Eventyr

Storytelling as Role Modeling: Collecting Oral Histories

I had been awaiting this one session ever since the programme was first published.  Happily I was not disappointed.

Barbara Boucher Owens (Southwestern University), Vicki L. Almstrum (The University of Texas at Austin), Lecia J. Barker (ATLAS Assessment and Research Center), and E. Anne Gates Applin (Ithaca College) spoke about their in-progress work with the Computing Educators Oral History Project (CEOHP).

The rationale for the project is to collect narratives and oral histories from women educators in computing, to provide the basis for exploring how they could be used to support mentoring. We were introduced to the project, some sample interviews and looked at their early stage indexing system. 

What interested me was the similarities in the issues they were addressing with our own on the (slightly less ambitious) Agile Narratives Project.  Their talk gave me plenty to think about and implement, further references for reading, and the potential promise of a support network for people working in this field in the future.  This connection alone would have made the entire conference invaluable for me.   I left with a spring in my step, and a gladness in my heart, knowing that I was not alone and had just met some lovely people who were working in the same area.

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Johanna Hunt
Official GHC 2007 Blogger
You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum

GHC Scholarship Reunion Lunch

After an unpleasant dash in the midday sun, sweltering as I tried to navigate out from Downtown Disney, I made it to the GHC Scholarship  lunch.  (I swore to myself never-ever to try to take a short-cut out of there ever again.)

Attending the GHC lunch was very important for me, I was eager to attend to show just how much this scholarship meant to me; providing me with the finances and support to come to Orlando to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration (something I could never have done otherwise).

Once I had gathered myself, and cooled down, I got to have some interesting chats with other scholarship recipients, discussions about the future, and debate about what was wonderful and what could be improved further next time.

Thanks to the Anita Borg Institute for making this possible and giving me such a lovely opportunity!

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Johanna Hunt
Official GHC 2007 Blogger
You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum

PhD Forum: HCI Applications (paper 2)

I popped in for one talk in the PhD Forum (HCI Applications).  Petra Isenberg (University of Calgary) was giving a paper called 'Information Visualization in Co-located Collaborative Environments', which I did not feel I could miss as I am currently very curious about collaborative information visualisation.

Her research has three main problems she is trying to address:

• We don't really know how the collaborative information analysis process works
• We don't really know what the design guidelines for digital tools of this type are
• We don't really know how such things would be used in the real world

She found 8 distinct processes used by groups to work with data and decide strategy (selection, operation, strategizing) - and I must find a paper on this.  Really interesting was the finding that there was a lack of common temporal order for these processes.  She went on to describe her work on looking at design guidelines for digital tools, and considering how a visualisation system could be generated in a real world setting to support such work.

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Johanna Hunt
Official GHC 2007 Blogger
You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum

New Investigators: Artificial Intelligence

'Efficient Plan Recognition for Dynamic Multi-agent Teams'
Gita Sukthankar (University of Central Florida), Katia Sycara (Carnegie Mellon University)

Gita kicked off the New Investigators in AI session this Friday morning by addressing the problem of multi-agent plan recognition.  It wasn't an area I knew anything about, but to my mind team dynamics is generally an interesting topic.   

She spoke about multi-agent plan recognition, using spatial, temporal and coordination data for understanding dynamic team plans. Plan recognition is understood through observations, prior knowledge, and closed world observation, but there are problems with understanding dynamic membership, especially when there is team change or subteams.  She mentioned that sub-team creation and destruction are important cues and spoke about ways to leverage temporal, spatial and coordination cues for understanding dynamic team membership.   

She took advantage of her phone ringing partway through her talk to prompt for questions, which was skilfully managed, and won my respect for her presentation skills. 

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'Simplifying Sketch Recognition UI Development '
Tracy Hammond (Texas A&M University)

Tracy gave a lovely and engaging presentation.  As she pointed out sketching is engaging, creative and involves active learning.  Sadly sketching is generally dropped from the curriculum as hard to test and correct.  Sketch-recognition systems are a way to bridge this gap - by looking at the identification of hand-drawn shapes. 

Tracy gave a really interesting demo of sketching to create moving demos using LADDER Domain builder (LADDER is a sketch recognition language).  Such systems are quick and fun ways to create natural design animations, give immediate feedback, reduce teacher time and enhance teacher feedback.  Systems like this are very hard to build.  It is impractical for instructors to build such systems, so her work has been looking at ways to simplify this process.

I had never really focussed on how hard stroke and shape recognition could be, especially for arcs, but the demo and videos she gave were really impressive.  She mentioned her student's poster on recognising scribble types (for filling vs. deleting scribbles), research on natural shape descriptions, and showed videos using sketch recognition.

The GUILD system has been created to generate user interfaces using LADDER descriptions and Tracy went on to demonstrate how it could be used to create a tic-tac-toe sketch recognition board game.  So far 30 systems have been built using this system across many domains, and has been used for student prototyping.

I really enjoyed this talk and it really helped me understand both the problems with, and potential uses for, such systems and I hope to read more about this on the Sketch Recognition Lab site later.

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Johanna Hunt
Official GHC 2007 Blogger
You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum

Survival Skills for the Graduate Student

I'll love any talk that opens with quoted music (Making it up as I go along) and some really astounding figures, this held very true for this session.

Shannon Duvall (Elon University) and Michele Pagnotta (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) ran a really interesting session on 'Survival Skills for the Graduate Student' aiming to give hints and tips to help improve mental well-being during graduate school.

The statistics are impressive.  From the 2004 Berkeley Graduate Student Mental Health Survey:

• 50% of graduate* students suffer from emotional or stress-related issues
• 10% seriously considered suicide
• 1 in 20 considered it

I plan to delve into those figures later (might be interesting for stimulating discussion with the first year PhD class I lead), but that is an amazing and worrying finding.

They started by talking through Michele's Top Tips:

• Wise Mind (make decisions you are really happy with, by keeping a balance in your mind between emotion and reason)
• Acting Effectively (do things that will work, most effective.  Don't use SHOULD.)
• Don't Worry, be happy (worrying is not problem solving)

And then Shannon's Top Tips:

• Focus on the Facts (don't worry about Imposter Syndrome, not provable, not a fact)
• Advisor Relations (ever-evolving, professional, vital to your happiness and success)
• Be Professional (it's ok to have worries and doubts, but don't forget to keep your academic relationships professional)

Further advice:

• Set Your Goals and document your activities and meetings
• How to Ask for things (Describe, Express, Assert, Reinforce)
• Communication with advisors (ask directly for positive feedback)
• (Everyone was told to write down) MAKE NO ASSUMPTIONS (ask, ask, ask)
• Act Confident (you don't need to be confident, you just need to 'act' confident)
• Getting Motivated (remember that progress comes in waves, intentionally take breaks)
• Get Going Again (clarify goals, prioritise and break down)
• Review your Work Schedule
• Gaining Motivation (develop small, medium and large rewards, guild-free breaks and cheerleading statements)

They gave an interesting introduction to the five areas involved in keeping your vital life balance (in order of importance):

• Personal Growth / Care
• Relational Growth
• Community Growth
• Spiritual Growth
• Professional Growth

You don't have time not to take these things not into account - they are critical to your mental health.  Keep yourself physically healthy and relax to reduce stress.  Make sure to attend to current relationships, it is a priority goal.

All in all, sensible and useful advice.  It is really worth visiting the Mental Makeover website, where they have a downloadable handout related to the session.

A lot of people rushed to queue to ask questions when they opened the floor, with more eagerness than I had seen in any other session so far.  What they spoke about had related in some way to everyone in the audience.

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* The term graduate is equivalent to post-graduate in the UK - an interesting difference and a grammatical mystery worth pondering at another time.

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Johanna Hunt
Official GHC 2007 Blogger
You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum

Real Teamwork in the Virtual World

Not having any experience of working with distributed or virtual teams I thought I would head along to this session to find out what some of the common problems and solutions are for dealing with building teams under such circumstances.  The straw poll suggested that I was one of very few in the room that did not have direct experience of working in this way, although I think this did not greatly stop me from finding the discussion interesting.

There are several factors which contribute to a virtual team's success:

• Make sure you have a good team leader with an openness to share
• Try to meet people at least once in person if possible
• Inter-team communication is vital and important to build on - technology can be used to leverage this
• Try to help everyone overcome language and cultural differences early on
• Have a clear and shared vision
• Keep a clear meeting schedule so everyone is on the same page
• Reach out to those who may not speak so much in conference calls
• Speak to people outside of conference calls to address issues early - use the phone!  This avoids broadsiding and potential embarrassing moments in group calls
• Draw others out by sharing something of yourself
• Remember to work the relationship before the issue - Work on relationship building above all

Communication over distances / conference calls:

• Make sure you clarify turn-taking in conference calls
• Remember to speak slowly to avoid any language or accent issues
• Allow pauses so that people have the chance to speak up
• Create signals that people can use when they have something to say or add

Interestingly all of these things hold true for collocated teams as well.

Ways to make sure technology supports teams:

• Leverage communication by using IM alongside conference calls
• Real-time collaboration allows everyone to be working on the same page, and generates a better shared understanding.
• Be aware that video conferencing isn't always the best method
• Remember to have bios and photos, so everyone has a mental image of each other
• Remember that there may be security issues with using more social media like Second Life or Facebook.

Time issues:

• Many of the larger companies allow for flexible working (time and location), this is especially useful for working mothers
• You should still make sure you know your boundaries
• You should accept that sometimes there will just not be a good time for everyone

It was mooted that a lot of the communication issues that arise from not being able to communicate face-to-face may not be such a problem for the next generation.  The culture of how we interact with each other is changing, and lack of body language may not be such an issue in the future for those who have grown up with such technologies (cf. texting).  This flashed my mind in fear to the Asimov book The Naked Sun where the culture was almost unable to deal with face-to-face relationships, and all communication was mediated by technology.

For me, the most interesting point was made right at the end.  Listen to people's stories to understand team dynamics and potential issues (oh how true!).  The example was given of a team who all shared stories about how they had learned to be self-reliant - an understanding that they were all lone cowboys would have been useful earlier on in the project!

The conversation was set to continue in the following session, which I am sad I was not able to follow.

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Johanna Hunt
Official GHC 2007 Blogger
You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum

We Invent the Future of Interdisciplinary Research

I was annoyed with myself for being late to this session, as it was one I had been anticipating for a while. 

As my research is (rather wildly) interdisciplinary, and I lead a graduate class in interdisciplinary and group processes, it was certainly set to be of value to me.  Sadly the second half of the talk, the bit I made it to, didn't solve my problems with my research not being “computer science-y” enough, but then I think that is something I need to resolve through my own hard work. 

There were several interesting points that I leapt on however.

• You need to be stubborn.  To push a new field forward you need to be willing to go against the grain and not take things, or others opinions, as given truths.  Be willing to push for what you believe in.
• Fields move from 'out there' to interdisciplinary to accepted; cognitive science, HCI, AI, Gaming, Ubiquitous Computing, Bio-Informatics.
• It will always be hard to keep up with two fields at the same time.  This is never an easy path.
• Consider what your field is - how do the disciplines you work in contribute to this field?  How do they change perspective on the field?
• Read broadly, and remember to cultivate a network of people who can support you.

Some useful places to start:

• Design Research by Brenda Laurel
• Work on Ethnographic Interviewing by George Marcus
• ACM Digital Library and Citeseer
• Spinning in the library
• Anthro-design mailing list

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Johanna Hunt
Official GHC 2007 Blogger
You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum

Now You are an Associate Professor

This panel session was run by Tracy Camp (Colorado School of Mines), Joan Francioni (Winona State University), Mary Lou Soffa (University of Virginia) and Mary Jane Irwin (Penn State).

This was an odd session for me to attend.  I am not, and I probably never will be an Associate Professor.  This role doesn't exist in the same way in the UK, and so knowing what to do after I became one was perhaps a little unnecessary for me.   In an odd way everything under discussion was alien to me, and I had to work my head round the differences in the English and American Academic systems.  However, the talk was still interesting and there were many commonalities between the responsibilities of an academic in the UK and the US. I found myself taking copious notes.

The talk was split into three main sections 'Activities towards Promotion' (Mary Lou), 'Undergraduate Institutions' (Joan), and 'Achieving Leadership' (Mary Jane).

Mary Lou talked about role progression, and the responsibilities of teaching, research and scholarship and service and leadership once you have tenure.  I found myself fighting with two terms 'tenure' and 'service', both of which are established in the American academic lexicon but not in mine (I heard 'tenure' mentioned on House once, but I don't think that counts).  'Service' I established was just a term for administration, just more formally labelled and acknowledged.   I quite approve, as admin is a major part of any academics role. 

I vowed to look up tenure as soon as the lovely GHC-Juniper network connection started back up again, as I was struggling to understand what it meant beyond just being permanently employed by an institution.  Somehow your job is more secure?   I still fail to fully grasp it, and would love to have someone explain the underlying premise to me!  It seems like the concept of tenure would reduce movement of faculty between institutions, and leave departments somewhat stale.  (I am happy to be wrong on this point!)

Once you have Associate Professor status (and thereby tenure) you are free to do the things you would like to do.  You must be careful to:

• Balance teaching and research
• Not switch research areas
• Not take on too much admin and organisational work

Joan spoke about the differences in the skills needed to progress in research vs. undergraduate institutions.  This parallels the differences in the UK between teaching and research focussed universities.  In undergraduate institutions the focus is on excellence in teaching and scholarly activity as well as leadership.   I found it interesting that she noted that many undergraduate institutions tended to be more closely linked to the local community, and wondered whether this was true back home.  Is Brighton Uni more closely tied to the city than Sussex University?

Mary Jane spoke (and she admitted it was very US-centric) about leadership roles in research institutions.  It is worth watching out for roles which are too demanding, or might pull your focus.  After a detailed look at someone of the professional roles you could take on she made some clear points of advice, which I am sure are true everywhere:

• Be proactive
  • Let people know who you are and what you are doing
  • Be positive and confident
  • Prepare an elevator talk
  • Go after awards
• Make sure your webpage is up-to-date and professional!
• Stay focussed and keep your balance
• Don't forget to have a life
• And, afterwards, don't forget to pay it forward.

In the questions session, after a discussion around being explicit about your contribution in any collaboration, the topic was raised of saying 'no' (a common discussion point in my research group, and something I am notoriously bad at).

Saying no is important:

• Be clear
• Don't feel you have to
• Point out things you already do or suggest alternatives that would help your career
• Possibly show that you are willing to consider it for a few days before saying no.

All in all a very interesting talk, even for someone who is not an associate professor!

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Johanna Hunt
Official GHC 2007 Blogger
You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum

Bringing Women into the World of Games

Joining The Game was a panel session I slipped along to, and my first full session of the conference.  The panel was run by representatives of UNC Chapel Hill, UNC Charlotte and EA Games.  By the time I found the room it had already started, but I still managed to secure myself a good seat at the back.

I took brief notes, but found the many things being discussed interesting:

Why games? They can be used as both a way of teaching computer science and as a means to attract women into the field.  As per good ole Wittgenstein, we were asked to consider what defined our notion of a game, considering the (now classic) example of second life as still constituting a game. 

The panellists introduced the nature of working in the games industry; interdisciplinary and well-rounded experience with a strong need to be able to communicate both technically and non-technically.  To get into the industry you really need to be well rounded (as it is potentially the hardest area in computer science); able to create fun games and ideas, strong C or C++ programming skills, memory management, architecture, networking, game AI all being useful.

Wu's Castle sounded like an interesting example of using a game to teach for loops in programming, and it was mentioned to have proven significant learning games.  I am looking forward to hearing more about this in the future, as my department is keenly interested in games for teaching programming.

The future of gaming using pervasive technologies was briefly mentioned, especially for GPS on mobile devices.  I wish more had been said on this topic, beyond mention that there was currently only really one game of this type (possibly in Italy) so far.  It had me wanting to leap out of my seat and mention  the exciting possibilities with Loco...  But I refrained, as the queue for questions was longer than the time available.

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Johanna Hunt
Official GHC 2007 Blogger
You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum

Bridge Day

...and so we left Backstage Disney and headed back with weary feet.

Or is that the end?

My, this will be a long tale.

In the beginning there was Bridge Day, this magical thing that was given to us lucky few.  At least that was how I, and I'm fairly sure we, all felt.  It really had sounded like a gift of a day from the start, and with the scholarship having allowed me to even attend at all, it was the icing on the cake. 

Post jetlag and ready for Bridge Day I set off. We were divided into groups, A, B, C, Pink, Blue, Green.   By happy coincidence I was shipped out with the blue group....

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Our first stop was to listen to a Disney Logistics talk from three Disney developers entitled 'A Day in the Life of a Disney Developer'. 

First up we learned about the IT structure of Disney IT, about the Business Technology Partners and job roles and progressions.  I mused to myself that it was interesting they viewed IT development careers as leading to increasing mentoring roles to support those newer or less experienced.   This was a nice way to view senior roles; mentoring not managing.   I was not so pleasantly struck by the discovery that all Disney staff are called 'cast members', this was a new concept for me, but clearly one entrenched in the Disney culture. 

We then heard more about the Disney development lifecycle (a topic which fascinated me but I'll not blather on about it here) and this was followed by a series of short demos.

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Then lunch, which I would have enjoyed more had it not been tempered by my realisation I had lost my phone.  It isn't just needed for twitter; it is my camera, alarm clock and back-up email reader.  Mid-way through the talk on Disney Imagineering, and the excellent sounding ImagiNations competition (which I wish I had known about while I still qualified), I realised where my phone must be.  Under that table, over there.  I admit I was distracted, biding my time until I could cross the room, whip up the tablecloth and look under.

Fortunately by the time the talk finished and I fought my way against the tide over there it had been discovered and placed on the table.  It was a quick find and my peace of mind was saved for a brief while.

Fortunately I found it just in time to take photos of our traipsing out for the group photo.

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Then we were whisked off to Epcot (my first time!) where we got to hear all about the little exciting things they do with technology.  I'm a fan of ubiquitous computing, so became quite excited when they moved on from talking about the biometrics they use for ticket verification to ways they are using infrared and wifi technology to create a more interactive environment. Epcot has 90% wifi coverage which makes POS systems which can be linked up to your room card, or cameras which can upload images to a central store accessible to all, possible and usable.  They use RFID tagged cards to monitor queue times, and infra red ipods, headphones, and 'Pal Mickey' plush speaking toys to create an interactive experience (language options available) around the site.

And then we got to go on Mission: Space.  I bypassed all the repeated and repeated warnings about motion sickness etc, and went for the orange 'more intense' version.  On getting in I realised I was afraid.  Not for me you understand, but for the precious thing in my bag, my laptop.  I'd taken my laptop on the ride with me.  Oops.  All the warnings flashed back through my mind.   ...and we were off.

(Thankfully, and I'm ruining the story here, I'm now typing on it perfectly well and all is fine.).

It was a good ride, not the most stressful or scary, just pleasant.

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The final stage of our journey was to the Magic Kingdom. I loved the opportunity to go on the Haunted Mansion ride and see the Disney that I had heard about since I was a child. 

I also really enjoyed the chance to go backstage but, as they say, what happens at Backstage Disney stays at Backstage Disney. 

(Either my lips are sealed, or I have just written much too much about Disney for now.)

...and so we left Backstage Disney and headed back with weary feet.

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After arriving back late, we rushed into the introductory talk then on to the reception and posters.  Phew, what a day!

And well worth it.  It was a lovely opportunity and lovely to have been allowed to participate.

 

The day is done.  Now I just need to find time to go through all the photos I took!

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Johanna Hunt
Official GHC 2007 Blogger
You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum