Hopping good time

As I write this post, I’ve spent more than 12 hours soaking up keynotes, panel discussions and workshops on various issues around women in tech, chatted with reps of organizations ranging from The Walt Disney Company to the Federal Reserve, evangelized an idea for gender diversity certifications and been to parties thrown by recruiting organizations from Cisco, Twitter, Facebook, EA and the Fed.

I have picked up surprisingly little swag, considering that this is one of the major features of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing touted by everyone who’s ever been to one of these. So far, only one tee-shirt, a couple of totes, a mobile device charger and a few pens.

However, I’ve clocked more than 13K steps on my pedometer, and expect that I’ll only make it through the week by applications of Lidoderm patches and heavy doses of ibuprofen.

Tomorrow I have two breakfasts, a speed mentoring session, a couple of afternoon things, and six recruiter parties in the evening. One of them requires me to bluff my way through “Game of Thrones”. My plan is to wave my cocktail around and intone, “I drink, and I know things.” If pressed for how I feel about [plot point X] I’ll just grimace and say, “Intense.”

I expect someone will jump in to take over the conversation.