Following up on a Women in Scientific Computing Birds of a Feather social gathering last year, this year a proper diversity committee was established to plan an event. The diversity committee, Patricia Francis-Lyon (University of San Francisco), Katy Huff (University of California, Berkeley), Leah Silen (NumFOCUS), and me, planned at luncheon during the SciPy 2014 conference. The event sold out with 50 people in attendance. NumFOCUS sponsored the lunch as well as funded five attendees to the conference and lunch.
After people gathered, sat down, and had a chance to chat a little, our speaker, Elaine Kant, shared with us some of her experiences. Elaine told us some of her background, her experiences starting a business, and some thoughts about how to improve all people's experiences in the scientific computing community. Elaine's company, SciComp, does financial modeling and derivatives consulting. Afterward, there was a short discussion in which people started to share their views and experiences. There was also a call for continuing the conversation by starting a list of interested people. There appeared to be strong interest in having more time and space for an event next year.
