The Grace Hopper Celebration has been around since 1994, and for a lot of people, it's the event for women in tech. It's where students land their ...
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I was devastated to see this event was cancelled for this year. Lately it's felt like 2 steps forward 3,000 steps back. Also, I feel like I'm not actually seeing anywhere near enough coverage of the fact that GHC isn't happening this year. We need to be more upset, more outraged. We can't just accept this and we can't get overwhelmed by it either or it will be death by a thousand cancelled conferences.
Similar feelings. With energy and tenacity we keep going. ❤️
Really well said, Jess! Heartbreaking to see a historic event like this struggling, and very telling of our current environment. Hopefully the pendulum can swing back someday, but a lot of damage will have already been done.
This is really sad to hear, Jess.
Conferences may disappear, but the connections and communities they helped build don’t have to.
I’ve always believed that some of the most meaningful things we can do in tech are surprisingly simple: share what we know, encourage someone who’s just starting out, and make room for voices that deserve to be heard.
I hope you still get the opportunity to host that panel. It sounds like a conversation worth having.
Thanks for sharing this.
A powerful and thought-provoking reflection. 💜 The cancellation of such an influential event is a reminder that meaningful progress requires more than words—it requires sustained investment, genuine commitment, and community support. Even when major platforms disappear, mentorship, advocacy, and amplifying underrepresented voices can keep the momentum alive. Diversity in tech shouldn’t depend on trends or budgets; it should be part of the industry’s foundation. Thank you for highlighting why this work still matters. 👏
I hadn't ever attended Grace Hopper...but I always loved knowing it was there.
It’s disappointing to see an event with such a long history face this situation. Communities like Grace Hopper offer more than networking; they create opportunities for mentorship, career growth, and a sense of belonging. Your point about the sponsorship gap is especially important because low attendance may reflect a lack of employer support rather than a lack of interest. I hope the community finds a way to keep these opportunities alive.
Thanks for writing this, Jess. Your point that low registrations can be the same sponsorship gap in a different line item, with employers no longer paying for attendance, reframes the question from “do people want this?” to “who can afford to go?” That’s a useful distinction.
Since the big stages are harder to fund right now, a few smaller things can help keep the connections going:
Low-cost recurring formats. Local or virtual meetups, mentoring circles, and study groups need very little budget and keep relationships alive between big events.
Make the content reusable. Recording or writing up panels and talks lets people who couldn’t travel still benefit.
A small learning-budget ask. For people at companies, requesting funds for local events or memberships may be an easier yes than full conference travel.
I hope your panel on nontraditional paths into tech still finds a home, even if it’s virtual. That’s a conversation a lot of people need.
What makes this particularly troubling is that the disappearance of these spaces represents more than the loss of conferences. It can mean the gradual erosion of professional networks, mentorship opportunities, and pathways into an industry where access has never been distributed equally.
I think Kara raises an important concern about the cumulative impact of these cancellations, while Amanda's observation about the damage already being done deserves attention. Even if funding eventually returns, professional communities cannot always be rebuilt as quickly as their budgets were withdrawn.
There's also a structural issue worth examining. When opportunities for underrepresented professionals depend heavily on corporate sponsorship, their continuity becomes vulnerable to changes in corporate priorities. That raises an uncomfortable question: if inclusion is genuinely considered essential to innovation and talent development, why is the infrastructure supporting it so often treated as discretionary?
Your point about employer-funded attendance is especially insightful. Declining registrations can easily be interpreted as declining interest when they may actually reflect declining access. Those are two very different problems, requiring very different responses.
I appreciate your emphasis on individual action, particularly mentorship and advocacy. But I would add that grassroots resilience shouldn't become an excuse for institutional withdrawal. Personal commitment can sustain a community, but lasting opportunity also requires resources, accountability, and investment.
Perhaps the most important measure of an industry's commitment to inclusion isn't what it celebrates when budgets are generous, but what it chooses to preserve when priorities become difficult.
curious how you're scaling the mentorship matchmaking for a fully virtual GHC, are you leaning on profile similarity scores or a manual sign‑up flow? automated pairing usually hashes key attributes to compute a similarity matrix, then runs a greedy assignment to keep latency low
Thanks for Writing <3