nadiachaouch.net

CUTC finally came to an end. I really enjoyed it. The best part for me was going to sucha great event that I didn’t have to organize! Although I did have a minor role and got some gifts for being a leading ambassador. That was a nice surprise (along with my free ticket!) Go Concordia! Hopefully next year we will be able to get a much larger delegation. I still don’t believe that something like 20 people took the plane all the way from B.C.!

As graduation approaches I am sure I will appreciate the very commercial aspects of the conference a lot more and hopefully will help me get a job after I graduate. For all those complaining that their low marks or whatever make it hard to find a job, well they should have been there. In my opinion, this is really a place where only students who have a real interest in their fields go and the employers treat them as such.

Highlights from the last day include a Think Tank discussion where a group of about 10 students gets together with a professional to discuss an issue. My group talked about Entrepreneurship with John Hantoumakos, an entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in the industry. The banquet was also very nice and yummy.

I would like to say thanks to the organizers for such a great conference!

Yesterday, I forgot to mention the incredibly obvious recruiting campaign that took place during a keynote presentation by someone from Bell. I don’t think I learned anything in that presentation except for the presenter selling the idea of Bell being a great place to work for. More proof of this is the abundant documentation from the company found in the Welcome package and their large set-up during the Career Fair type event. It was just too much in my face.

Moving on, I also got to see Joel Spolsky again. I was excited about this because last year at CUSEC I was just too tired at his presentation and preferred sleep. Once again, excitement has lead to disappointment because it was 90% of the same presentation that I saw one year ago. Sure I was entertained, Spolsky does have fun material, but I would think he would have at least a different idea to present. I also found out from Skrud, that he didn’t show up to the breakfast with delegates who won a contest. (Skrud was a lucky winner!)

Another speaker who “pulled a Spolsky” is Lee Smolin a physicist who I was supposed to listen to this morning. Fortunately, the organizers didn’t waste their time to tell us so, and now I’m listening to Larry Rodricks who is talking about Brownfields, a more environmental topic .

So, I’ve been in Toronto since Wednesday night at CUTC. This has been pretty cool up to date, the hotel is very nice and the organization has been very professional. They have just so much more manpower than CUSEC.

Yesterday had some good speakers and an entertaining TechShow. My favorite was from Sheueling Chang Shantz who spoke about Elliptic Curve Cryptography. The TechShow featured many tech gadgets such as a GPS system you can plug into the USB of your laptop. It typically comes with MS Streets & Trips and sells for 100$. If you’re a traveler with a laptop, I think that thing would be super cool and useful. During the TechShow there was also a speaker called Micheal Furdyk who in a very young entrepreneur and provides a website: http://www.takingitglobal.org.

The Joel Spolsky is about to start so that’s all for now.

I just came back from CUSEC last night, hosted by Carleton University. As could be expected, there were some interesting and less interesting speakers.

Some of my favorites, were J. B. Rainsberger who started off the conference by giving us the straight facts about team projects in school and in the real world. Although I have already worked in companies and have spent lots of time observing how people work (or don’t work) in groups, he really explained his points well. Also, there was Alistair Cockburn who described how software is a “Cooperative Game”. Greg Wilson had a great presentation on using CVS (or basically any type of Version Tracking software) for student assignments. We hope to bring this presentation to Concordia. His presentation not only dealt with the benefits to students but the benefits for markers/professors as well. Also to note, Dan Berry gave a surprisingly good presentation on “Is Emotion Relevant to Requirements Engineering?”

Concordia showed a strong presence by its delegates as well as multiple presenters who did a great job at representing themselves and the school .

On the downside, there were two presentations that were cancelled, including Tony Bailetti, a keynote. I am very curious to see what happened with that guy (he was even from Carleton University). Other criticisms include a moderator for the panel discussion who did not know how to moderate (You are a Moderator, you Do Not Speak and give your opinion!) as well as lack of attention to detail. Also there were “super cool” hotel parties that were completely disrespectful to any other guests that were in the surrounding rooms.

Slides are available at Protose.org which describes itself as “Keeping you up to date with everything software engineering!”

CUSEC 2006: The plan seems for it to be held in Montreal by a diverse group of individuals. I’m pretty sure I will end up having some degree of involvement in this. In the worst case, I will at least attend the conference. All CS/SOEN people should attend!

So today I’ve been working on the site to get some content up. It’s been coming along fairly nicely.
I figured out how to make static pages and put my CV up and added new Goodies. If only it wasn’t for school starting tomorrow. Grrr…