North American Tour – Day 8 - Second Day of Workshop

These events took place on Sunday 29 April 2007

I woke up early to give some finishing touches to my presentation and did present on time, this time. The particulars of this are in my other blog, once I have the time to update it...

All the workshop attendants went for lunch to some Vietnamese restaurant and then came back to the Convention Center to wrap up and finish. The required pictures were taken, some of which can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jose_in_glasgow/

After the workshop there was a networking event, but I almost missed it because I was supposed to be attending another course at 6 pm. However, before heading for the course I met the other people from Glasgow attending the conference, Roderick, John, and Steve, plus some former colleagues, Lorna and her boyfriend. I also met someone from Toshiba who, like me, is attending this conference for the first time, and also that guy from Samsung who was visiting Glasgow University and staying in my office a few months back.

After my course with Jonathan Grudin from Microsoft on the History of HCI, I joined the other people from Glasgow for dinner. Two ladies from Copenhagen University and the Technical University of Copenhagen joined us as well. It took 36 hours for one of them to make it to California from Mauritius! The evening was a little chilly, but still the weather was wonderful.

I arrived back to the hotel at around 10:30 pm. I was pretty tired but I still watched the news for a while... I mean, to keep my habit...

Oh! one more thing that left me pleasantly surprised. I met this guy from Mexico who works for the Universidad Tecnologica de la Mixteca (UTM) in Oaxaca, Mexico who told me that some of his students are taking part in the student competition during the conference. He insisted in telling me they are doing a wonderful job over there and on the high level they have achieved on the HCI field. Of course, I have my doubts, but I was nice to hear from this. Eventually, I saw to Mexican committee which I easily recognized.

I didn't know I should have brought presentation cards! Everyone is exchanging cards and a little piece of paper with my name on it doesn't have the same impact. There's also a job fair on Tuesday. I asked the guy from Microsoft who was in my workshop with whom should I talk about internships and he gave me some name... I need to do this because I was turned down from MSR, Cambridge last week :-(

I chatted briefly with Kate, Elnaz and Echo. Miss them all.

North American Tour – Day 7 - Arriving to San Jose, CA

Today I missed my flight to San Jose, CA. I was supposed to be leaving from Los Angeles at 6 AM to be perfectly on time at the San Jose Convention Center on time for my presentation at 11:20 AM. For some reason I went to sleep last night thinking that my flight was at 7 AM… the result was that after taking a shower I checked my flight scheduled and realized that at 5:30 AM was already too late to arrive to the airport on time all the way from Santa Ana. However, Roberto took me to the airport as fast as he could.

On our way to the airport I called the airline to ask for advice on my situation. They asked me not to reschedule over the phone as this would incur a different cost than if I did it right at the ticket counter. I was told the price for rescheduling would be around 100 USD and that the next available flight to San Jose would be at 7:50 AM.

We arrived to the airport just to be told that the next flight would be at 10 AM arriving to San Jose at 11:15 AM! Fortunately, the price for rescheduling would be just 25 USD, which, I must say, Roberto paid for me. Before he left me at the airport, Roberto gave me an extra 100 USD, which were really welcomed!

As I waited for my departure I had tot wander around the airport searching for an Internet connection to send an email to the organizers of the workshop notifying my delay. I found some public phones where I had to use my credit card to call and leave a message for the organizers. Finally, I found some wireless Internet access point, which, by the way, wasn’t free and I had to pay, again with my credit card, around 7 USD for 60 min of Internet access. I sent emails to the organizers and they were kind enough to quickly reply informing me they would arrange my presentation for later during the workshop.

As I waited for the flight I fell asleep and woke up before 10 AM thinking I had missed my flight again… fortunately that was not the case! My plane was the smallest plane I have ever been in. It had rows of only three seats (two on one side and another after the aisle). Well, it was so small that once I took my seat at the front of the plane I realized I would have to help the pilot with the controls on the right-hand side of the control panel.

I arrived quite swiftly to San Jose. On my way over here, I admired the Californian landscape that was very contrasting: lots of mountains and hills and several large valleys in between. There were also a few lakes. As I have highlighted elsewhere, California has a lot of areas resembling a desert.

Once in San Jose I took a taxi to the Convention Center. It costed 16 USD. I decided to go with my luggage straight to the Convention Center thinking I would make it on time for my presentation. I registered for CHI, I was given my course materials for several courses I’ll be taking during this week, and I headed to the room where the workshop was taking place. I made it at 11:45 AM, but sadly I had already been rescheduled for tomorrow Sunday at 9:40 AM. A girl from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign took my time slot for her own presentation and I’m taking hers tomorrow.

Issues dealing with the actual content of the workshop are described in my other blog. Here it suffices to say that I met Marcela, which whom I made contact before, and I realized we are around 20 people taking part in this workshop including just 5 guys. There are people from Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Hong Kong, Chicago, Australia, California at Irvine, Microsoft, and Utah State.

A few minutes after I arrived to the room where the workshop is taking place I realized I had forgotten my course materials at the registration desk… I think. Sadly, I couldn’t recover them because after lunch there was nobody at the registration desk.

Around 15 of us went to have dinner together to a fancy restaurant where the food wasn’t that good. On my way back to the Hilton Hotel where I’m staying I stumbled upon Malc and Eve who apparently arrived to San Jose one day ago. Eve is presenting a poster and taking part as a student volunteer. BTW, I volunteered twice already for this but I have been rejected the same number of times; apparently they are already complete.