ve attended this one! Let me know in the comments and I will also answers any questions anyone might have. Thank you for reading.