Clare's LJ

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

Of course, the biggest news around ECS lately is our very own Professor Wendy Hall becoming a Dame. It’s utterly fantastic news, and a wonderful accolade to an inspirational woman. As well as being a leading scientist, Wendy has contributed to the community in many other ways, including involvement in various diversity initiatives.

Web science is a current focus of Wendy’s. I’ve been following its rise with some interest, not least because my research seems to be sitting somewhere within this domain. I’m really pleased to see concrete things starting to happen: the first WebSci conference is happening next month; our Masters-level taught course began this week; finally (as I mentioned previously), ECS was recently awarded funding for a Centre for Doctoral Training in web science. WebSci is really beginning to crystallise from a set of abstract ideas into something more solid. These are interesting times!

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

I had the pleasure of attending the above event last week. It examined the careers and ongoing professional life of PhDs, inside and outside academia. It included four plenaries, which each took two successful PhDs from a given area (history; sociology; natural science; drama), one of whom had stayed in academia and one of whom had gone into industry. There was a very broad selection of speakers - and of doctoral students - with great discussions.

Overall observations

It was fascinating to have the chance to talk with people carrying out PhDs in areas like art and drama - how do you examine one of those? (Well, I have more of a clue than I did before.) This was not a CompSci conference: people didn’t use their laptops during sessions!

There were negative and positive themes throughout this event. Points were made about the frustration of imposed processes which stifle creativity and innovation, and the lack of investment here in the UK compared to other countries (e.g. Germany). On the other hand, there were fascinating life stories on hand, and an enormous range of diversity and openness. ‘Serendipity’ was an often-used word, and ‘don’t over-plan your careers’ was said more than once!

Detail

The opening keynote was given by Tom Docherty, an English professor at Warwick. He talked about how we have lived through the age of mechanical production and are now in the age of digital production, and ranted at great length about how we value form above content. For example, we have all seen the Mona Lisa, whether we’ve been to Paris or not - we get an aesthetic impression of its form, but don’t see the work right there in front of us, in context as the result of a historical process. Similarly, he talked about how we disconnect from stuff in the news (e.g. a dying child in Gaza) and instead look at situations in terms of how they’ll play out (say, the consequences for countries in a conflict).

Similarly, he ranted about how lecturers are expected to fill in data on the aims, objectives, goals of a taught module - and not just go and teach it. How many PhD students have courses about managing their PhDs, structuring their time? A lot of us.  But that stuff is nothing to do with the content of the PhDs!

He ended by saying that we have lost the visceral experience - we experience what we think we ought to experience, not the thing itself - how do we respond to that dying child in Gaza? How do we grieve? (Personally, I’m not convinced about all of this. He says we aren’t free to experience things as they are, but were we ever? And does this not, on some levels, just boil down to over-thinking things and “head vs heart”? He is, after all, a PhD talking to a room of PhD candidates.)

Anyway. Enough on the opening keynote.

Other things which came up were discussions of issues faced by female academics (you know the stuff - bringing up families etc - though also a point about how there is a need for the token woman on committees, which can leave us over-stretched - this resonated!). Also a point was made about inequality, not in terms of promotion and pay, but care-giving: how many husbands might drop a job to care for an ailing mother-in-law? How many wives would do likewise? Hm.

Student presentations were in parallel streams, ten to a group. I heard about visual deception in cinema, the effects of downhill walking in the elderly, implementation of policy… see how broad this conference was? Heard an utterly fantastic talk on the Battle of Mersa El Brega in 1941 - the speaker just came to life and told us a story - I forgot I was in a presentation, I was there with the speaker in 1941. Fab!

I gave my own presentation after a walk around the grounds (which were so “upper class English” it was unbelievable: of course, we were a stone’s throw from Eton and Windsor Castle). I worked really hard when putting it together to make it accessible to non-techies, and I was really pleased that I appear to have succeeded in this. I had loads of questions, and at breakfast the next day an artist from RCA and then a cinematographer separately grabbed me to talk some more. Win!

Of course, the Q&A session following my presentation was very broad, reflecting the audience. I was really surprised to be asked by the historian, “How on earth will you write this up?” He felt it would be incredibly difficult because my work is currently in two halves (which will later, with luck and hard work, mesh together), and thus I can’t write a linear document. This hadn’t struck me as anything of note at all - perhaps a reflection of how different approaches to PhDs can be.

I was delighted to meet a fellow CompSci at the conference - by the strangest coincidence, our research areas overlap. He’s looking at online social networking, what makes some profiles popular and things like this. There was an interesting discussion following his presentation on the ethics of data collection (the data’s grabbed from the ‘net - he isn’t getting consent from the profile holders), what data mining means (clearly not a topic which many in the room were well versed in), how it can be used. Anyway, we two cheated the interdisciplinary nature of affairs by talking CompSci over dinner - CHI, hypertext, coding languages. Tee hee!

The final plenary was given by the drama people, and was very interesting. Topics included the power of the actor to create something which isn’t physically there (think invisible walking sticks), and to bring to life the (perhaps ambiguous) written word. Actors and research: how some love to research a role, others hate it and fear the research will constrain or confine them. Discussion of the obligation to publish in academia, and how that can lead to lots of second rate stuff, rather than rarer but sparkling gems. Great points about how academic research requires a rather introverted state of mind, but teaching and attending conferences demands an extroverted approach. Impostor syndrome as a consequence of always questioning everything.

The penultimate speaker discussed Nietzsche, including a quote which resonated with the opening keynote - “life in things is truer than any theory about things”. But PhDs inherently involve engaging with the theory of things!

Clearly, this conference produced a lot of food for thought. It was really refreshing to go and talk to such a broad set of people, and I found the exercise of explaining my research to such a group very valuable indeed. Good times!

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

Brief work update thing

How is it 2009 already? What happened to 2008? What happened to this week, for that matter? It doesn’t feel it should be Friday already. Then again, I spent all week focused on rewriting a paper, with a conference deadline tomorrow. At least, it was tomorrow until a few hours ago… they just extended it to 30th January. It’s just like PhD comics, it really is!

Never mind: the paper is done.

This month is paper-tastic. Having finished that one today, I now need to write another for hypertext. Next month, I write my (delayed) mini thesis. Fun times?!

On EngDs changing

I received an interesting email or two back in mid-December about how EngDs are being run. EPSRC have been revising the number and nature of EngD Centres, apparently to extend the model to a broader range of disciplines. (Southampton seems to have always been unusually broad in its implementation of the EngD.) From October this year there’ll be 44 ‘new’ centres for doctoral training (CDTs) - I am sceptical about the ‘new’ part, given that Southampton is one (actually, three) of these, when it can already be described as such a beast.

So there are going to be a bunch of ‘Industrial Doctorate Centres’ (IDCs), which are basically EngD centres, and a bunch of ‘Doctoral Training Centres’ (DTCs), which will offer four-year Masters/PhD courses. Are you loving the acronyms yet? Anyway, the good news for Southampton is that we have successfully bid for an IDC in ‘transport and the environment’, and also for two DTCs in web science and complexity. Winning the IDC is particularly cool, as apparently only a third of the original EngD centres remain - so this reflects rather well on our own EngD programme.

On a personal note, these changes don’t really affect me at all. All current REs (Research Engineers, or EngD students) are funded through to the end of our programmes, and the operation of the current EngD won’t change.

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

I ended my last post by mentioning an interest in returning to regularly blogging about my work, but also noting I wasn’t sure if it’d happen. Well, here I am!

I used as a prompt a system internal to ECS. On a monthly basis, it bugs postgrads to write a mini activity report for their supervisors to read, and then bugs supervisors to respond to these reports. I think writing about its effectiveness is maybe another blog post in its own right, but I will say that it was useful in reminding me to write this

So what have I been up to lately?

The main thrust of my work in the last while was coding up a prototype messaging system. The purpose was twofold - partly to check my logic was sound, and partly to see whether it really *is* feasible to implement it using IBM’s MicroBroker product. I was really pleased with how quickly I built the prototype, and also that it worked!

I’ve now very nearly finished writing up a document about that prototype: this presents the motivation, a scenario of use, system description, all that sort of thing. Hopefully the document will form a good chunk of my mini thesis.

Speaking of which, that’s coming up rapidly. I have one more chunk of work which may be worth doing before the mini thesis - the issue at the mo is that neither myself nor my supervisor have the knowledge to scope the task out. We have a meeting with an expert tomorrow to try and figure that out, and once we know that, hopefully we can work out the timing of everything, and start booking people for the viva!

All that said, I’ve been doing a few things on the side, too. A few weeks ago, I presented to my 2nd and 3rd line managers at Hursley about EngDs in general, and my research in particular. It went well, I’m pleased to say. I also organised an LSL/ECS seminar, which concerned mobile and pervasive work in LSL. Three of us spoke about our work, before we all moved into a discussion on where these technologies are going, particularly with respect to LSL.

I’ve agreed to a bit of demonstrator work, which is coming up: I’ll be marking half of the courseworks for our second year HCI course over Christmas, and from February I’ll be involved with the 2009 SEG module, where I will mentor two groups and apparently be involved in the demo/presentation assessment at the module’s end. I’m interested in HCI, so I’m happy to do the marking, and I had a really good time mentoring SEG students in 2007 - so I’m looking forward to getting back to that, too.

So I’m living in busy times, but good times. I really like where I am at the moment, in fact: the mini thesis deadline (despite being a bit vague right now) is close enough that I’m motivated to get on with things, but far enough away that I’m not enormously stressed. I should make the most of that!

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

So the head of my research group has been encouraging us to update blogs and maintain an online presence. I used to update this pretty often, then it all kind of fell over towards the end of last year. On reflection, I suspect that this is due to a sequence of important non-work events, such as getting married…

So: hi!

I last updated nearly a year ago. What’s been going on?

Research stuff

Well, I picked myself up and got back to work, with rather improved health. As I mentioned in my previous post, the viva for my lit review went well. I was particularly pleased that my future research ideas fitted well with IBM - definitely an important goal to meet.

Work-wise, I’ve been looking at two threads in parallel. The first involves pervasive messaging, and considering ways to use existing IBM technologies to ‘translate’ messages between various modalities of communication. The second is to do with examining the functionality offered by social technologies, particularly with an eye to figuring out exactly what’s going on when you browse a site such as Facebook - what is the experience offered? To which (if any) real-life experiences is it analogous? Ideally, it’d be ace to ‘deconstruct’ this experience as Dix does in his paper on Christmas crackers. Long-term, I want to pull these threads together to look at how (if at all) it is possible to ‘transpose’ web-based social experiences to novel, pervasive technologies.

Next up is the mini thesis, the midpoint of my degree. In this report I need to explain where I am, what I’ve achieved and (importantly!) where I’m going.

IP stuff

On the side, I’ve been doing a bit of innovation work with colleagues at IBM - a couple of patents have been filed, now, and some bits and bobs are in the system. Patents are, in some ways, analogous to publications within academia - it’s great that IBM encourage employees to spend some time thinking about unusual and novel things at work.

Less fun is submitting papers to conferences whilst ensuring you meet company rules and regs - IBM are (understandably) very protective of their IP, so I have to ensure any papers I want to submit to a conference are given legal and technical sign-off before I do anything with them… which generally means I need them ready at least a week before any deadlines. That isn’t always terribly convenient! We’ve made it work so far, though

IBM in general

I’m onto my third first-line manager since starting at IBM, but that seems to be relatively normal - people move around a lot. For me, the role of my first line is relatively simple: really it’s about sorting out admin stuff. My industrial supervisor, Andy, hasn’t changed,which is the main thing!

That’s it!

What the heading says. Of course, there’s a difference between making an effort to write a one-off blog entry when prodded by the head of your research group, and regularly updating anything. It’d be cool if I get back into this, if only because (as my supervisor Dave has observed), writing posts can be useful for straightening out thoughts on particular topics. We shall see…

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

Long time no update. So, a bunch of health problems jumped on me very soon after my previous post on here; I don’t have much to say about the Hopper conference, as I pretty much missed all of it. The good news is that I’ve been back at work for a fortnight now, and all is going well.

I had the viva on my lit review back on 11th. It went really well! The examiner seemed happy with my report, and I think the discussion of where to go next went extremely well: I’m very excited about all the possibilities. It’s funny: I started off looking at assistive tech for learning, particularly for students with issues such as dyslexia. Somewhere along the way, my direction altered. I’m really intrigued by how different generations/cultures approach and use technology, and how we can use techs to help ‘unusual’ (i.e. non-standard, maybe elderly or disabled) users, particularly socially. (Wendy asked me to put my lit review online, so if you’re interested by this stuff, it is here: you’re probably better off just chatting to me, though!)

I read a fantastic paper today, which is here. It’s all about the design of assistive technologies for use by elders, and discusses the importance of aesthetics. I’ve always felt that interfaces are key (I have been known to say that the smartest, most fantastic technology is useless if no one can use it), but the paper explains this far better than I ever did, particularly with regard to assistive technology for the elderly.

It looks at how the perception of your abilities affects those abilities, and how devices can cause feelings of shame and powerlessness. For example, it describes a woman who resisted leaving her home once wheelchair-bound, due to embarrassment about this; she therefore lost social ties, became more isolated, and engaged in far less physical activity. (Compare a wheelchair with the motorised scooters you see the elderly zipping around in. The functionality is pretty similar, but the image is utterly different.)

The paper concludes that you can’t assume elders will use an assistive technology just because they need it: if it makes them feel embarrassed or incapable, they may avoid it even at the expense of independence or social interaction.

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

I’ve just spent an exceptionally busy four weeks writing, reviewing and improving my literature review. This is the first major deadline in a doctorate, and at the least catalogues your chosen research area, and helps you to work out where to go next; the good ones do some analysis, too. I’m pleased to say I handed mine in yesterday. It was very hard work, and I was very pleased to get rid of it! It isn’t over, though, as I have a viva in just under three weeks. I hope, in the viva, to get in some good discussion about my future direction.

I won’t be thinking about that immediately, though, because I’m off to Florida on Monday. A group of us from ECS are attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing - I’m thrilled to have a scholarship! I attended a very useful briefing earlier this week. I have discovered that it isn’t a research conference, and it is very parallel: loads of streams to choose from. It’s all about motivating and inspiring women in computing, and is full of talks from women in industry and research, speaking about what they are doing, and why. (I think!) Another purpose of the conference is, I gather, recruitment of women who are about to graduate: so there’ll be lots of undergrads, and lots of big companies. That said, I hear there are plenty of postgrads there, too. Most of all, I am told, it is a celebration. I am intrigued!

The astute among you may have noted that the conference isn’t actually starting ’til the week after next: this is because myself and a friend are going out a week early, for a well-earned break!

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

I discovered yesterday that I’m quoted on the ECS page about EngDocs!

The ECS page explains what the programme is, perhaps a little more clearly (certainly a little more formally) than my previous post.

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

A month and a half ago, I (finally) moved house. The following information is hopefully of use to the prospective house buyer within Southampton:

Firstly, I’d recommend getting a mortgage broker. (The guide here is rather useful at explaining why, but in summary: there are thousands of products on the market, so whole-of-market brokers are A Good Thing, as they can find the best deals.) Specifically, I recommend Compass Mortgage Services: they’ve provided nothing but excellent advice, both to myself and to some friends of mine. (They were also ace at hassling the mortgage company to hurry things along.)  These guys earn their money via commission from mortgage companies, so they don’t charge you any fees.

While we’re on the topic, mortgage companies: we went with Abbey National. They are very, very, very slow when it comes to admin. That said, we’ve had no serious problems.

Next, to consider estate agents:

Connells Southampton were absolutely rubbish. I failed to move house in February because they lied to me for well over a month, claiming that the sellers of the house in question had moved out and were ready to go. In fact, they were half-way through buying another house, and had in no way left the vicinity. Not recommended.

Enfields Eastleigh, by contrast, were nothing but a pleasure to deal with. Efficient and professional, they went to great lengths to help get the sale through. This is despite the efforts of various solicitors, to whom we shall now move…

Coffin Mew were… interesting. The service we received was absolutely abysmal: I can barely face detailing it. However, just to throw a few random examples out there: our solicitor told us she’d do things, then didn’t; ‘forgot’ that our mortgage offer expired on 31st May; let us think there was a chance of exchanging and completing on 31st May (up to and including the day itself), when several forms and queries were outstanding; and so forth. She was totally disinterested in our case.

However… that particular solicitor is apparently no longer working for Coffin Mew, and when we complained about the above, they promptly apologised and refunded the conveyancing fees, plus an amount of compensation.

As such, I can’t say I’ll be using these guys again, but perhaps they don’t entirely suck. Our experience did, mind you!

Michael Hayes & Co (another solicitor): this guy is, by all accounts, genuinely useless. He was the solicitor working for the sellers in our second, successful transaction. From what I can gather, the chap seemed to be entirely disinterested in the sale. Our useless solicitor claimed that he was referring pretty much every query to her to do; when the estate agents tried to convince him to do a particular piece of work, he apparently told them that he ‘didn’t give a f***’. Interesting… my suggestion is, avoid like the plague.

Meanwhile, it’s lovely to actually be in the house! It was a long haul getting here, but well worth it.

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

A friend passed me this link a little while ago. It is entitled The Lord of the Rings: an allegory of the PhD?, and it made me laugh.

I was also made aware of a tribute to this fantastic comic, which is all about playing chess on a rollercoaster. Yes. That’s right. A bunch of people did it!

The sparsity of updates lately is almost entirely due to my having moved house at the very end of June. There’s been a lot of decorating, buying of furniture, sorting out of utilities, and general Being Grown Up. Most distressing! (But fun, and worthwhile, all at once.) We’re gradually winning the fight to get our home homely, so perhaps I’ll be around a bit more soon… but no promises.

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

Splitting my time between two locations means that I’ve never full-time anywhere. As such, it’s not too unusual for people to ask me what, exactly, it is that I do: what is an EngD?

Hopefully this post will answer that question.

A Doctorate of Engineering is very similar to a PhD. It has the same major requirements, with a few extras thrown in for good measure. Unlike a PhD, it’s integrated with industry. It takes four years, not three. One of these years is taken up with a mixture of MBA and masters-level technical modules. One of the years is spent carrying out research at the university, and the remaining two years are spent carrying out research at the sponsor company; in my case, IBM.

Traditionally, the EngD student spends two straight years at uni, then two straight years at the host company. Why aren’t I doing that? Well, there’s so much going on in Hursley that it seems a waste! With so many exciting projects and technologies, it’s good to pop in (if only for a day a week, which has been the case for most of this year), and at least stay in touch with developments at the office.

Officially, I’m part-time at IBM over the four years of the course, but what’s really happening is that, having started on one day a week, I’m ramping it up as things progress. Once my lit review is done, and I know where my research is going, I’m better placed to get on with stuff at Hursley. Towards the end of the course, I’ll be in almost full-time… but keeping in touch with the uni, in the same way that I’m currently keeping in touch with IBM.

At least, that’s the plan!

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

Ever wondered where cats go each day, and what they see?

One answer.

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

Three that I’d like to share:

Firstly, these wonderful people sell a multitude of colourful, daisy decals for cars (via Dan). What a brilliant idea! Unfortunately, I’m not sure that my other half would be happy driving a flower-covered car… ho hum.

The second link is via Dave. This continues the LOLCATS meme with - was it inevitable? - LOLCODE. A quick Hello World example for you:

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE "HAI WORLD!"
KTHXBYE

Finally, via Carrie, is The Great British Duck Race! It involves many, many rubber ducks, setting a world record, and supporting charities. It sounds great!

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

I had the pleasure of attending Ted Nelson’s 70th birthday lecture two days ago. It was my first time hearing him speak, and it was fantastic! I was expecting it to be fairly computery, but the first words he uttered were along the lines of, “I am tired of talking about computers.”

I wasn’t disappointed. He touched on many a topic, from the end of the earth, to note taking, to the brokenness of our education systems (students as prisoners of requirements and obligations - the fun has been taken out, there are no choices!), to the Brothers Grimm, linguistics and the history of the European languages, to a bit of HCI and a rant about the ‘cut and paste’ function, a 3D version of Xanadu, nuclear war, quitting smoking, police informants, a HIV contact curtain using strategic self-revelation, the earth’s core, and back to education (”the perfect curriculum is no curriculum”!).

(I’m sure the above isn’t comprehensive: the pace was fast, and I wasn’t note-taking at every moment!)

It was quite a whirlwind. Awesome stuff.

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

Campus is very pretty sometimes. I was wandering in at eightish, a few mornings ago, when everything was fairly still and peaceful. There’s a stretch of tree-dotted grass leading up to the stream, which really did look like something from a fairytale: ducks and ducklings, squirrels and thrushes, the odd pigeon were all dotted around on the grass, apparently unconcerned with one another, or myself. They were surprisingly peaceful.

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

I had to share this picture - adorable, no?

(A Facebook login is probably required to view it, apologies for any frustration caused! Just imagine a really, really cute pair of ducklings.)

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

My awesome Cities character (background) went at auction (here) a little while ago, for the grand old sum of £121! Not bad, eh? The money is being shared between Oxfam and Amnesty International.

Yay for web-based RPGs!

Edit: Turns out we’ve actually raised another £50 on top of that; one of the unsuccessful bidders has a personal policy whereby, when he fails to win a charity auction in which he placed a bid, he donates half of that bid to the charity anyway. Yay!

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

(And now, for something completely different.)

I received a couple of emails today about the Anita Borg networking retreat. (Still looking forward to it!) A quick query, and I discovered that yes, Google are happy to book my return flight a few days later. Their plan was to return me to my country sometime on the Saturday afternoon, but I think I’ll ask for something coming back on the Tuesday afternoon; that gives me nearly half a week to explore. Yay, exploring!

(I must brush up on my German. I gather that the Swiss accent is very different, so I’m not sure how much it’ll come in. Still! It’s nice to make the effort, and I’ve been meaning to go back to my German for a little while.)

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

The below entry mostly repeats what other people have said; apologies. I think it’s worth saying.

As I just said in an email to Mark, I was absolutely shocked by his latest blog entry. To quote…

An idiotic group of eighty students [from] Norco High School in Norco, California went to Mike Daisey’s (wonderful) performance of his monologue, Invincible Summer, at the American Repertory Theater. One fellow, apparently a chaperone accompanying the group, poured water all over Dalsey’s original manuscript.

The incident is captured on video, as Dalsey tapes all his performances. Mark’s entry includes a link to this, and to various other blog entries - not least of which is Mike’s own entry about the experience. What are things coming to?

As John Hodgman remarks:

AND IT IS INSPIRING to me, both as a performer and a human, to see the humor and the grace with which Mike reassures those members of his audience who did not choose to pour water on his notes and regain control of himself and the moment.

I was deeply impressed with Mike’s response to the whole incident. I guess what scares me is that I don’t at all understand how these students and their chaperone can even consider taking the course of action that they did. Yes, by all means object to someone’s work - but like that? Why?

Originally published at Clare's blog. You can comment here or there.

This EngD business is pretty awesome. I get the opportunity to do a bunch of MBA modules at the University, and this week I had my first lecture in business ethics. It’s the lecturer’s first time running the course, and I was very impressed!

The lecture lasted for not quite four hours. We started off with a set of slides, and a few discussions - why business ethics, what sort of issues might we touch upon, etc. Then a 50 minute BBC video about Corporate Social Responsibility. (I was a bit dubious at this stage: slides plus a video? Feels like we aren’t being given too much interaction, here.) However, the video was good, and after a quick break, Leo Martin of Good Corporation (the ’star’ of the BBC’s program) showed up. He’s an excellent speaker, and we had plenty of time for questions.

We finished with a ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ type exercise: split into about eight groups, each being a different petrol station. During each round, we’d compete with one other group, and had to choose whether to maintain high prices, or drop them. As a CompSci, I’ve covered prisoner’s dilemma a zillion times before: but there’s something very different between hearing about the game theory, writing code to do it, and actually being a participant.

Good stuff.