Posted by Skrud at Friday, March 14th 2008 at 12:01pm
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Tags: 3.141592, day, events, holidays, holy days, march, pi | no comments
Posted by Skrud at Tuesday, January 22nd 2008 at 3:47pm
It’s no secret how passionate I am about CUSEC: the Canadian University Software Engineering Conference. I’ve been attending it diligently every year since 2004, my first semester at university. Which makes CUSEC 2008 my fifth. I guess I’ve been in school for way too long.
This year I was an organizer for the first time, and settled happily into my role as Director of Promotions. My job was to find new head delegates and make sure that the conference was well advertised. What I actually did amounted more to making sure there was enough actual content out there to convince people to come to the conference. This meant pushing people to update the web site with stuff like FAQ’s, blogging about why people should attend CUSEC, advertising it to people on Facebook, and – back at Concordia – speaking in classrooms and selling tickets.
And now I’m co-chair for CUSEC 2009. Because I refuse to disappear from CUSEC just because I’m graduating this spring.
This year was a blast! We had more delegates than ever before, so many that we were running out of places to put them, with people having to stand in the back during some of the speeches. This means that next year we’ll need some more space. Maybe we can even move into the giant auditorium (”Le Grand Salon”).
Another great thing this year: the students were unusually outgoing. We’ve never had more than 75 people show up for the pub night parties, but this year we must’ve had about 200 people. I got to experience what it was like to run around a crowded bar with plates of food, delivering nachos and quesadillas and chicken wings to hungry delegates. We’ll need to find a bigger place than Brutopia. On the second day of the conference, so many people were running up to me asking “so where are we going to party tonight?” … We had nothing planned, so I told them I was heading to Pub Distillerie. I think this was a mistake, since the bar was so packed that I couldn’t even get in… (this was after redirecting people to McKibbins, too!)
CUSEC has always had the ability to win the hearts and minds of delegates and speakers alike. And this year, as always, we’ve had a stellar lineup of speakers. Unfortunately, being an organizer means I sometimes have to miss speeches in order to run errands, or prepare for the next speech, or set up another event. Unfortunately Tim Bray’s opening keynote was one of these. Luckily we videotaped all the speeches (and we’ll be putting them up as soon as we can). I was really happy to read about Tim’s experience at the conference.
One of our speakers whom I was really excited about bringing was Jeff Atwood. He is the author of codinghorror.com and practically one of my heroes. I learn a lot from reading his blog daily, even if he’s writing about something seemingly obvious, because he often puts things into a context that I didn’t think of. You should read what he wrote about his first day at CUSEC.
Another speaker that seemed to surprise everyone with shock value, was Zed Shaw. Zed not only fulfilled his duty as a keynote speaker by giving some important life lessons during his keynote speech (i.e., don’t get an MBA because the first thing they do to geeks who get an MBA is lobotomized them), but he was at every party, every event, and hung around with delegates for the entire conference. We got to learn a lot from him, just from hanging out and talking to him.
One of the best parts of CUSEC is the fact that the speakers who come to the conference are often willing to meet and chat with students outside the context of the lectures, completely informally. Jeff Atwood, for example, came to the pub night, and we taught him and his wife to play Bunnies. Kate Hollenbach was there too, and I’m told she drank everyone under the table. Of course it’s not only drinking. We had students interview the speakers on camera, for example, and hopefully we can get those edited into a nice montage and put it up on YouTube to seed advertising for next year. :)
There is altogether way too much to talk about as far as CUSEC goes, and it only gets better each year.
Tags: 2008, 2009, cusec, events, soen | 2 comments
Posted by Skrud at Friday, November 23rd 2007 at 8:00pm
This past summer was undoubtedly the most intriguing, influential and fun period of my life I’ve ever had. Looking through my archive of pictures in iPhoto include trips to the Biodome, the Imagine Cup experience, no less than two trips to New York City, and dozens if not hundreds parties. At the centre of it all is the internship I held for four months at IBM. I had a blast working there, I got to meet some incredibly smart and interesting people, and I learned more about opportunities out there than I thought. I could write pages upon pages about my experience as an Extreme Blue technical intern – but I’d rather talk about it person. Instead, I’ll tell you how this summer changed me completely.
I’m moving to Ottawa
The biggest surprise of the summer came to me during my first week of school. I got a call from IBM offering me a full time job, starting July 2008, in the Garbage Collection team for their Java Virtual Machine. I remember showing up to my interview, barely having had time to read through a research paper on “Uniprocessor Garbage Collection Techniques” and wearing jeans and a t-shirt that read “I’m in it for the π”. They asked me tons of questions on C programming – which I live, eat, sleep and breathe. It was a long interview, about two and a half hours! But I got the job, and as of July 2008, I’ll be moving away from my beloved Montreal.
I can’t even begin to describe how intimidating it is for me to be leaving, and it’s something that’s been consuming my thoughts since September. Naturally, I should be nervous… and I still have quite a few months to psyche myself up for it. But it’s going to be a huge change. On the one hand, I’m relieved that I don’t have to spend the next 8+ months looking for a job. I understand that I’m extremely lucky – but I feel like I replaced one burden with another: the anxiety of leaving!
I know I shouldn’t be too worried about moving to Ottawa. First of all, it’s not at all that far from Montreal. It’s relatively cheap and easy to get back here for the weekends and see all my friends. I already have some great friends in Ottawa, so I won’t be starting completely from scratch at building a new social network. Ottawa also has a great collection of pubs, despite its small size. And I also know that I won’t lose my current friends, or my team. I know that I have the best set of friends and that a mere two-hour drive isn’t going to get between them and me. So why, then, am I still so anxious?
At the heart of the matter, I suspect, is the fact that I’ll be leaving school. Concordia has been a wonderful place for me. I’ve learned so much, and made such close connections with so many people. I’ve gotten involved with a number of student associations, like ECA, and I’ve given up countless hours volunteering for all kinds of events. The student community in Engineering at Concordia is a fabulous one, and it pains me to have to say goodbye to it and I know that when the time comes, it won’t be easy.
I’m worried that I’ll be forgotten. These days, I can walk through the Hall building and run into tons of people whom I know, that say “Hi!” and smile as I walk past, and it makes me feel good to be recognized. I suppose that’s what happens after spending close to five years meandering through the same corridors. I know that once I’m gone, life at Concordia is going to continue to move along and move forward, and that it’ll do so without me – and that’s what bothers me. I’ve been personally involved in so many things here, I’ve had a hand in organizing so many conferences, trips, activities, and parties that it will feel weird to me to see those same things happening without me. Maybe I’m just being selfish.
Everything that’s going on now is the current stage of a chain of events that started way back during the CUSEC 2007 conference. The catalyst was Dominique, and the impact that she has had on my life in the past year is profound. She convinced me (and she actually did have to twist my arm a bit) to apply to the Extreme Blue program in the first place. At the time I thought it was just going to be a summer job, but look at what came out of it! When I was working at IBM this summer, Dominique was the supervisor for both Extreme Blue teams in Montreal (and she was great to work with!). And when she found out that OOPSLA was coming to Montreal, it was Dominique who told me about it and mentioned the Student Volunteer program, without which I never would have gone. I’ve really got to find a way to thank her properly. I don’t think a mention on my blog counts for nearly enough!
Tags: 2007, anxiety, events, extremeblue, ibm, work | 4 comments
Posted by Skrud at Wednesday, October 31st 2007 at 12:55pm
It was barely a week before the conference when they announced that Kathy Sierra would be a surprise special guest keynote speaker at ooPSLA. The second I read that on the web site I was excited. I adore Kathy Sierra. Her blog has offered countless insights on software engineering, usability, passion and people.
I saw Kathy speak at CUSEC 2006, and it still sticks in my head as one of (if not the) best presentation at CUSEC. Ever. So even though she was giving the “Creating Passionate Users” speech at ooPSLA, and even though that was the same talk I had already seen, I made sure to attend Kathy’s keynote – and give her greetings from Ed.
Kathy hinted that she might be coming back to the blogging world, and I sincerely hope she does. The world needs people like her, even if it doesn’t always deserve her.
Tags: 2007, conference, events, oopsla | 1 comment
Posted by Skrud at Friday, October 26th 2007 at 6:51pm
Following the Fred Brooks keynote speech, I went to the coffee break room to caffeinate before going to the Kathy Sierra presentation. I was minding my own business, sipping some coffee, reading my RSS feeds, chatting with some friends from UVic; until they walked off to go their presentations. I noticed out of the corner of my eye two old guys putting their jackers on the chairs around my table and sitting down. Looking up, I was faced with Fred Brooks and David Parnas. Wow!. These two guys practically created software engineering as we know it. What do you say to them?
I told Dr. Parnas about the time I saw him speak at CUSEC 2004: That one presentation was an extremely influential moment of my life. I remember he was talking about the importance of software quality, and how it needs to be engineered as oppose to hacked together by a rogue band of coders. Most importantly, I remember looking up at Dr. Parnas giving that speech and thinking “that’s what I want to do”. As soon as I got back to school following that conference, I applied to transfer my major from Computer Science to Software Engineering. I think that was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life, and I thanked Dr. Parnas for that.
David Parnas replied to me: “Thanks for that! That actually just made my day.”
And Fred Brooks added: “As well it should!”
And I got a picture with both of them.
Tags: 2007, acm, computerscience, conference, events, oopsla, soen | 2 comments
