Encouraging participation in computer science with CONNECT

Although professional networking is vital to career building, college-age students may not have acquired sufficient skills to network effectively. Several conferences, such as the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) of Women in Computing and the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, now exist to counteract feelings of isolation and encourage participation of women and minorities in computer science. To enable conference attendees to take full advantage of the potential for mentoring at these events, we have developed CONNECT (Creating Open Networks aNd Expanding Connections with Technology), a technology-based system that helps conference attendees meet and exchange information. This paper reports the results of deploying the CONNECT system at the GHC conference on two different years. Although the results were generally positive, with about 75% of the survey respondents indicating they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the support provided by CONNECT, there were also a number of suggestions for improvement. We review these results and provide a list of guidelines for creating an effective tool to encourage conference attendees, especially college students, to network and form communities.