Posted by Skrud at Wednesday, January 30th 2008 at 5:39pm
Placing 2nd in the Quebec Engineering Competition was completely unexpected. I was there to have fun and attempt to solve interesting problems. I really didn’t expect us to come in second! What’s even more, is that we found out that the first place team beat us by only 0.7%. Wow! That’s extremely close! Luckily both teams get to advance to the national Canadian Engineering Competition in Waterloo.
The same weekend of the CEC, however, is the annual CS Games competition which is being hosted in Sherbrooke. I have spent the past month struggling to put together a team, and was extremely proud of the strong responses I got from computer science and software engineering students here at Concordia. We managed to register a compliment of two full teams, many of whom are in their first and second years of school. I couldn’t be happier! We’re going to bring these greenhorns to Sherbrooke for fun, friendly, nerdy competition and lots of partying. I’ve been coordinating with the team from ETS for us to share a bus down to Sherbrooke. They’ll be teaching our team French drinking songs while we’ll be teaching them the English ones. Cultural exchange for the win!
This is my last semester of school, and I’ve been looking forward to CS Games 2008 since … well, since the last CS Games. It’s my chance to go out with a bang, to party one last time with friends from all the Québec schools, a number of Ontario schools, and from all over North America. More than anything, I want to be the one to lead my team of mostly-freshmen to the battlefields of Université de Sherbrooke and show them what it means to represent your school, your friends and flaunt your knowledge and nerdly status. Then I get to pass along the torch, and these froshies will be the ones organizing the trip to CS Games next year. Maybe they can even get it hosted at Concordia in 2010! I have such high hopes for this new batch of students and I want to teach them everything I’ve learned over my years of student involvement. I’ll be able to get my team to mingle with other schools, forge alliances and friendships that will lead them on to be supreme powers in inter-university events. CS Games is my chance to do that; and I feel like it’s my last chance.
Now I’ve got myself stuck in this pretty sticky situation. CS Games and the Canadian Engineering Competition are mutually exclusive. They overlap completely, and there’s no way I can go to both. I can’t let down the other three members of my Consulting Engineering team – they’re convinced they need me. Apparently, in the national competition you’re allowed access to the internet, so my Google Fu will come in handy. Considering this is the first time Concordia has ever sent teams to the CEC, I would love to be a part of the inaugural team, boldly going where no Concordian has gone before. I want to be there to represent my university, and more importantly to represent my province. I’m proud to be a Québecker, and I want to join with the other Québec teams in drink and song and competition, especially before I move away to Ontario. While I’ve attended previous CS Games competitions, I’ve never been to CEC before. The pressure to attend CEC is terrible.
I wish I could fork a new process1 so that I could attend both competitions, then merge together again. But alas, there’s only one of me. I can’t go to both. I have no idea what I’m going to do … but I feel like I’m being torn apart and it’s depressing me. I put off thinking about it for the weekend, but now I can’t stop thinking about it.
Tags: cec, competition, concordia, csgames, life, party, school | 5 comments
Posted by Skrud at Wednesday, August 29th 2007 at 5:11pm
This has been the summer to remember. I haven’t been blogging what I’ve been doing, since I’ve spent all my time actually doing it. Work was amazing. Big Blue couldn’t have been better. And I finally moved downtown, so I’ve been partying harder/longer than I ever have before.
Now I’m settling into my new role as VP Academic of the ECA. Today, this meant going throughout the faculty and department offices asking department heads and associate deans, professors and TAs to be the victims of a dunk tank next Thursday. You’d be surprised at how positively most people reacted. :D
Frosh starts next Tuesday. Make sure to be there.
Tags: concordia, eca, events, frosh, school | no comments
Posted by Skrud at Sunday, June 10th 2007 at 10:28am
Here are some of the things I’ve been up to recently:
- Moved out for the summer, and am now living downtown, in the McGill ghetto, with Harley. What’s so awesome about the ghetto? I’m within easy walking distance to all the Crescent bars and all the St-Denis bars. I can get to the Plateau as easily as I can get to Concordia. And I’m only two blocks away from Benelux.
- I started working at IBM in the Extreme Blue program, and it’s been incredible so far.
- I was elected VP Academic of the ECA and already started working on getting stuff done for the new year with an awesome team of execs.
- As I write this, I’m waiting for a taxi to come take me to the airport. I’m off to Seattle for a full week to participate in the Imagine Cup North American Finals.
I’ve got so much more stuff planned for this summer I just hope I’ll have time to do all of it!
Tags: events, metablogging, school, summer, travel, work | no comments
Posted by Skrud at Saturday, January 20th 2007 at 12:00am
Of all the student conferences I’ve been to, CUSEC is repeatedly and consistently the best. I started with CUSEC 2004, immediately after my first semester of Computer Science at Concordia. I learned what “Software Engineering” meant. And I remember the epiphany I had during David L. Parnas’ keynote: “That’s what I want to do.” As soon as the conference was over I applied to transfer from Computer Science to Software Engineering; I love it, and I’ve gone to every CUSEC since.
This was my fourth CUSEC, and it’s every bit as amazing as it’s been in previous years.
I enjoyed every single seminar I attended this year, especially the ones by Greg Brill, Dave Thomas and Venkat Subramanian. The career fair was fun, though not as large as CUTC’s. The party at McKibbin’s was a blast, with the Infusion Development team joining in the fun and singing, and Nick Landry sticking around for the entire conference and all the rest of the parties.
In the inevitable comparison to CUTC on the conference circuit, CUSEC crushes the competition. I think CUSEC wins because of its specialization: it’s a software engineering conference, and as such it attracts students and speakers from a smaller, more targeted niche. CUTC is a technology conference, and has a more diverse range of topics under the technology umbrella. Most people who attended CUTC probably wouldn’t get much out of CUSEC, but those who are passionate and enthusiastic about software engineering, programming, computer science and all that geeky stuff will take away so much more from CUSEC.
The best part about CUSEC is the crowd. I feel empowered when I’m surrounded by so many like-minded, friendly, approachable and smart people. The speakers themselves mingle with the students at the banquet, in the bars, at the hotel parties. How many other places offer students the ability to have a beer with Ralph Johnson, Dave Thomas or Pete McBreen (even though I’m pretty sure he said he doesn’t drink)? These guys not only wrote some influential books, but changed the way software development is done!
CUSEC also leaves a lasting impression on the speakers. Kathy Sierra, who spoke last year, wrote about it on her blog. This year, I think it was Nick who said something like “This conference renewed my faith in the future generation of software engineers.” And the recruiters from Infusion who were at the career fair (the same people were at the career fair at CUTC) said that the students were “exactly the kind of people they’re looking for.”
Next year, I’d like to be one of the organizers.
You can see pictures from this year’s CUSEC on flickr by browsing the cusec2007 tag. Dave’s CUSEC pictures are particularly stunning.
Tags: 2007, cusec, events, school, soen | 2 comments
Posted by Skrud at Thursday, January 11th 2007 at 10:22am
Here I am at CUTC for the third year in a row. It’s opening keynote time, and the speaker, John Polyani is actually pretty interesting. He’s been telling us anecdotes from his lifetime of scientific research, which are fun to listen to. Yet for some reason I keep tuning out every other sentence or so and I’m only getting a few pieces of the whole keynote. Maybe that’s because it’s too early in the morning.
We arrived yesterday afternoon after a 6.5 hour-or-so bus ride (spent watching Bon Cop, Bad Cop and Godzilla Final Wars and playing MarioKart DS on the WiFi). The hotel is the Hilton Toronto, which has a very superficial beauty.
The lobby is gorgeous, as is the bar and on-site super-fancy restaurant, but the conference room’s ceiling is cracked and looks like it’s going to fall. Also, there is no wireless internet for us. We actually have to pay to use the internet in our rooms and on the conference room WiFi – $13/day – absolutely ridiculous. We’re at a technology conference., it’s sacrilege to not have access to the internet while we’re here. Sure, they set up a lab with some 50 PCs for people to use, but I don’t think 400 people are going to be able to share very well. I miss the Holiday Inn on King which hosted CUTC two years ago. That place was awesome.
Attendance also seems to be pretty sparse compared to previous years, but that’s possibly only because today is the first morning of the conference. Last year, we didn’t arrive until lunchtime on the first day. I haven’t seen anyone from SFU yet …
Here’s hoping the conference picks up!
Tags: 2007, cutc, events, geek, school | 6 comments
