Google Europe Anita Borg Scholarship Retreat 2008

Every year scholarship finalists and recipients are invited to visit Google’s Engineering Centre in Zurich for an all-expenses-paid retreat. The second Google Europe Anita Borg Scholarship Retreat was held from 3rd – 5th July 2008 in Zurich, Switzerland. In addition to free time for sightseeing and socialising, the formal part of the retreat included tech talks, workshops, and panels. All sessions were open to all research staff and engineers, and thus there was plenty of opportunity for the finalists to meet Googlers.

Topics covered many areas from the technical – including user experience, graph theory, algorithms, social networks and product engineering – to broader discussions on career choices and challenges in computer science. The retreat provided an opportunity for all finalists to get together, meet each other, network, share their experiences and create a community of leaders in the computer science field.

You can find out more about The Retreat through the YouTube video, photos, and from The Official Google Blog.

Agenda

Thursday, 3rd July 2008

Morning	Registration
12:30 pm	Lunch
02:00 pm	Welcome & Opening Remarks, Jennifer Trelewicz, Director of Engineering for the Russian Federation, Google Moscow, Russia
02:30 pm	Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship Background, Emily Nishi, Director, Global Diversity and Talent Inclusion, Google Mountain View, CA, US
03:00 pm	Tech talk: Focus on the User and all else will follow: User Experience Research and Design @ Google, Jennifer Gove, User Experience Research Manager, Google Mountain View, CA, US
04:15 pm	Afternoon Tea
04:45 pm	Women Engineers Panel: Life of a Technical Product at Google
06:00 pm	Tour of Google
07:00 pm	Dinner and Welcome Reception, Café Milliways, Google Zurich

Friday, 4th July 2008

08:30 am	Breakfast, Café Milliways, Google Zurich
09:30 am	Tech talk: Applications of Graph Theory to Analysis of Social Networks and Organizational Structure, Jennifer Trelewicz, Director of Engineering for the Russian Federation, Google Moscow, Russia
10:45 am	Morning Break
11:15 am	Career Panels: BSc / MSc Students: Going on for a PhD vs. Industry PhD Students: Industry vs. Academia
12:30 pm	Lunch: BBQ with review committee members and speakers
02:00 pm	Product Talk: Ads Quality at Google, Grace Kwak, Product Manager, Google Zurich, Switzerland
03:00 pm	Career Panel: Technical vs. Product Management Career Track
04:15 pm	Ice-cream social with Google Engineers and Researchers
05:00 pm	TGIF – Thank Goodness It’s Friday
06:30 pm	Tram to Hotel Zurichberg
08:00 pm	Dinner, Hotel Zurichberg

Saturday, 5th July 2008

8.30 am	Farewell Brunch
	Time to explore Zurich