SIGCSE (St Louis, MO)

I was at SIGCSE to present research (read the paper here) my colleague Aditya (right) did on event outreach. This was my first time presenting a poster at a conference, which was kind of cool. Lots of people asked interesting questions and it was a good way to meet new people.

One of the highlights of my SIGCSE was the student research competition, I was really impressed by the passion and quality of the work done. The keynotes were also excellent, I found them very motivating, topical, and engaging.

I also got to see the Gateway Arch, that was pretty cool. You have probably seen the same exact picture a thousand times of the gateway arch so here’s an angle I’ve never seen a photo of before: (I’m sure tens of thousands of people still take that exact photo every year, but I am going to pretend I am creative and special)

I also went to City Museum which was REALLY cool. I talked to my parents about it and apparently I was there as a young child and had fun then too, although I didn’t remember that. (there’s a picture of me hanging out in some spring thing somewhere, if I ever find it and remember I’ll add it here)

After getting home from SIGCSE, I had to do a bunch of packing and moving for my move to Minnesota. I don’t have any good pictures of that but the move went pretty smoothly. It was a long process (we had technically been moving for the last 6 months) so I was very happy when it was finally over.

SCaLE (Pasadena, CA)

I spent most of my time at SCaLE running the CodeDay booth, so didn’t do anything nearly as cool as City Museum but still had a good time. I gave a talk (technically my first one, even though I’ve done lots of public speaking and similar stuff before), which went really well. You can see more details (and watch a recording once it’s uploaded) here. I was supposed to give the talk with my colleague Ramiz, but he was travelling from India and got his visa rejected. Hopefully he can make it and give a talk with me next SCaLE.

Another fun thing I did was make a set of Opossum trading cards: There are 18 different cards and each one has a different picture and fun fact about Opossums on them. SCaLE is a very student focused conference, so the idea was students without much networking experience could walk up to me and ask for an opossum trading card, and I would give them a card plus a friendly professional conversation. Some people did it, but it didn’t really take off as much as I had hoped, since I needed to rely on second-hand word of mouth (from people who are inexperienced networkers, no less!) I have some ideas for next year how I can make it a better experience and encourage more people to use it.

SXSW EDU (Austin, TX)

Right after SCaLE was SXSW EDU, which was awesome! It was my first time going and I wasn’t really sure what to expect but it went really well and I made lots of valuable connections. It was one of the biggest conferences I’ve ever been to and it was really interesting to see SXSW completely take over and transform the entire city of Austin. Thank you to all the year-round Austin residents who put up with us!

Thanks for reading my inaugural blog post. The rest of this year is already packed full of lots more interesting travel, watch for next months blog post detailing my upcoming trip to Europe! (Pictured, flying over MSP before my first time landing there as a permanent Minnesota resident)