Programming involves a particular flavour of problem solving. If you're a beginner trying to get better at it, an educator teaching beginners, or just someone who enjoys thinking about thinking, then I may have just the book for you: Think Like a Programmer from No Starch Press.
This book is, as its subtitle promises, an introduction to creative problem solving. It starts with a chapter on general problem solving techniques such as breaking problems into smaller pieces and looking for answers in what you already know. It then devotes a chapter to solving non-programming problems with code. After that, most of the book covers some of the basic problem types all programmers encounter, including arrays, dynamic memory, class design, recursion, and code reuse. The last chapter summarizes general techniques for thinking like a programmer.
I read this book as someone interested in computer science education, particularly for beginners. But despite the fact that I'm an experienced programmer of ten years, I actually enjoyed readinf about things I already know how to do. It ended up being an interesting exercise in thinking about thinking, and it brought my attention back to some of the details about programming that I now take for granted.
The author has an easy-to-understand, approachable, discussion-based style of writing. There is a good progression through topics — as a course instructor, you could certainly mirror the flow of the book even if you didn't want to use it as the official text. The numerous diagrams are clear and genuinely useful. I also love that good programming practices are embedded in the discussion, and that many other aspects of CS (for example, data structures) make an appearance in a natural way.
One of the chapters I was most curious about is the one on recursion, given how difficult this topic can be to teach. I liked that this topic was introduced with a detailed real-life example of head and tail recursion. I'm not sure if I was never explicitly taught these concepts or if I've come to take them for granted by now, but I have at the very least not thought about the difference in a long time. I appreciated bringing these ideas back to my conscious mind, and felt like the discussion should be helpful to beginners. I also liked the suggestion to solve problems as if there was no recursion, and to just trust the recursive call to do its thing. (Incidentally, you can read this chapter online, where it is offered as a sample.)
There were a few things I didn't like as much, such as the unnecessarily long paragraphs. I also thought some of the sample problems were cliched and rather dull (how many of us actually care about keeping track of student records?). Each chapter begins with a very fast review of relevant C++ syntax, and while I understand why this is done, I find it ends up being too sparse to be useful to anyone who actually needs it.
Probably the thing I struggle with the most is the choice of C++. I actually think C++ is a reasonable early language for computer science majors (at least in terms of what's currently available), and the rationale for choosing it for the book is sound. However, I don't really know of many post-secondary programs that teach C++ first. The problem is that the book would become a lot less relevant after the first course or two in a good CS program since the concepts will already have been covered, but it's difficult to make use of it unless you already know some C++.
Nonetheless, given to a new programmer at the right time, I think the book has the potential to be very valuable. It comes highly recommended in my mind.
I am against overtime. I do as little of it as possible. And now I have proof that this philosophy actually makes sense!
The Sleeping Geek Kitten - Angers - / Nathonline-Beta
Before any potential future employers find this and take my resume off the pile, let me explain. Knowing how long I can work before getting tired is important to me. If I go too long, then I'm likely to just make things worse. Plus, if I know I only have a set amount of time to get things done, I can focus better - there is no later. The standard 8 or 9 hour day seems to work perfectly well for me.
That's not to say that I'm not willing to put in some extra time around a deadline, of course. I have stayed late a few times during my co-op terms and I've worked into the evening on school stuff more than once (though I've only ever done one all-nighter, and it wasn't even strictly necessary). I just ensure this is very much the exception and not the norm.
So, back to this proof I mentioned. The IGDA has a great article on why perpetual crunch modes just don't work. Most other industries started figuring this out 100 years ago (hence why the 40 hour work week is fairly standard). Research literally proves that after a certain number of hours worked in a single week, output goes down when compared to a more regular work week. Working more just doesn't pay.
High tech can be a brutal field when it comes to overtime expectations. My strategy? Don't make working longer a precedent. If you do, then that amount of work will be expected of you. But, of course, the more you work long hours, the less you'll do over time, making you want to work longer to make up for it, making you accomplish less... and so it goes...
I will soon be trying out simple nonlinear narrative ideas for my thesis research, and wanted to find (freely available) tools that will make doing so much easier. Here are a few, some of which are great for beginners and non-programmers. (Know of any other great tools? Let me know in the comments!)
inklewriter
If you want to create branching stories quickly and easily, this free graphical tool might just be for you. It's not likely to be useful for me without access to its source code, but non-programmers should have some fun with it.
Ren'Py is a visual novel engine that helps you use words, images, and sounds to tell stories with the computer. These can be both visual novels and life simulation games. The easy to learn script language allows you to efficiently write large visual novels, while its Python scripting is enough for complex simulation games.
I like that beginners can use its simple scripting language to create interesting stories, and that I will be able to use Python to make more sophisticated games. This is probably the first tool I'm going to download and try since it should be really fast to get going on the simplest of ideas.
Fabula is an Open Source Python Game Engine suitable for adventure, role-playing and strategy games and digital interactive storytelling. Fabula can be used as a library to develop your own games. As an alternative, you can use the Pygame-based graphical editor and the default game engine that come with fabula.
With this tool, you get into programmer's territory, but still get a lot for free. I like that the engine was designed with storytelling in mind, and that like Ren'Py it uses Python, which should make it fairly easy to work with. I will likely give this one a try early on as well.
Orx is an open source, portable, lightweight, plugin-based, data-driven and extremely easy to use 2D-oriented game engine. It has been created to allow fast creation of games and prototypes.
The reason I include this project is because I think 2D is the way to go to test story ideas, and such an engine would make creating a 2D game much easier. If the other tools aren't flexible enough to customize things as much as desired, then this might be the way to go (assuming you understand C/C++ programming). I probably won't use this one right away since I don't need the power, but I have a feeling it could come in handy later on.
Back in May I wrote a popular post about which was a better beginners language: Processing or Python. Although I concluded that Processing was better for the audiences I tend to have in mind (that is, nontechnical members of the general public), that doesn't mean I think Python is a bad language.
I finally had the opportunity to use Python for my own project. I have been making a simple iOS QR code scavenger hunt / story game as a (very) side project for a while now, and am trying to give it the final push to completion. The game is defined in a plist file. I wanted to generate the QR codes automatically from the data in that plist. I also wanted to arrange the generated images into contact sheets with the text associated with each code written underneath. I figured this was the perfect opportunity to use Python for a real purpose instead of just as a teaching language.
The very best thing about Python is the fact that no matter what singular unit of work you need to do, you can almost always find freely available code online that does it. QR generator? Check. Contact sheet creation? Check. Help with the imaging library, including drawing text? Check. Put the pieces together and do some customization to suit my purposes, and I was off to the races.
I also like the 'scriptiness' of the language. I felt that I didn't need to work hard to make robust and reusable code. So long as it worked for my purpose here, that was good enough. This is a rare feeling for me. I usually feel compelled to make the code as general and 'nice' as possible. I loved being able to do what I wanted quickly and not worrying about what the result looked like.
But that's sort of a downside, too. When I stepped back to look at the code from a beginner's perspective, I noted how messy and likely difficult to understand it had become. I remember reading that Python inherently helped developers write good code (thanks to, for example, indentation to signify blocks of code). But this experience made me believe the opposite - it's so easy to write fast code that it can quickly end up being kind of ugly.
I also had a heck of a time getting everything set up on my Macbook. Python comes installed on OSX, but it's usually kind of old. So I downloaded and installed Python 3. After wrestling with the OS to get it to actually use that version for most Python-related things, I quickly found that the libraries I was trying to use didn't really work with this version. After several hours I ended up reverting back to the newest release of version 2. If I was a beginner trying to accomplish some relatively simple task, I would have been turned off the whole thing pretty quickly, if I even understood how to set up the environment in the first place (and I doubt much of the general public would, given how much time you are likely to spend at the command line).
So, all in all, I really like Python for my own purposes as an experienced programmer. But I'm still favouring Processing (or, even better, something like Scratch or some not-yet-existing language theorized by Bret Victor) as a beginner language. I could see Python being really handy once the basics are taught and some confidence is built, but I am still fairly sure I wouldn't want to begin with it if I had a choice.
I am very grateful that I will (hopefully) be lucky enough to see my vision for my Gram's House game developed professionally with research grants. After watching Indie Game: The Movie, this sentiment has only increased. Though the documentary only presents one experience of independent game production, it's not an experience I particularly want to have.
I thought that this documentary was really well done. The filmmakers did a great job of finding a good story with tension and drama in the development process. I felt such relief when good things finally happened to each of them.
The elation experienced particularly by the Super Meat Boy creators got me thinking: what happens to those who spend a few hellish years trying to finish their masterpiece, but end up with little to show for it? I wonder how often the risks pay off? I'm sure not everyone drops everything to work on their game, and even those that do probably don't always forego any sort of life balance to do it. But I would not want to see anyone experience risking everything and losing.
Of course, great success doesn't always bring happiness. Braid's creator was shown to be fairly (even deeply) disappointed even after his game broke indie records. People loved his game, but they didn't get it. The reviews focused on superficial mechanical elements, but not the deeper meaning.
Which brings me to the issue of games as art. After listening to all the game creators talk about how much their games reflect themselves, how the games express what they think and feel, I don't know how how anyone could say that games can't be art. If you aren't yet convinced yourself, watch the movie and listen for those moments.
Overall, I definitely recommend this movie, and hope more like it will be made to show a variety of indie game creation experiences.
I serve on the Advisory Board of the Anita Borg Institute, an organization focused on increasing women's participation in the technology workforce --- as technologists, and as technical leaders. One important aspect of our work is recognizing the contributions of amazing women technical leaders all over the world. We do this through the Women of Vision program.
We are now accepting nominations for the 2013 Women of Vision awards.
We could greatly use your help identifying women who deserve recognition, and facilitating their nomination. These women are incredible achievers whose stories inspire us, and whose example can be held up as a role model for thousands of other technical women. A bit of background:
These awards recognize outstanding women for Leadership, Social Impact, and Innovation. See the full descriptions of these award categories online.
Last year we honoured these amazing women:
Sarita Adve, Professor of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for Innovation.
Sarah Revi Sterling, Faculty Director, ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado at Boulder, for Social Impact.
Jennifer Chayes, Distinguished Scientist and Managing Director, Microsoft Research New England, for Leadership.
You can also see the complete list of past winners online.
Please think about a woman at your organization or school (or anywhere, really) who deserves to be honoured for her career achievements, and nominate her! Please contact me if there is any way I can help you with this action.
Also be sure to save the date for the 8th annual Women of Vision Awards Banquet on May 9, 2013 in Santa Clara, California. Registration passes and table sponsorships will be available for purchase soon.
As Christmas approaches perhaps you want to Turing theme your Christmas gifts. A new childrens book, by Paul Morris, has a Turing connection: "Time Traveller Danny and the Codebreaker." The book, which is part of the Time Traveller Kids series for 7 to 12 year olds, tells the story of Danny who goes back in time and meets Alan Turing. Paul carried out background research for the book using the archives at Sherborne School where Alan was a student from 1926 to 1931. Paul also has a family connection with Turing because his father, then a clerk in a Manchester firm of solicitors, witnessed the signing of Turing's will in February 1954. Thanks to The Alan Turing Year for this information.
My colleague Bob Doran has recently returned from a trip to England where he visited Bletchley Park. He writes: I finally got to visit the displays at Bletchley Park. The biggest thrill was seeing the bombe replica in operation. Here it is being explained to a tour group:
Actually, it wasn't working correctly but you could still get some idea of the noise that it made:
But the biggest surprise was learning that there was a bombe named Auckland. This is described with the text:
They had the actual sign for the Dunedin machine (this has been digitally enhanced):
All in all, an interesting experience to recommend.
I'm happy that I'm starting to get noticed when it comes to my public speaking abilities. My latest speaking request was for a local edition of TED on December 2: TEDxSandyHillWomen. A fellow speaker had been at my Processing workshop and thought I'd enjoy talking about women in tech.
I am going to be a TEDx speaker in Ottawa! I'm going to talk about women in tech in some form or another. Excited! ted.com/tedx/events/66… — Gail Carmichael (@gailcarmichael) November 4, 2012
I haven't decided exactly what I'll talk about yet, but you can be sure I'll be following my own strict presentation policies (including having little or no text on my slides). I might go with the "It's Not About the Numbers" theme I sometimes talk about. More to come!
With the US Presidential elections only a couple of days away it's time to talk politics. I'm not going to endorse either candidate, though if you know me at all you'll know whom I prefer. I live in New Zealand and obviously can't vote in US elections, but nonetheless the outcome will effect me, just as it will effect the entire world. The hactivist group Anonymous has recently released a video saying that they are watching Karl Rove, previously a senior advisor to George W. Bush, and will release any information that suggests he is trying to steal the election for the Republican party. Remember the "hanging chads" in the 2000 Presidential election that Al Gore lost by just a few hundred votes. Some commentators and bloggers are claiming that the right wing is calling the election "too close to call" to soften people up for a surprise win by Romney when they rig the ballot.
I picked up this story on Twitter from @AlanTuringYear - basically Heinz Billing, of the Max Planck Institute for Physics wrote in his memoirs that a group of British scientists from the National Physical Laboratory in London interrogated German scientists after WWII. Thus, Alan Turing, who was one of the British scientists ,would have met the German computer pioneer Konrad Zuse. Evidence for and against this meeting is described by Herbert Bruderer, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, in a paper called Did Alan Turing interrogate Konrad Zuse in Göttingen in 1947? If they did meet it would have been fascinating for both men. Zuse had independently invented a digital computer, the Z1, in Nazi Germany and after the war he founded a computer company that was eventually bought by Siemens. He also wrote a book, Computing Space, that presents the idea that the universe may actually be a digital construct running in the memory of a grid of computers. You can find out more about this remarkable man in The Universal Machine.
I recently read a popular science book called "The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood" by James Gleick. The book is basically a biography of Claude Shannon and is about information theory. It covers, what is quite a challenging subject, in a very approachable way; giving examples from African talking drums to modern digital communication. Other people also feature such as: Robert Caudrey, the compiler of the first English dictionary; Samuel Morse, the inventor of the eponymous code, and people more familiar to this blog, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace and of course Alan Turing. I really enjoyed this book - 5 stars.
When Alan Turing looked at some sunflowers in his garden in Manchester he thought he saw a pattern he recognised in the spiral of seeds in the flowers' heads - the Fibonacci sequence, where each number is the sum of the previous two. Turing died before he could test his theory. As part of the celebrations around Turing's centenary hundreds of volunteers grew sunflowers as part of a project led by Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry. Data from 557 sunflowers from seven countries was collected for the Turing's Sunflowers project. It showed 82% of the flowers conformed to the mathematical Fibonacci sequence. The BBC reports that Professor Jonathan Swinton, a computational biologist, said: "It's the most comprehensive information we have so far on Fibonacci numbers in sunflowers and we have proved what Alan Turing observed when he looked at a few sunflowers in his own garden in Wilmslow. Now we need to work together with biologists to understand the wider implications of different number patterns for plant growth."
Due to inclement weather, the deadline for STOC submissions has been extended to Monday, November 5, at 5:00 pm EST. Check the STOC web page for more details
Due to inclement weather, the deadline for STOC submissions has been extended to Monday, November 5, at 5:00 pm EST. Check the STOC web page for more details
I found a couple of interesting games after reading Kotaku's recent article The Complicated Truth Behind Games That Want to Change the World. One has more gameplay time than the other, but both can be experienced in a short period of time, making them worth a quick look.
Sweatshop
The first game is called Sweatshop. It is essentially a tower defence-style game where you place workers instead of towers to create items of knock-off clothing instead of kill enemies. You start with a child worker that costs less than others. As you move up through the levels, you get different types of pricier but quicker workers to place, such as a shirt maker or a hat maker. You need to place them around the conveyor belt strategically so that they are able to finish creating and packaging each item before it reaches the end.
The thing that intrigued me about this game was whether it used procedural rhetoric to make its point. From the Kotaku article:
The game aims to educate players on workplace conditions around the world. "I think its strength comes from putting you in the role of the manager, someone who is still a guilty party but has some capacity for empathy," she [Mattie Brice, social justice activist and game critic] explained. "The game forces you to be efficient and min/max to keep profits high, and usually has you doing some unethical things to your workers. Instead of having an artificial story put on top of a detached mechanic or so, the game twists how you already interact with tower defense and uses that to create a connection to what's going on."
So it seems there is an argument for this. To maximize profits and thus win the game, you have to be unethical and act as they really do in sweatshops. I think designers of games for change need to pay more attention to procedural rhetoric if we want to see more good games of this type.
Unmanned
Unmanned, on the other hand, is more of a story-based game experience. The game is presented with a split screen. In the screenshot above, which comes from the opening sequence, the main character is shown on the left asleep, and what seems to be his dream appears on the right. Much of the time, one side of the screen is dedicated to dialog and dialog choices. Though you can earn medals by choosing the right dialog, this example is much less game-like than Sweatshop.
Kotaku doesn't say much about this one; just that it's "nothing short of remarkable." The story follows a man who is apparently a soldier. He seems to be working to stop terrorist activity. You follow him through a typical day, where at one point he's on the cell phone talking to his wife (?) about their son, and after work he's playing war games with that son. You get a disjointed feel for his character, and you help build it through your dialog choices. There is much left unsaid so that you fill in the blanks, and I think that is what makes this experience so potentially powerful.
Hurricane Sandy looks like it will be the most closely watched storm in history. Google has set us a "crisis map" for Hurricane Sandy to help people who may be in its path. The map features various overlays including: the storm's predicted path, wind speeds, predicted storm surge, public alerts, evacuation routes, refuge centres and more. Of course as the power goes down across the North Eastern seaboard of the US WiFi and broadband will be lost as well. Cell phone towers can work for a time on battery power, so 3G may still be available, but I'd recommend getting any digital information you may require sooner rather than later - the Internet isn't storm proof.
The Harvard Crimson just finished a four-part series looking at the Harvard Ad Board since the reforms a couple of years ago. I must admit I didn't find the articles very insightful, but they offered a glimpse as to some of the changes and current feelings about the Ad Board. The first part begins here<.a>, and from there you can find links to the rest of the articles.
The Harvard Crimson just finished a four-part series looking at the Harvard Ad Board since the reforms a couple of years ago. I must admit I didn't find the articles very insightful, but they offered a glimpse as to some of the changes and current feelings about the Ad Board. The first part begins here, and from there you can find links to the rest of the articles.
Another piece of history brought to my attention by Bob Doran. This one features the British Post Office (GPO) in 1969 looking ahead to the future of telecommunications in the 1990s including: video phone calls, document sharing, online banking and access to other computing services. Unfortunately, the GPO is still envisaging using circuit switching with its wasteful dedicated end-to-end communications and complex exchanges and not the much more efficient packet switching that underpins the Internet.
This Sunday (Oct 28 8:00pm) BBC2 is giving us another chance to see its excellent Timewatch programme "Codebreakers: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes", giving overdue recognition to the brilliance of Bill Tutte and Tommy Flowers. The BBC says the documentary "reveals the secret story behind one of the greatest intellectual feats of World War II, a feat that gave birth to the digital age. In 1943, a 24-year-old maths student and a GPO engineer combined to hack into Hitler's personal super-code machine - not Enigma but an even tougher system, which he called his 'secrets writer'." If you thought that Bletchley Park was just about Alan Turing, Enigma and U Boats you're in for a pleasant surprise!
In the week that Apple released the new iPad Mini and Microsoft released Windows 8 and its Surface tablet my colleague Bob Doran pointed me back to the future - 1975 to be precise. Steve Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak, invented the digital camera in December 1975. In a Kodak blog post written in 2007, before Kodak went bankrupt, Sasson explains how it was constructed: "It had a lens that we took from a used parts bin from the Super 8 movie camera production line downstairs from our little lab on the second floor in Bldg 4. On the side of our portable contraption, we shoehorned in a portable digital cassette instrumentation recorder. Add to that 16 nickel cadmium batteries, a highly temperamental new type of CCD imaging area array, an a/d converter implementation stolen from a digital voltmeter application, several dozen digital and analog circuits all wired together on approximately half a dozen circuit boards, and you have our interpretation of what a portable all electronic still camera might look like." We all become mesmerized by the new and the shiny but this reminds us that being first or being an established powerful company doesn't inevitably result in long term success. Sasson ends his post with, "The camera described in this report represents a first attempt demonstrating a photographic system which may, with improvements in technology, substantially impact the way pictures will be taken in the future." - how did Kodak get it so wrong.
Now that I'm back in school full time, it's a good time to have a look at where I am research-wise. Here are some of the projects I'm working on and what progress I've made. (My last snapshot was from Fall 2011, before I went on maternity leave, and has more detail about some of these projects.)
Since last fall, this project has moved forward a bit. One of our team members ran a pilot project that just wrapped up. The study compared a slightly updated version of Gram's House that tracks player stats, and a new game created by my colleague's students. It will be very interesting to see the data that was collected during the study.
In the meantime, we are also finding some new researchers who want to try for an NSF (or other) grant to further develop the project. We've got a few ideas on how to make our project stand out among the many trying to do things like this with games, and I'm excited to see where we go!
This project centred on the study we did in this past year's mini-course. The study went well and we learned some interesting things (like the fact that story had little or not benefit over context). However, the paper we submitted to SIGCSE was not accepted.
We are in the process of deciding what to do next, but I am leaning toward taking what we learned, doing a follow up study, and submitting to next year's conference. I am not sure if I'd like to stick to the middle school age group or try something in an undergrad class.
Nonlinear Story in Games
This is the thread of research that will be my thesis. In fact, my supervisor liked the ideas I had put together while on leave, so I have a good, solid direction now! In a nutshell, I want to use procedural rhetoric as a way to break apart story episodes in a reasonable way, and learning theory to dynamically arrange those pieces as well as entire episodes.
Before delving too deeply into my specific ideas, however, I'm going to finish some work I started last fall. We're looking at nonlinear stories (that is, stories whose events are presented out of chronological order) and comparing them to nonlinear stories in games. We are trying to see why games shy away from more sophisticated uses of nonlinear stories, which may lead to new ideas on how to do it.
The unveiling of the iPad Mini with its 7.9-inch display has many pundits referring to Steve Job's talking about the wisdom of making a tablet with a screen smaller than the iPad's 10-inch display (for example this article in the Register). It's true that the iPad Mini is a "gap filler" aimed in particular at the Amazon Kindle Fire market. Apple seem to have reasoned, "why shouldn't we make a mini tablet?We make iPod's and MacBooks in all sort of different sizes and specs." Yes, it makes no sense logically - if I want a device that fits in my pocket I've got an iPhone; if I want a device that fits in my bag I've got an iPad. Why would I want something in between? But it seems some people do want a device this size and Apple aren't about to gift this market segment to Amazon and Google. I expect the iPad Mini will sell well, despite being technically underwhelming. It will certainly appeal to people who are already committed to the Apple ecosystem, and will make a good eBook reader being about the size of a small paperback.
I was asked to post the following regarding STOC 2013 submissions:
1) Please read the Call for Papers carefully and pay special attention to length and formatting requirements, which have changed since last year: a) Submissions must be no more than 10 pages in two-column ACM Proceedings format, including the bibliography. b) Length and formatting requirements will be enforced strictly and literally; submissions that don't conform will be summarily rejected. Note that you have the option of uploading a full-paper version, along with your 10-page extended abstract. 2) The online submission process will take more time than it has in the past for at least two reasons: a) There are roughly three times as many Program-Committee members as in the past, and thus Conflicts of Interest will take longer to check off. b) Each author is required to select one or more Topics (from a moderately long list) that describe his or her submission. Thus we strongly suggest that you create your user account on the submission server NOW and fill in a "start new paper" form for each submission, even if you have not yet finished writing it. Submissions can be modified any time between now and the deadline of Nov. 2, 2012 at 04:59 pm EDT. Note that this and all other information about STOC 2013 can be found athttp://theory.stanford.edu/stoc2013/
I was asked to post the following regarding STOC 2013 submissions:
1) Please read the Call for Papers carefully and pay special attention to length and formatting requirements, which have changed since last year: a) Submissions must be no more than 10 pages in two-column ACM Proceedings format, including the bibliography. b) Length and formatting requirements will be enforced strictly and literally; submissions that don't conform will be summarily rejected. Note that you have the option of uploading a full-paper version, along with your 10-page extended abstract. 2) The online submission process will take more time than it has in the past for at least two reasons: a) There are roughly three times as many Program-Committee members as in the past, and thus Conflicts of Interest will take longer to check off. b) Each author is required to select one or more Topics (from a moderately long list) that describe his or her submission. Thus we strongly suggest that you create your user account on the submission server NOW and fill in a "start new paper" form for each submission, even if you have not yet finished writing it. Submissions can be modified any time between now and the deadline of Nov. 2, 2012 at 04:59 pm EDT. Note that this and all other information about STOC 2013 can be found athttp://theory.stanford.edu/stoc2013/
The nice folks at Texas A&M asked me to give a teleseminar as part of their series. So instead of flying all the way to Texas to give a talk, I did so from the comfort of my office, using Cisco's WebEx. It was, I believe, the first formal teleseminar I've given. I imagine that it's the future of talks, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on the experience.
Overall, technically, it went just fine. Any slight hiccups were managed easily. I was working in my office and not paying attention to the clock, so they had to e-mail me and remind me to get online for the talk. (Oops.) When I logged in at first the sound didn't work for some reason, but logging in again all was fine, and we started pretty much on time. They could see the slides on my laptop, they had a camera image of me and I had an image of them, and after the initial bump the sound seemed to work the entire time (at least on my end, and I think I spoke loudly enough it was not a problem on their end). At this point the technology is really there to do this sort of thing, so if anything I'm surprised there's not more of this type of seminar being done.
Pros: Obviously, from my standpoint, not flying to give a talk. I'm going to Cornell to give a talk in a couple of weeks, and while I'll undoubtedly enjoy the face time with the many great people at Cornell I'll get to see, I won't enjoy the multiple nights away from my family, or the multiple hours flying to get there. (One could arrange the Web equivalent of face to face time with teleseminars quite easily -- set up Skype sessions or a Google hangout for the day.)
Another pro is that people online could log in, watch the talk, and ask questions as well. That can also be done with standard talks, although it seemed to me the real-time asking of questions is a bit more awkward when the speaker is there live with the audience rather than online.
Cons: You don't get that face to face time with the people at the home institution that can, sometimes, work out so well. I've had someone giving a talk at Harvard come to my office for the standard chat-with-the-visitor session and had the solid beginning of a paper by the time they left. I don't know if serendipity works the same online yet.
The biggest downside was the setup made it hard for me to gauge the audience reaction, which would have been really helpful for this talk. I was talking about hashing data structures like Bloom filters to a primarily EE audience, so for all I knew I could have been going way over their head, boring them silly, or been pretty much on target. I wasn't able to see how they were responding and adjust accordingly. I think I needed a second (very big) screen in front of me -- one devoted to my slides, and one large, full screen instead of a little window big enough so I could watch the audience react, the way I do in a live lecture. This might have been easy enough to set up had I knew how useful it would be ahead of time. I tried to ask during the talk and it seemed like I was targeting the right level, but that type of on-the-fly correction would have been easier to make if I were actually there.
Conclusion: I would happily give a teleseminar like this again. Until my kids are older and I feel like traveling more instead of less, this may become my preferred method of giving talks (except, possibly, for California; I'm generally always happy to have an excuse to go to California, but even then, timing might make a teleseminar preferable sometimes). I'm surprised there aren't more schools or organizations adopting and experimenting with this approach. It seems both cost-effective and time-effective. Thanks to Texas A&M for inviting me to try it.
The nice folks at Texas A&M asked me to give a teleseminar as part of their series. So instead of flying all the way to Texas to give a talk, I did so from the comfort of my office, using Cisco's WebEx. It was, I believe, the first formal teleseminar I've given. I imagine that it's the future of talks, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on the experience.
Overall, technically, it went just fine. Any slight hiccups were managed easily. I was working in my office and not paying attention to the clock, so they had to e-mail me and remind me to get online for the talk. (Oops.) When I logged in at first the sound didn't work for some reason, but logging in again all was fine, and we started pretty much on time. They could see the slides on my laptop, they had a camera image of me and I had an image of them, and after the initial bump the sound seemed to work the entire time (at least on my end, and I think I spoke loudly enough it was not a problem on their end). At this point the technology is really there to do this sort of thing, so if anything I'm surprised there's not more of this type of seminar being done.
Pros: Obviously, from my standpoint, not flying to give a talk. I'm going to Cornell to give a talk in a couple of weeks, and while I'll undoubtedly enjoy the face time with the many great people at Cornell I'll get to see, I won't enjoy the multiple nights away from my family, or the multiple hours flying to get there. (One could arrange the Web equivalent of face to face time with teleseminars quite easily -- set up Skype sessions or a Google hangout for the day.)
Another pro is that people online could log in, watch the talk, and ask questions as well. That can also be done with standard talks, although it seemed to me the real-time asking of questions is a bit more awkward when the speaker is there live with the audience rather than online.
Cons: You don't get that face to face time with the people at the home institution that can, sometimes, work out so well. I've had someone giving a talk at Harvard come to my office for the standard chat-with-the-visitor session and had the solid beginning of a paper by the time they left. I don't know if serendipity works the same online yet.
The biggest downside was the setup made it hard for me to gauge the audience reaction, which would have been really helpful for this talk. I was talking about hashing data structures like Bloom filters to a primarily EE audience, so for all I knew I could have been going way over their head, boring them silly, or been pretty much on target. I wasn't able to see how they were responding and adjust accordingly. I think I needed a second (very big) screen in front of me -- one devoted to my slides, and one large, full screen instead of a little window big enough so I could watch the audience react, the way I do in a live lecture. This might have been easy enough to set up had I knew how useful it would be ahead of time. I tried to ask during the talk and it seemed like I was targeting the right level, but that type of on-the-fly correction would have been easier to make if I were actually there.
Conclusion: I would happily give a teleseminar like this again. Until my kids are older and I feel like traveling more instead of less, this may become my preferred method of giving talks (except, possibly, for California; I'm generally always happy to have an excuse to go to California, but even then, timing might make a teleseminar preferable sometimes). I'm surprised there aren't more schools or organizations adopting and experimenting with this approach. It seems both cost-effective and time-effective. Thanks to Texas A&M for inviting me to try it.
The Pet Shop Boys write on their blog Pet Texts that, "We will be performing a concert with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in Salford, Greater Manchester, on December 6th. As well as a selection of old and new songs, we'll be premiering part of a piece we have been writing inspired by the British scientist, mathematician and code-breaker, Alan Turing. The concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 2." Not sure if the concert will be broadcast live, but I'll try to let you know.
Ada Lovelace Day was celebrated last week and as usual was organised and co-ordinated by Finding Ada - "Celebrating the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths." If you don't know who Ada Lovelace is and why we might be celebrating her I suggest you find out from: "Who was Ada?" The Guardian has also just published a good story about the "forgotten women of science," But, as women struggle for the right to be educated in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan perhaps we should remember just how difficult it was, just over a century ago, for any woman to get an education. Kate Edger in 1877 was the first woman in New Zealand, and the British Empire, to receive a Bachelor's degree from the University of New Zealand! Kate Edger is honoured at Auckland University by having the Information Commons building named after her.
I'm one of the original founders of our Carleton University Women in Science and Engineering group. I stayed on the exec for a few years, stepping down only when I was pregnant, since I knew I wasn't going to be there the whole year. I was the last remaining original exec. The transition into new leadership was tricky at first, but I couldn't be more proud of what the new generation of CU-WISE is doing!
I put a lot of effort into making CU-WISE successful and, more importantly, sustainable. From ensuring we had an up-to-date web presence, to creating a consistent brand, to planning outreach events and events for current students, to getting our mentoring program off the ground... I did a lot. When I left, they needed more than one person to replace me! Despite my efforts in documenting everything, it was difficult at first for those who remained to get off the ground.
After a bit of struggle last year, CU-WISE is totally rocking it this year. We finally scored some coveted office space, which the new co-chairs have set up very nicely. They use it to meet in person weekly, something we never did before (but should have). One of our past execs has offered to get the mentoring program going again remotely, despite being a post-doc at another institution now. There are several really interesting new events planned, including outreach events that build off of what I had created in the past. Things are looking amazing. The only thing that's needed is a few more executive members to help the current team out!
So why do I tell you all this? Yes, I did want to share my pride, but I also wanted to encourage anyone else who wonders whether all the effort is worth it. It is! If you're trying to get a women in science and/or engineering program off the ground at your school or workplace, give it all you can reasonably give. Document everything so others can take over later. And if you're finding nobody is able to carry the torch at first, don't fret - persevere, and you'll see the fruits of your effort in no time. You'll be amazed at what comes next.
Harvard's CRCS is looking for postdocs! Please apply.... We're very interested in theorists (and, of course, non-theorists as well!) in all of the areas listed below. Also, for those who know of my work with Giorgos Zervas -- well, he's finishing his postdoc this year, and I'd be thrilled to find other people to work with on the semi-theoretical semi-data-focused EconCS style work. Spread the word... ---------- The Harvard Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS) solicits applications for its Postdoctoral Fellows and Visiting Scholars Programs for the 2013-2014 academic year. Postdoctoral Fellows are given an annual salary of approximately $60,000 for one year (with the possibility of renewal) to engage in a program of original research, and are provided with additional funds for travel and research support. Visiting Scholars often come with their own support, but CRCS can occasionally offer supplemental funding. We seek researchers who wish to interact with both computer scientists and colleagues from other disciplines, and have a demonstrated interest in connecting their research agenda with societal issues. We are particularly interested in candidates with interests in Economics and Computer Science, Health Care Informatics, Privacy & Security, and/or Technology & Accessibility, and those who may be interested in engaging in one of our ongoing/upcoming projects: - Intelligent, Adaptive Systems for Health Care Informatics - Language-Based Security - Personalized Accessibility - Privacy and Security in Targeted Advertising - Privacy Tools for Sharing Research Data - Trustworthy Crowdsourcing Harvard University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. We are particularly interested in attracting women and underrepresented groups to participate in CRCS. For further information about the Center and its activities, seehttp://crcs.seas.harvard.edu/. Application Procedure A cover letter, CV, research statement, copies of up to three research papers, and up to three letters of reference should be sent to: Postdoctoral Fellows and Visiting Scholars Programs Center for Research on Computation and Society crcs-apply@seas.harvard.edu References for postdoctoral fellows should send their letters directly, and Visiting Scholar applicants may provide a list of references rather than having letters sent. The application deadline for full consideration is December 16, 2012.
