SEKE 2009 Paper and Presentation for Download

Hi Folks,

here is my paper for download.

And for those of you who already requested it, here are the slides I used for the presentation.
This slide-deck actually includes 2 more slides which I was not able to show during the presentation. But who knew that the projector was going to die on me after 10 minutes? Exactly: nobody.

Have fun with it and leave me a comment what you thought about it.

FYI: Next step is camera ready version for ICSC 2009. Should be finished this weekend.

Attending the SEKE 2009 in Boston

I am at the SEKE 2009 in Boston at this very moment.
I have already seen astonishing presentations, i.e. in a good and a bad way.

• There was a presentation where a girl literally read her slides aloud while watching the screen not even looking at the audience once. I thought this was just a joke about powerpoint madness. Reality can be tough.
• There was a very nice presentation which included audience interaction with the speaker as well as very easy to grasp examples with hands on experience. The guy used balls which he juggled during his presentation. Pretty good show and his points came across easily. I still remember all the aspects he noted during his presentation. Well, that was really good.

My talk will be tomorrow morning o920am (ET).
Tonight is the banquett dinner which includes a city bus tour and a visit at Harvard. I am looking forward to that.

Have a good week and I'll let you know how the presentation went.

IEEE ICSC - We're Coming!

We got word today that another of our papers was accepted.
The conference is the IEEE ICSC 2009 conference in Berkeley, CA.

We are happy that we achieved the acknowledgment for the huge effort we made to write this paper. The "reading was excellent" (that's what the reviewers said) and we made it though the acceptance rate was below 30%.
This really makes my day.

This weeks plans still are to finalize the presentation for the SEKE 2009 conference and then work on the camera ready file of the ICSC paper.

I'll keep you updated.

Giving the Presentation a Garr Reynolds Style

Some of you might have read the book "Presentation Zen" by Garr Reynolds or maybe follow his blog.
I am changing my plain standard presentation (as I laid it out last week) into a Garr-style presentation. I expect it to fulfill a couple of serious jobs for me while I present one year's work in about 25 minutes. These jobs are:

• get the attention of the audience though they might already be exhausted from the 2 days prior conference presentations they have seen
• transport my message, i.e. giving them a profound and understandable overview of what I have done within the last 12 months of research
• get them excited for the subject so that I can gather valuable feedback and comments
• stick out of the masses (which I personally think is always good)
• get more attendants to read my actual article in the conference proceedings

Other possible options are:

• win the best-paper award because of the presentation
• get offered a million dollar job because of that presentation
• ... fill in any possible dream you might have ...
  

Well, that's it for this week's funny story. I am off for the holiday and travel to Switzerland after that.
The proposal has to wait a couple of more days.

I wish you the best. Cya.

Created SEKE 2009 presentation

Hi Folks,

just got done with the presentation for SEKE 2009 which takes place in Boston in approx. 4 weeks.
So far I have arranged a presentation of 12 slides which should be enough to transport my research and also entertain the people a little bit.
We all know that research presentations can be long, tiresome and back-killers once your forehead hits the table since you fell asleep. Well, it's not that bad, but we could all learn something from TED. That's for sure.

Further, I am still waiting for feedback to the other conference we sent our latest paper.
This might mark the start of the final stage of my PhD program.
We'll see, I'll keep you guys posted.

Have a great night, I am out of here.

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.