sacha chua living an awesome life

On the way to jazz choir practice, I thought about what I like
creating and when people have called me creative. One of the things
people have complimented me on is the way I hack conferences, from
modding conference T-shirts to posting people’s tag clouds along the
wall in order to spark conversations.

I _love_ going above and beyond the usual ideas of what a conference
should be like. That’s one of the reasons why I’m really excited about
CASCON 2006: as part of the organizing team, I can try out many cool
ideas!

I’d love to start a bigger conversation around that, and I’d love to
share my thoughts with more people! I think it would make a great
blog. I want to share tips and ideas with participants, speakers, and
organizers. It’ll also be a great place to post my conference reports
and pictures of hacked T-shirts! ;)

I already have a name for the blog: Conference Commando. I came
across the term “conference commando” in Keith Ferrazzi’s book Never
Eat Alone. Good stuff, and I think I’ve got a lot to contribute to
this space.

So I’m going to make it happen! Here’s what I need to do:

• Make a logo so that it’s not just a boring WordPress install. ;)
• Set up a blog and JUST START BLOGGING! I can probably install
  Wordpress or something like that on some computer somewhere. Maybe
  Richi will let me virtualhost conferencecommando.sachachua.com on
  his computer. I need a MySQL database. Alternatively, I could host
  it on adphoto.com.ph, which is currently underutilized anyway. Yup,
  that’s also a possibility…
• Extract some of the relevant blog posts from my main blog. For
  example, my notes about the social computing workshop might be of
  interest to organizers. A review of the relevant section in Never
  Eat Alone would be handy for participants, and my blog entry about
  keynote styles would be good for speakers.

Fun! Hooray for Creative Thursday!

On Technorati: networking, conference, conferencecommando, creativity

This is totally, totally, totally sweet. I _must_ get into this.
Personal information management with wikis?

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

2006 International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym 2006)

August 21-23, 2006, Odense, Denmark
Co-located with ACM Hypertext 2006
Sponsored by ACM SIGWEB

See http://www.wikisym.org/ws2006

Research paper submission deadline: April 15, 2006



OVERVIEW

The 2006 International Symposium on Wikis brings
together wiki researchers, practitioners, and
users. The goal of the symposium is to explore
and extend our growing community. The symposium
has a rigorously reviewed research paper track as
well as plenty of space for practitioner reports,
demonstrations, and discussions. Anyone who is
involved in using, researching, or developing
wikis is invited to WikiSym 2006! To learn more
about the Wiki Symposium, feel free to browse
last year's program
(http://www.wikisym.org/ws2005/program.html), the
proceedings
(http://www.wikisym.org/ws2005/proceedings), and
its wiki (http://ws2005.wikisym.org). Information
about the 2006 program will be available at

http://www.wikisym.org/ws2006.

We are seeking submissions for

 - research papers
 - practitioner reports
 - demonstrations
 - workshops
 - panels

Research paper and practitioner report
submissions as well as workshop proposals are due

 - April 15, 2006

Panel and demonstration submissions are due

 - May 1, 2006

Topics of interest to the symposium include, but are not limited to:

 - wikis as social software
 - wiki user behavior, user dynamics
 - wiki user experiences, usability
 - information dynamics in wikis
 - work group processes, wiki-based collaboration
 - reputation systems, quality assurance processes
 - wiki implementation experiences and technology
 - wiki administration, processes, dealing with abuse
 - wiki scalability, social and technical
 - wikis and the semantic web/ontologies, semantic wikis
 - domain-specific/special-purpose wikis
 - wikis in education



SUBMISSION DETAILS

Research papers will be reviewed by the committee
to meet rigorous academic standards of
publication. Research papers are expected to
advance the state of the art by describing
substantiated new research or novel technical
results or by reporting on significant experience
or experimentation. They are reviewed both with
respect to conceptual quality and clarity of presentation.

Accepted research papers will be provided as part
of the conference proceedings. They will be put
into the ACM Digital Library and can be
referenced as papers that appeared in the
Proceedings of the 2006 International Symposium
on Wikis. At the symposium, the presenter will be
given a 25min + 5min Q&A presentation slot.
Research papers should not be longer than 10000
words and 20 pages and should meet the ACM SIG
Proceedings Format, see

http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html.

Practitioner reports will be reviewed for
suitability of presentation to the community. The
primary evaluation criterion is the interest to
the community. Practitioner reports will be
provided as part of the conference proceedings
handed out at the symposium and can be referenced
as papers that appeared in the Proceedings of the
2006 International Symposium on Wikis as well.
Practitioner reports should not be longer than
6000 words and 12 pages and should meet the ACM SIG
Proceedings Format.

Demonstration, workshop, and panel submissions
will be reviewed for their interest to the
community. A submission should consist of two
pages describing what you intend to do and how
you meet this criterion. It should include a
100-word abstract and one-paragraph bios of all
people relevant to the submission. Demonstrations
will be presented in a joint demonstration
session, workshops will get a half-day or a
full-day and a room of their own (depending on
your request), and panels will get a 90min slot at the symposium.

Please submit your papers or proposals in PDF
format by the respective deadline through our
submission system, which will be available
through the WikiSym website. Questions should be
directed respectively at papers@wikisym.org
(research papers and practitioner reports),
workshops@wikisym.org (workshops),
panels@wikisym.org (panels), or demos@wikisym.org (demonstrations).



SYMPOSIUM LOGISTICS

The 2006 International Symposium on Wikis will be
held at the Radisson SAS H.C. Andersen Hotel in
Odense, Denmark, August 21-23, 2006. A special
(reduced) hotel rate has been negotiated. WikiSym
2006 will be co-located with the ACM Hypertext
2006 conference (back-to-back), and participants
may register for the symposium alone, or may
jointly register for WikiSym and Hypertext 2006.
Registration is handled through the ACM Hypertext website.

If you have any questions, please contact Dirk
Riehle through chair@wikisym.org.



SYMPOSIUM COMMITTEE

Dirk Riehle, Bayave Software GmbH, Germany (Symposium Chair)

Ward Cunningham, Eclipse Foundation, U.S.A.
Kouichirou Eto, AIST, Japan (Publicity Co-Chair)
Richard P. Gabriel, Sun Microsystems, U.S.A.
Beat Doebeli Honegger, UAS Northwestern Switzerland (Workshop
Chair) Matthias L. Jugel, Fraunhofer FIRST, Germany (Panel
Chair) Samuel J. Klein, Harvard University, U.S.A. Helmut
Leitner, HLS Software, Austria (Publicity Co-Chair) James
Noble, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
(Program Chair) Sebastien Paquet, Socialtext, U.S.A.
(Demonstrations Chair) Sunir Shah, University of Toronto,
Canada (Publicity Co-Chair)



PROGRAM COMMITTEE

James Noble, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
(Program Chair)

Ademar Aguiar, Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Robert Biddle, Carleton University, Canada
Amy Bruckman, Georgia Institute of Technology, U.S.A.
Alain Désilet, NRC, CNRC, Canada
Ann Majchrzak, University of Southern California, U.S.A.
Frank Fuchs-Kittowski, Fraunhofer ISST, Germany
Mark Guzdial, Georgia Institute of Technology, U.S.A.
Dirk Riehle, Bayave Software GmbH, Germany
Robert Tolksdorf, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

E-Mail from Mark Chignell

On Technorati: research, gradschool, conference, wiki

Suddenly blindsided by post-conference blues. The dangerous thing
about finally having time to breathe is that it’s also enough time to
cry.

Now I remember.

Left the workshop room to find an empty corridor. Talked a bit with
other people from the lab. It was nowhere near laughter and
conversation over coffee, late-night conference parties, enjoying time
with my closest friends…

Friends.

That’s it. This is loneliness and homesickness.

Tech conferences were always the best times for me to meet with
friends. They’ve always been reunions for me, from the programming
competitions in high school to the last open-source get-together I
went to right before I left for Canada. We’d chat long into the night
about all the crazy stuff that was going on.

Sometimes conferences were the only times I’d get to see
Dominique. And I miss him. I miss him
terribly. I miss going to conferences with him. He helped me prep,
stopped me from panicking, made it easy for me to talk to other
people…

Conferences are some of my fondest memories. Today’s conference was
nice, but… Cold. Strange. Empty.

I guess it’s like that for everything else. I’m still trying to find
friends, still figuring out how to relate to people.

I miss being totally present, the way you can be only among friends
who know you as more than a collection of interests, who care about
you as _you_, who know the million things you hate about yourself and
love you anyway.

It doesn’t make sense to feel lonely, but I feel it anyway.

Hooray for technology, though. People who say computers are impersonal
have never been on the receiving end of some heavy-duty ASCII
comforting. People who don’t see the point in cellphones have never
instantly touched base with other people without having to worry about
where they were. (What’s up with charging for incoming calls, anyway?
SHEESH.) And oh, I really hope that Skype upgrade gets everything
working again. I hadn’t realized just _how_ much I needed to talk to
friends…

(And yes, this is a personal bit of information and most of you are
probably wondering why the heck I’m posting this, but this is what’s
happening in my life and it affects me far more than the other things
I post.)

Thanks to Clair, Charo, Dominique, Mom, Dad, Diane, Mario, and everyone
else who was there in spirit although perhaps not online.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8392

Interesting idea: put the focus on the attendees…

それらの単語は彼のコンピュータ・スクリーンに現れたのだった。 The words would appear on his computer screen.

On Technorati: conference

I learned so much from the conference—proof that the best way to
receive knowledge is to give it away! I met a lot of people that I
should definitely keep in touch with because they’re doing really cool
things, like Dr. Maja, Justin, Pauline, Lawrence…

Here are some more conference notes:

Justin was a great speaker. He structured his talk to have some
interactivity, breaking the students up into groups so that they could
try out project planning. Slightly marred by students’ inertia, but a
good idea anyway. He then put forward a humorous scenario that neatly
highlighted the challenges of project management and explained the
basics of PM through jokes and stories. Excellent speaker, probably
the best presenter in the conference.

They asked me to repeat my Knoppix talk for the benefit of the
students, so I did my whizbang look-how-much-you-can-get-on-one-CD
presentation. That was fun, too.

Met Dominique’s landlady. She was really nice.

Had to buy a swimsuit. I came to Cebu without packing a swimsuit—what
was I thinking? Grabbed a pair of slippers, too.

Had dinner with the camera club. Dominique came as well. That was fun.

He’s teaching me Bisaya. If I can learn enough Japanese to make myself
understood, I should be able to learn enough Bisaya to charm people.
Here’s what I took up today:

(Thanks to James Lloyd Atwil for the corrections!)

I didn’t get to use the phrases during my talk, though. Got nervous. =)

More thoughts on software patents. In short, I think they really suck,
and that our government should focus on fixing copyright.

On Technorati: conference, bisaya, mytalks, dominique

My laptop wouldn’t talk to the projector, so I did my Knoppix talk
without slides. I forgot to give people my e-mail address. Whoops.
Still, I have a few contacts, and I guess that’s a good start. Most
people had already tried Linux, so I went for the
evangelization-of-others angle instead, although I threw in a few
benefits for newbies.

I misplaced Vahid’s index card, but I know he’s a Ma. IT student at
USC. I should write to him about repartitioning.

Chatted with Lawrence and Justin over dinner. Turns out they’re both
into Stephenson and other SF stuff. (Thanks to Baryon for introducing
me to those books!) I think I convinced Justin to try out Emacs.

It was tons of fun geeking out and swapping stories. Lawrence is a
treasure-trove of business experience and geek stories. =)

Tired from a long but absolutely fun day. Good night!

On Technorati: conference, mytalks, presentation, opensource

Official website for open source conference to be held in Cebu on March 14 and 15:

http://www.secure.net.ph/ossa/

On Technorati: opensource, conference, cebu, philippines