CRV 2010, Teaching, and Good Presentations

Yesterday afternoon, I gave my first academic conference paper presentation. I have given talks at conferences before (including Grace Hopper), but they weren't on highly technical topics. My main goal for this talk was to stay true to what I believe is a good presentation style, even though it's not really the norm.

I've had the opportunity to rant about talks and poster presentations a few times lately. The main summary of these rants is that I hate that people put so much information in their slides or on their posters! The thing is, there's only so much detail I can take in in a short period of time. And guess what? If your second slide (or your poster) is filled with all kinds of facts and numbers and equations you think are useful...my brain turns off. You've lost me for the entire rest of your talk. I don't this on purpose - I just can't process all that stuff, no matter how clearly and loudly and well paced you speak.

I knew avoiding the temptation to put lots of detail in my talk would be hard when I presented my CRV 2010 paper on global context for SURF and MSER features. After all, this is a technical conference with an audience that actually knows this stuff. But somehow, I think I managed to do it. My slides, embedded below, certainly don't stand alone, though they do seem to give a decent general idea of what I talked about. I made sure I rehearsed, and found a good way to explain some of the details of the method and results when I spoke. I'm quite happy with the results (one very kind attendee introduced herself and then told me the presentation was "perfect"). Even still, I would probably prefer to remove some of the text. ;)

Global Context Descriptors for SURF and MSER Feature Descriptors

View more presentations from Gail Carmichael.

I like to take this idea to teaching as well. Many of those willing to listen to my rants argue that lectures are different. You need to include lots of text so students have notes to refer to later. I say if you want to give them extra information, use the Notes section of your slides software. Keep the main slide content to a minimum, and supplement with activities, videos, and discussions. This is much easier in the intro to computers class I'm giving to arts students, but should translate to programming and algorithms classes as well (to an extent, anyway).

Anyway, I don't mean to sound as pretentious as I think I may be sounding, but I think it's worth ranting on this topic every once in a while so that, one day, the norm can become a style that many more of us can learn from.

CRV 2010

The Seventh Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV 2010) is being held right here in Ottawa next week, and I'll be attending at least a couple of the days. A paper I wrote based on some of my Masters work was accepted to be presented there, and I was also invited to give a tutorial on feature detection for the free tutorial day happening on Sunday.

In the paper, I talked about using supplemental information to help make existing SURF and MSER feature descriptors a bit more unique. I found that adding this information didn't help SURF descriptors a whole lot in many cases, but always seemed to improve MSER performance. (If none of that makes any sense to you, basically I just did some stuff to make matching features in images a little bit easier.)

The tutorial is just an overview of some of the different feature detectors and doesn't get into much detail at all. It's only 15 minutes including questions, so there's no point in trying to get too deep into it. My slides are very visual and minimal, but I made a PDF copy of them that includes many notes to be posted on the web.

You can see the Tutorial Day schedule, or look at my slides from the main CRV website. My paper isn't online anywhere yet, but if you want to download and look at my 20 MB thesis file, you can.

Tech Mommies

A friend of mine is expecting her first baby in the next couple of months. She asked me if I could do some maternity shots with her. The criteria? Nothing cliché! In fact, she was hoping to even bring some geekiness into it so she could be a role model for the CU-WISE community.

My idea was to make use of her cute little teeny laptop. Perhaps using her belly as a table? Well, she loved this idea, and luckily she remembered to bring the computer to our outdoor photo shoot. I'm really glad she did because some of the cutest photos are with the laptop and her glasses on.

This one doesn't do the table thing, but it shows her perfect round belly really well. Gorgeous!



Thanks, Natalia, for letting me put your photo online so you can be an inspiration to us all - we love you!

GHC10 Talks

It's that time of year again! My travel scholarship application is in, our committee on online communities is starting to make headway, and the results of our talk submissions are out. Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2010 to be held in October in Atlanta, Georgia is in season.

I was involved with a couple of submissions this year, but unfortunately only one got in (but I'm still excited to be a speaker in some capacity!). The panels I organized were on making the most of grad school. The concept was that there are lots of risks and rewards for going beyond the research, and not everyone is aware of them, nor does everyone know about the extra-curricular opportunities available. The topics and panelists I gathered together were really amazing, but our submission document probably needed some work. For instance, it looked like we had too many panelists and topics for a one hour slot. I learned a lot from the reviewers and will definitely try again next year.

The other panel I'm on came out of the blue, and I'm really excited to meet and work with the other ladies on that one. It's going to be on outreach using video games, but with a particular focus on attracting girls to the programs in the first place. I've had good luck with my mini-course, but other groups have had a harder time with recruitment, so what is it that makes them give it a chance?

This conference always reinvigorates me and makes me that much more motivated to be the best I can in my graduate program. This time I'll be more or less just starting my PhD research when I attend, and expect that I'll have many interesting conversations with chances to mentor and be mentored. I can't wait for October!

CSTA Voice

If you are interested in CS Education and haven't heard of CSTA's Voice newsletter (CSTA = ACM's Computer Science Teachers Association), go check it out!

The CSTA Voice is a quarterly publication for members of the Computer Science Teachers Association. It provides analysis and commentary on issues relating to K-12 computer science education issues, resources for educators, and information for members. The newsletter supports CSTA's mission to promote the teaching of computer science and other computing disciplines.

You can even get PDF's of the newsletter free online.

Plus, as a bonus, if you go read the current issue (Volume 6, Number 2), you'll get to read an article by me. Just scroll to page 6 and read a short article about my mini-course on computer science and games.