I’ve been to my first computer science conference. I made new friends, I met interesting people (most of them infinitely smarter than I’ll ever be…), I had fun. So much to write about… I suppose I have enough material and inspiration for a series of essays of such grandeur and significance that they would challenge and even surpass the works of many renowned masters of both prose and poetry. But I am so busy with my PhD applications that I won’t venture there..

Besides, my advisor has already done that (maybe not the “surpassing” part, although who am I to judge?) - his series of articles/reports on this OOPSLA, in my opinion, are not to be missed by anyone interested in OOP and computer science in general.

I am truly dreadfully busy with my PhD applications. Here’s a very brief account of my trip to OOPSLA.

It was great. I was a student volunteer which, besides free registration, gave me an opportunity to meet with other student volunteers who came literally from all over the world. The conference in general was very international - I met computer scientists, doctoral and masters students from Brazil, Chili, Mexico, Canada, Egypt, Austria, Sweden, France, UK, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Japan - that’s just to mention a few of the ones I personally met. Amazing! Also, many student volunteers, unlike myself, came to the U.S. specially for the conference - which, I think, is quite impressive - so, major kudos to the conference organizers!

I won’t even attempt to describe the sessions - for that, again, try reading my advisor’s essays. Unfortunately, some of the sessions I attended were not exactly within my area of interest -so I didn’t gain much insight from every talk or workshop. Also, I think I won’t be attending many workshops at future conferences. A workshop at OOPSLA was a 3-hour session during which the speaker (or workshop leader) tried to teach the audience a skill or a tool. Didn’t work in most cases. Or rather, in my humble opinion, it wasn’t the most efficient way to learn a skill or a tool. Maybe I feel that way because i am a graduate student and I have grown accustomed to learning myself what I can’t learn in class in a much more efficient manner. maybe if I were in industry, a workshop would be an ideal solution. Although, quite possibly, I will change my opinion after attending a conference on information retrieval, which, I suppose, is closer to my area of research than OOP, agile, TDD, wikis and other topics discussed at OOPSLA.

Listening to keynote speakers, but most importantly - interacting with other conference participants - was what I found to be most insightful and interesting. My new friends and me - we talked about my research, we talked about their research, we talked about grad school and research in general, we talked about our future and what not…

I was pleasantly surprised when my research topic was very well received by my more experienced peers. My idea (which is not entirely mine - Professor O’Kane deserves at least half the credit for it (hint-hint: better grade, please, professor? - the idea I’ve described before - about using Open Directory to auto-classify the Wikipedia English content - was found interesting and quite promising. So I might be onto something intereting.

My new friends -

Hani is originally from Egypt, he is a student at University at Buffalo, SUNY, he is currently working on visualizing errors in OO programs. Like myself, he comes from a different academic background and has been doing computer science for several years - not since childhood. He’s very happy with his field, I think he’ll end up starting his own company some day. Hani succeeded in dragging me out to the gym - but only once. We both have athletic backgrounds in the same sport, the difference is - he still works out and stays in shape, I don’t. Although I’ve recently started running (I ran about 7 miles one afternoon at the conference!) I’m still ages away from Hani. Because i am lazy.

Stephane is from Montreal. His father is a professor of computer science - so he was among the lucky once who grew up knowing all the concepts the rest of us have to study hard. (although I was lucky too - my parents were linguists and my father spoke only English to me - so I grew up knowing both languages, while the rest of …you? had to study a second language. They say it’s hard - studying a foreign language - oh well, maybe it is - you tell me.. The day before the conference we went to see the Ocean (I miss it so much here in Iowa!) and ended up playing catch in the waves with a tennis ball we found in the seaweeds. Not that we gathered a crowd, but the people were quite amazed - we were the only ones in the water besides the surfers, who had wetsuits. But hey, one form Canada, the other from Russia - we have our own definitions of cold!

I also met Daniel from the Digital Enterprise Research Institute in Austria who works on using wikis to develop ontologies. Our areas might be related - so we agreed to share ideas. I met Rebecca from Sweden who is a graphic designer - not a computer scientist - and yet is very involved in the patterns community. Rebecca was lots of fun, the most memorable occasion was going out to a salsa club - Rebecca and 9 OOPSLA guys - she danced with most of us (those who dared!) - even those who didn’t know what they were doing, like yours truly!

To sum up my experience at OOPSLA, I’ll say this: I think I have sort of “arrived” - I’ve seen the community a member of which I’m gradually becoming, and it felt very much “at home.” Now watch me fail at my PhD applications and go to New York to become a cabbie