Preparation for Thesis Proposal

As we have submitted our final paper for this year's first half, I am preparing my thesis proposal.

To those of you who wonder what the proposal is all about:
It is as well intended for my supervisor as for any other skilled mind which does not come from my certain area of research. It shows what my idea of what I have been working on so far and explains what the drawback of related work have been. It ends with a kind of roadmap to reaching the final part of the PhD student's life: The dissertation.

In short this means I am structuring my research findings to cover 6 important points I have to address with the proposal.

1. A statement of the problem and why it should be solved (is there a problem at all?)
   
2. Reference to and comments upon relevant work in this area (what have the others done so far?)
   
3. My ideas and insights of how to solve the problem plus results I have already obtained (this is how i role! And yes, I can do it ...)
   
4. Characterization of the solution that is being sought after (when do I want to stop and insist on the piece of paper they call degree)
5. A plan of action (what else is there to do besides writing it all down? Often many hours are buried in evaluation)
6. A rough outline of the thesis (well, what the little book gonna look like?)

Besides that, I still have to prepare the presentation for the SEKE 2009 conference.
But as you can see, this should be enough work for the next 2 months.

On the Verge of Submission

The submission date for ICSC was postponed to May, 10th.
We haven't made many changes on the paper for 2 weeks, but some minor adjustments in last couple of days.
We plan to submit the paper on Friday and give it another two days to find spelling errors and other mistakes in the document.

After that, we need to prepare the presentation for the SEKE 2009 conference as long as the papers "ingredients" are still fresh in our mind.
I am looking forward to visiting Boston. Always liked the city and having a hotel at the harbor has never proved to be a mistake.

Talk to you soon.

Alpha Version of new paper is ready

The alpha version of the new paper is finished as scheduled.
The submission date is not till next Thursday, but we are already as far as we could go.
A last check on the weekend should suffice.

Yeah, we got it. Honestly, this feels great - it's been a stressful 10 weeks.

SEKE 2009 is Camera Ready, 2nd paper almost done

I just finished the SEKE 2009 camera ready version. In case none of my pals find any typos or incorrect sentences, this should be the final version before the submission on May, 1st.

The other paper describing RESI in all its detail and workmanship is also almost done. We finished our internal alpha-version at the weekend and already progressing to the beta-version which should be ready on Saturday or Sunday.
This one will simmer till Wednesday the following week and will then be submitted after a final proof-reading. Let's hope the best the reviewers like our paper as much as we do.

So long, that's it for today. I am out.

Accepted for SEKE 2009

Our first paper submission (due march, 25th) was accepted at the SEKE 2009 conference in Boston.
Congratulations to all of us. It was tough work - and it seems to pay off any time.
We got an overall scoring of 7.8/10 which is pretty good for a first shot.
The reviewers remarked things we were already aware about and also suggested that we should keep focusing on getting the software to run.
Well, this is what we (already) did and therefore are about to finish the next paper concerning the other topics which we could not address so far.

Today we're going to have our internal paper-workshop which should give us a nice alpha-version of the next paper which is then due on May, 1st.
From our own opinion, this paper is even better than the last one and we are confident that our submission might yield fruit soon.

Have a sunny day, y'all.

Paper 2 in pre-alpha state

Discussed the paper content with Torben today (he writes his master thesis).
We did some polishing on the existing chapters and divided the work for the following chapters.
So far, I would dare to say the paper is 60% done. Give it another week and we should have a nice alpha version up next Sunday.
After that we need to pass the Walter F. Tichy (head of our research chair) quality-gate and probably run another revision of the paper (this would be the beta version).
After that, we let it simmer for another 5 days and do a last check and changes. This leads to the gamma version which we will then submit to the conference.

So far we're good on the schedule ... let's stay focused so we can keep the timeline.

Happy Easter to everybody and cya next week.

Paper 1 submitted, Paper 2 in progress

Hi all,

the first paper of this quarters plan is submitted to the conference. Let's see if our work satisfies the reviewers. We truly hope so.
It is the conceptual basis of the tool we're working on at the moment. Parts of the implementation are already done.

Today, we prepared the rough sketch of the next paper which will describe in detail how RESI (Requirements Engineering Specification Improver) works. This one will be submitted to the ICSC at the end of the month.

Next thing I need to do is update the AutoModel homepage and my profile.
That's it for today.

Btw - where's the sun? I was promised sunshine and love from last nights forecast ... none of it here today. Damn.