Geekflex

A lot of people complain about the fact that CUSEC is held on the second or third week of January. It’s cold in Montreal in January. We’ve had years where it’s been -40 degrees with the wind chill ¹, and some people find this tough to take. There are many good reasons to hold the conference in January, but the bottom line is it’s the best time to do it. That sounds like a subjective statement, but take a step back and seriously think about other possible times to hold the conference.

September and October are no good because they’re too early. This would also require that all of our promotion and advertising happens over the summer, when fewer people around to get pitched to ². Not to mention that these months are full of orientation activities, and the new students are so disoriented that you won’t be able to sell a single ticket to them. Most of them won’t have even learned “Hello, World” yet, and something like CUSEC will just seem massively intimidating.

November is an interesting month, because it tends to be between midterms and finals. In fact, the Impact National Conference tends to be held around this time each year. The reason I don’t think it’s particularly feasible for CUSEC, though, is that we would still be alienating the first-year students. Again, many of them will be learning to program for the first time. While CUSEC hasn’t been that technical in recent years, I think at least one full semester studying software engineering or computer science should be a pre-requisite for attending CUSEC. You’ll have at least some idea of what’s going on.

December is an obvious one, as is April. Two words: exams, vacation. Even for the students that don’t study very hard, December and April are busy months filled with studying and cramming and exam-taking. Once exams are over, a lot of students leave town and go on vacation, or home for the holidays. Hosting a conference during winter break means no one will show up.

February is a complicated month. Each school has it’s “Reading Week” in February. While it might seem like a good idea to host a conference when everyone is off school for a mid-term break, note that schools often have different weeks off. Even McGill and Concordia can’t agree on when their reading week should occur. ETS doesn’t even get a full week, but two days. To make matters worse, when students aren’t on their week-long breaks, February tends to be jam-packed with midterms.

March can be lumped in with November, except that there is a lot more going on in March. This is when most universities hold their award and special ceremonies, for example the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer, when engineering students in Canada are betrothed with an Iron Ring. These happen at various times throughout the month, and we would certainly lose any final year students should CUSEC conflict with their ceremony. There are various other award and scholarship ceremonies that carry a higher obligation. Another reason we don’t hold CUSEC in March is to avoid conflict with CS Games, which is an event that has a high overlap of participants with CUSEC. Also National Engineering Week Month occupies most students in engineering programs during the entire first week of March. This year, the Canadian University Technology Conference is being held in March — this very week — and I know Concordia is not sending a delegation because it conflicts with their engineering student awards banquet.

Last but not least, January is when hotels and conference centres are the cheapest. As a student-oriented conference (and a non-profit organization), we have to make sure that we can keep our operating costs low enough so that students can actually afford to attend. In January, hotels and conference centres are so desperate for attention that they’ll make insane deals just to fill up their rooms and take whatever they can get. The summer months are prime tourism season. Hotel rooms easily double and sometimes even quadruple in cost. Despite the fact that most students won’t even be thinking of school, let alone an extra-curricular conference in summer.

Another question I often get with regard to the dates is Why does CUSEC run from Thursday to Saturday instead of from Friday to Sunday? Students have to miss two full days of class to come attend CUSEC, and then have nothing to do on Sunday. One reason for this is a logistical one that has to do with our speakers. The keynote speakers that present at CUSEC are very often coming from the opposite end of the continent. In order to make sure that the CUSEC experience runs as smoothly as possible, we make sure they have the full day on Sunday to travel back home — wherever that may be. In some cases — as in the people coming from British Columbia or California — travel will easily take them an entire day. We want the speakers to stick around for as much of the conference as possible, so we make sure they have Sunday free to travel back. It would suck if all the speakers left on the second day and only one or two were sticking around for the third.

Having Sunday off is also leaves the door open for students to stick around Montreal for an extra day of sightseeing and tourism which, believe it or not, is an option that a lot of delegates actually do take. It also allows for students have the time to travel back themselves so that they don’t have to miss class on Monday. Finally, Sunday is a mental-health day for the organizers. We need the time to de-stress, unwind and take in everything that’s happened. It might be a little selfish, but trust me — we need it.

One of the things I miss most about being a student is the regular change of scenery. A typical day of my student life involved being in several different places throughout the day, from classrooms to student common areas to offices. I’d rarely stay in one place for very long. Not only was each class in a different physical location, requiring me to get up and move around a bit — but in each class I’d see a different subset of friends and acquaintances.

When I started my full time job, I quickly became agitated by the monotony of office life. Each day I’d be surrounded by the exact same subset of coworkers. I would sit in my one office, without anywhere else to go. Eventually the end of the day would come and I would go home. Sometimes I would go to the bathroom; a trip made infinitely more exciting by Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader, conveniently placed in every stall. My office building was in total suburbia, so meeting up with friends for lunch was all but impossible. I was in a private inner office, which meant I had no access to natural light and was pretty much just left alone all day every day in the same room, sitting on the same chair, with the same four walls boxing me in.

I’m not exaggerating. This is what office life is. The contrast between a dynamic student lifestyle and a “professional” lifestyle is staggering. It’s not that the stuff I was working on is boring — far from it. It’s just that the environment was about as stimulating and invigorating as white noise. I couldn’t focus on anything and my mind would wander. It doesn’t have to be like this.

I might be an exceptional case, but I’ve always concentrated better when there were more things going on around me. The background noise of a coffee shop would help me focus better. When studying for my final exams, I’d take over a conference room at school with a few friends. The occasional distractions we provided each other was like the seasoning on an otherwise really bland steak. It made for an environment where studying was bearable, and I managed to get much more done than I would have been able to if I’d stayed home alone with a textbook.

The day I was most productive at work was the one day I managed to work remotely from another lab. But working remotely (or working “from home”) isn’t the solution. A “change of scenery” doesn’t mean “working alone.” Collaboration is important, and you need to be able to ask questions of your teammates, and brainstorm with them. Instant messaging and e-mail only work up to a certain extent, but nothing compares with face-to-face interaction. This was the main point of Fred Brooks’ keynote speech from OOPSLA ‘07 (listen to the mp3 if you have 1.5 hours), and there is research and evidence to back it up.

The best thing to do is offer some alternative scenery at the workplace. IBM’s software lab in Markham, Ontario is a stellar example. The top floor of this lab has four different “theme rooms” that employees can use. One room is modeled after a medieval library with antique bookshelves full of ancient-looking books and wing-backed chairs. Another room looks like a fishing cabin with couches and paintings of canoes along the walls. My favourite room was the “Japanese Garden” which had a rock garden and an indoor waterfall between rice-paper walls. To make these rooms accessible, each employee receives a laptop as their primary workstation. If you ever need a change of scenery, just unplug your laptop and go sit near the waterfall. The theme rooms offer a change of scenery and, since you’re not leaving the lab, your teammates are always close by for when you need to collaborate.

My ideal environment would be just like the study space we improvised during exam period: a big room with a small group of coworkers. We don’t all have to be working on the same things, but just having other people there is a motivator. The occasional distractions and small talk would keep the day interesting, and I’d be able to focus better on my work. I know this kind of environment exists, because this is almost exactly what my Extreme Blue internship was like. The trick is going to be finding a similar environment now that I’m no longer a student.