Adding fun to the NZCSRSC 2008

Besides attending presentations, poster sessions and workshops, what else do you expect to experience when coming to NZCSRSC’08? Fun, entertainment, excitement, while keeping within the goals of this immersive event - all this is our job. As the NZCSRSC'08 Ministers of Culture, our main responsibility is to organize all the events during the conference. These include check-in on your arrival, opening and closing ceremonies, the industry event, as well as social event. Therefore everyday, the two of us keep on thinking about how we can make people comfortable and happy, how things can be interesting and appealing, how…

Anyway, I think you get the idea. Now, only if we had an unlimited (non-student) budget!

We want to give you the warmest welcome when you arrive in Christchurch, followed by a "welcome-to-NZCSRSC/Canterbury" opening ceremony. After the ceremony, you may want to take in a tour (with presentation) of NZ’s fastest supercomputer or have a look around the university! That evening we are combining a delicious sit-down dinner with an informative and fun after-dinner public speaker. After presentations on the second day, you get to relax during the social night, meet with others, and make new friends (build your network). Here people can mingle with each other and enjoy a couple of nice comedy shows we have planned. If you are a musician at heart, bring your instruments down and you might have a chance to jam during the BBQ (keep an eye on the forum for more details). The following evening you will be dining and mingling with representatives from the ICT industry. Here you can see some cool demos and talk to people from local or even national wide ICT companies and organizations, and build your industry-based network. We hope that you will find useful information there on software/tools or for future employment, collaboration, or partnerships. On the last day, award presentations and the closing ceremony will, we hope, draw a perfect end to the conference.

Now the question is: “who are we???” “We” are … Sharon and Xianglin - two of a few girls in the Computer Science & Software Engineering Department (We have to add, girls here are powerful!), who enjoy working for this Ministry. Sharon is from the ICTG (Intelligent Computer Tutoring Group). She is currently designing multiple presentations for open student models used in one of the tutoring systems. Xianglin is from the Network Security Lab. Her topic is on the security of Voice over IP.

NZCSRSC is new to the both of us as we enrolled in our Masters thesis in mid 2007, but now we have become very passionate about it and are really looking forward to experiencing it first hand. Imagine … many of the best computer science research students from around the nation will gather here and present their findings; how can we miss such an event! So come on and join us! Let’s talk to each other, learn new things and make friends. Together, let’s make it a fun, educational, interesting, and memorable experience!

Sharon and Xianglin are looking forward to meeting and mingling with all of you at the NZCSRSC'08.

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BuildIT, premium sponsor of the NZCSRSC 2008

Winston Peters move over.

When I was thinking about taking on the role of NZCSRSC'08 Foreign Affairs Minister, some one pointed out that FA Minister is the first person to blame if NZCSRS08 is poorly attended (this is not the voice in my head, but one of my colleagues who was eying the job). I took this as a challenge and my previous experience (as the UC local contact for NZCSRSC07) has helped me lots. My main job is to keep in touch with the local organisers at each university informed where we’re at with the conference. I think local contacts play a crucial role for making NZCSRSC08 a great success, as they promote the conference within their university and also help us understand what is feasible and what is not from their ends. I feel fortunate to work with a cool bunch of people who are just as keen about NZCSRSC08 as the bunch at UC. Thank you guys and gals.

Last year when I was the local contact for UC, my biggest challenge was to get the best travel for our group at UC and Lincoln, for that I had to jump through a lot of hoops. Thanks to our UC travel agent!! Were it not for our very efficient UC travel agent, there would have been no UC contingent at the 2007 conference. My advice for those few local contacts new to the role, is to find out the procedure to book travel as early as possible specially if your university travel agent has a reputation of being difficult to deal with (like UC). Also if there’s anything you’re uncertain about, hound us until you get a sufficient answer.

Ok, a little bit about me. I'm a PhD student at UC and also a mother (of a 4-yr old girl, Ravisha); one who is finding her PhD a breeze compared to her mothering duties … Though that said, it’s still no walk in the park. My husband is also working in the computer field, as a software developer. Yes you guessed it, computer talks are off-limits at home. We’re from warm, sunny Sri Lanka. Moved to Chch about 7 years ago and loving it here.

My PhD research is about encouraging students to be more involved while using Intelligent Tutoring Systems (adaptive educational system). My project is based on the evidence that some students tend to try different answers to the problems (provided by ITSs) just to complete the task without actually thinking (which equates to no learning happening ).

Before attending NZCSRSC07, my national network of CS people were very limited. (Facebook was not that popular then :). I got to meet so many postgrads, academics and people from the industry. I realised that I am not alone going through the different stages of the postgrad life (the excitement and the frustrations etc.) Also I got a lot of great ideas from the workshops at the conference (things like effective networking, time management, publishing etc.). We also got the chance to see the CS dept at Waikato, to get a taste how things are done and how things are set up. We actually had the chance to taste a Waikato-made cup of coffee from their Espresso machine.

So I highly recommend attending NZCSRSC'08. Even if you don't have a paper or a poster submission. If you're at the early stages of a research degree, this will give you a taste of a postgrad student life (the good, the bad and the ugly).

Amali, the NZCSRSC'08 Minister of Foreign Affairs, is considering a move to politics.

Attack of the 50ft Ministry

About four score and three months ago, the conference's call for papers was broadcast in Computer Science departments across the country. In the following two months we received over 50 submissions of long or short papers - an increase on the previous year, meaning the NZCSRSC is growing steadily, and with your input, we're looking forward to a great conference in April.

Submissions closed just before Christmas, and since then everyone's been furiously writing and sending in reviews - we know because we receive an e-mail for every review sent (54 papers x 3 reviews each = enough email to fill up the inside of Lancaster Jad Christchurch's sports arena, if the emails happened to be printed on the sides of meteors). All reviews have now been received and we'll be releasing the results to the paper authors this week. This should give everyone enough time to absorb the comments and make adequate changes to their papers before camera-ready copies are due on the 7th of March.

We will open registration for the event shortly after the results have been sent out. Registration is open to everyone, not just those who submitted, so even if you didn't have the time to submit a paper, we'd still love to see you at the conference!

Some info about us, the Ministry of Justice (this is our official name; world governments and the U.N. simply refer to us as the Justice League of NZCSRSC08). Although the name evokes images of a semi-famous superhero clan, we assure you that we are devoid of special powers (except for Amanda, who has the ability to bend time; this comes in handy when deadlines are approaching. Bending space is proving to be more of a challenge, hence people will still need to find their own travel to the conference).

Our main purpose as a group is to act as the Programme Chair for the conference. Anything to do with papers and conference scheduling is either our duty, or a shared duty with another ministry. Any time responsibility is ambiguous, disputes are settled by three rounds of rock-paper-scissors, or pistols at dawn, depending on the weather and the phase of the moon.

As for the nature of the group's individuals, the Cliff's notes version begins....NOW: Jay is a postgraduate student currently in the process of finishing his Masters degree. His area is Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), specifically tutors that teach programming. Amanda is in the second year of her PhD, also in the area of ITS. She is looking at curriculum integration of knowledge spaces into ITSs. Delio's research is in the area of network security, specifically: traffic self-similarity and distributed denial of service detection.

The conference itself is shaping up quite nicely, with four days of amazing academic activity (and alliteration) anticipated. But, alas, more conference planning awaits. To paraphrase a popular marionette-starring TV series, Justice League is GO!(ing to end this blog post now).

Making the world a safer place for paper submissions everywhere,
JL-NZCSRSC08


The Justice League thinks that it's pondering what you're pondering, but where will we find a speedboat and 3 manila folders full of termites at this hour?