Back from NLDB 2010, Cardiff University

Got back from NLDB 2010 in Cardiff two days ago.
The conference was very well organized and the talks (as always) reached from very good to extremely poor.
Just to give you some examples:

• one guy managed to talk 32minutes on 39 slides though the time cap was supposedly 15mins for every speaker
• one guy literally (and figuratively) read his slides which weren't actually slides. They were some kind of script we he presented. Kind of a book reading. I do have to admin though, that his presentation still was kind of interesting
• two ladies spoke so loud during the presentations, we only knew they already started their resp. talks because we could see their lips moving
• one guy showed up at 09:47am for his 09:30 - 09:45 presentation. He kind of had a good excuse and was pouring sweat all over his body, poor bastard
• one guy did not manage to get the projector to work with his laptop, therefore he rebooted with the laptop hooked up to it. Then he punched in his password into the "user" field of his Suse linux OS. Well, we all know the name of his wife now
• one guy had a screen saver with (somewhat embarrassing) private pictures which ran for 2 minutes on the big screen before he realized he had just talked too long on the slide and that the screen saver already kicked in. Funny

As you might be able to tell, I had a great time and think my/our presentation went well. I met a couple of very interesting researchers and we found some common ground for research collaboration. Also, Germany won the game in a pub full of English. Not bad either.
And the hotel (Radisson BLU) was centrally located and pretty nice.

You can get the presentation here.

So long. That's my short report from NLDB.

Just Got a Journal Article and Conference Paper Published

As we were working hard on the last publications, we are happy to announce the official release of two of our documents.
One will be published in the proceedings of the NLDB2010 conference in Cardiff, Wales, UK and you can pre-read it here.
The other is a journal article which was released by WorldPress in the International Journal of Semantic Computing. This article can be found here and here.

Have fun reading through it.

FYI: We are still waiting for two more reviews to conferences which we want to provide papers for.

Paper for NLDB Accepted - Going to Cardiff in June

Our paper for the NLDB 2010 has been accepted. We are now working on the camera ready version which is due in 3 weeks.
So from June, 23rd-26th we'll be in Cardiff, UK presenting the results of our work.

We'll give you a heads up about the other papers we submitted as soon as we get feedback.

Submitted 2 Papers for NLDB2010 and RE2010 conferences

We submitted 2 more papers in the last couple of days.
Just one more paper left, before we round up the work of the last 4 years into one big and nice dissertation.
Let's hope my mentor sees it the exact same way ;-)

The plan for the next weeks:

• Finish research project grant
• Finish thesis proposal
• Start compiling thesis
• Make master thesis students finish
• Hand over thesis
• Retire and enjoy life in a elderly neighborhood in Florida

So far, so good (once again). I will keep you posted.

Submitting Paper for NLDB

To our readers: we are currently under full load for the paper deadlines we need to hold in the next couple of weeks.
First deadline will be the NLDB 2010. We plan to submit one paper.
Next deadline is RE 2010. We plan to submit another paper.

All our pieces we worked on for the last couple of months are slowly coming together into one serious tool repository which might end up being the big solution for the new RE approach. We call it RECAA. It stands for "Requirements Engineerings Complete Automization Approach".

After the RE 2010 deadline on Feb, 19th, we plan to focus on the DFG proposal to support our project. That's the next big step into financing our studies for the next couple of years.

Preparing, Sorting and Structuring Contents for Publications

As of now, I am still writing on my PhD proposal.
Also, the whole RECAA-Team tries to funnel its finding into outlines for possible publications in 2010.

The PhD proposal will be finished this year. It looks like we have 3 to 4 papers in the pipeline coming up. We'll see how that turns out.

If I don't come back here before next week - merry Christmas to everybody!

Writing Thesis Proposal and Thinking about Google Fellowships

I am at the throat of my dissertation thesis. Actually have been for quite some weeks. I definitely want to finish it before xmas. That is a must.

Also, Google came around the corner offering fellowships in my research area. To make sure you get this: this ain't a job offer, it's just an option to apply for the fellowship. It is not certain if it will be granted or not. Still, it might be interesting - especially for those following me in my research, sustaining the wave and pushing Requirements Engineering a little further. These guys want to. And they should be able to do so.
Yeah, there's long ways to go, but somebody has to get to the bottom of the pit.

The end of this week should be marked by a rough sketch of the thesis contents. The outline is done, some of the contents and illustrations are already created. But again, way to go.

Let's see what I can tell you next week.