BY AMY YARNALL

Women in technology industries and academia across the nation convened at the sixth annual Grace Hopper Celebration of “Women in Computing” conference.

Event sponsorship has increased by 50 percent since it started in 1994 and includes Cisco Systems Inc., San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp., Cupertino-based Symantec Corp., and San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc.

Held at the Town & Country Hotel in Mission Valley from Oct. 4-7, the conference was hosted by two technology groups: The Association for Computing Machinery and the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, a nonprofit organization based in Palo Alto that seeks to advance women into technology and leadership roles.
The conference exceeded its anticipated draw by a third, with more than 1,200 people attending. Two years ago, the conference counted 899 attending in Chicago.

Corporate participation is also up.

Companies continue to increase the number of participants they send to the conference by 20 percent annually, said Telle Whitney, president and chief financial officer of the Anita Borg Institute.

Among them, Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard Co. is sending more than 40 of its employees this year, Whitney said.

“Technology is a really important part of our economic future,” she said.

Whitney left the technology industry to take over the institute after Anita Borg, her close friend and institute founder, died of a brain tumor in 2003, at age 54. Borg and Whitney founded the conference together in 1994 and Whitney continues to host the event with the support of nine staff members.

“If you think about the worldwide picture, there simply aren’t enough people to do the technology jobs,” Whitney said.

The technology industry is a great, untapped resource for women and Whitney said she believes women need to start taking advantage of it.

“This conference is a wonderful place where women in various technologies can come together,” said Fran Berman, director of UC San Diego’s Supercomputer Center. “These women have conversations not around the issues of their companies but of the commonalities they share with other women.”

Berman ran the Technology Leaders Workshop at the local conference, where industrial leaders collaborated on what needs to happen in the workplace.