Computer Things: YOW Roundup Edition
Hi everybody,
Back from YOW! I spent the last two weeks in Australia, giving talks at three separate conferences. I was off but back now. Here's some thoughts:
YOW
Livetweeted talks
I livetweet all the talks I go to. Each link below is the start of a thread for one day's worth of talks:
- twitter.com/hillelogram/status/1202343688468254721
- twitter.com/hillelogram/status/1202705656584630273
- twitter.com/hillelogram/status/1203809318220554240
- twitter.com/hillelogram/status/1204196342685298690
- twitter.com/hillelogram/status/1204923618448355329
That's only five links, because I only saw one talk the last day and by that point was sick of livetweeting. Livetweeting is exhausting.
So why do I do this to myself? Few reasons! First of all, conference organizers love it, and anything that makes conference organizers like me more is good. Second, the speakers love it. Being a person Other Speakers Don't Hate is good.¹ Third, people on Twitter like it, and I'm a sucker for internet points. Fourth, it forces me to pay attention to the talk. It makes a big difference. If I'm not livetweeting a talk I get distracted a lot more easily.
Conf Opinion
I really liked the whole thing. YOW held three separate conferences in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne. Same speakers, (mostly) same schedule. So I get to see a lot of talks while also hallway tracking.
My two favorite talks were by Matt Keenan on quantum computing and Jennifer Scheurle on making games for NASA. I'll include them in a future newsletter when the vids are up!
I gave my staple "intro to TLA+" talk. It ended up being one of the most technical talks at the conf, and twice was in the very last slot of the second day. I felt kinda bad for the audience!
It did okay, I think. I'm never the best judge of my talks- I always think they could be better. There's at least two major improvements I know I can make to this talk. But a lot of people said after that it was approachable and convinced them TLA+ was worth learning.
I worry that the talk is a little bit "salespitchy", which is a silly worry, since it IS a sales pitch. One of the major reasons I give talks is to find new clients. If I'm not selling, I'm not eating. This conference will be profitable to me if it leads to at least one new workshop.
(It doesn't have to do this directly: if it leads to someone reading my book and recommending it to someone else, who hires me to teach, then it's successful.)
Misc
- I got to meet the folks who work on seL4! Super cool people. Also I learned it's pronounced "ess ee ell four", not "sell-four". Definitely the most important takeaway, 100%, and not any of the technical stuff we chatted about.
- That's all. I have other takeaways but they're not computer related
- I just really wanted to geek out about the seL4 crew
Worst part of trip
The international flights.
Best part of trip
Other Stuff
Plans for rest of year
I'm done with the conference circuit and workshops for the year! Since I don't need to work on talks or lessons, that means more time for other writing. So crossover project, more Alloy docs, and a bunch of essays. At least two, one on progressive cheat sheets and one on the Science Fite, are polished versions of pieces I first shared in this newsletter. So there are benefits to reading these rants! You get sneak peeks.
Egyptian Knowledge Bank
If you're in Egypt, you can read Practical TLA+ for free as part of the Egyptian Knowledge Bank. You might also need to be a citizen? I'm not 100% sure how EKB access works. Thanks to Hossam El-Deen (@hossameldeenfci on Twitter) for the find.
¹ I used to be a lot more opinionated in my livetweets, adding more color commentary and critique of the talk content. Then I actually met one of the people I was critical of outside the context of the conf and thought "wow, I'm kind of a dick here." So I'll happily share talk thoughts in private, but keep my tweets somewhat more objective-ish.
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