VCSC meeting notes, 4/4/06
NSF Visitor's Meeting
The NSF Visitors said very kind things about our project. They indicated
that they will have some concrete suggestions for us to consider seriously
to improve what we are doing.
They felt our project was ambitious; it implied to me they saw a fair
amount of risk that we will not achieve our goals on the technical side.
They felt computer-human-interaction principles were neglected in our
current efforts.
Next Week's Demos
Your next opportunities to demo your work will come next week. On Monday
at 4pm PDT (5pm here) I am giving a colloquium at UNLV, and on Tuesday at
330 PDT (430pm here) Ziad is giving his conference talk on the VOIP stuff.
Depending on network availability, I would like to demo our CVE with as
much functionality as we have available.
Summer and Fall Funding
Summer funding looks promising. Fall funding is not known yet, but is
likely, given the NSF committee's verbal reactions. Next year's funding
for new CVE features development will likely be reduced, unless a new
grant (or grants) get funded.
Project Topics and Job Hours
Some of you are looking for more "technical" projects or more hours in
future, such as promotion from unpaid to paid, or promotion from hourly to
GA status, or from 10 hours to 20 hours. I had someone offer to work for
free during the summer if they could receive a GA in the fall. I do not
have all the answers to such questions for you yet, but here are some
of my perspectives:
- If you want to do a more technical part of the CVE for academic credit,
such as a Master's Project, there is no problem, we have a lot of more
technical problems that need solving.
- Paid positions are competitive and likely to become more so.
- If you want to be paid to do a more technical part of the CVE, you have
to perform strongly on what you have been given to do previously.
- If you are unable or taking too long to do a simple task this semester,
it is unlikely that there will be funding for you in future terms.
- If you want to be taken seriously as a Ph.D. level researcher who
deserves a 20 hour RA appointment, perform well on the job, and perform
well on the research side (for example, pass the Ph.D. quals exam, or
write a refereed academic conference or journal article with me).
Exceptional performance on the job would also commend you in this regard.
Unicron: where we are at, what our needs are
Our top priority this last few months was the IDE, and we have made good
progress collectively, especially thanks to Iyad, I think, and Hani. Making
the collaborative IDE fully functional is still a high priority.
Exercise: pair off in small groups and prioritize the following needs:
- stronger testing practices
- improved user interface
- binary builds for Linux - PRIORITY
- a viable whiteboard - PRIORITY
- stable VOIP on Windows - PRIORITY
- faster performance on Windows - PRIORITY
- better config/build on windows
- graphics quality
- moodle
- deliver an actual course via CVE (live test)
- automated regression tests
- lecture support (browser etc)
- file transfer (background)
- _____________________________ (your identified need(s))