Although our first team meeting was initially scheduled for week 4, we were not able to meet until week 5 of Spring. During this meeting, I showed Dr. Bansal my ontology and described my progress thus far. I asked for three items:
- Existing code she has access to that parses JSON data to RDF format.
- A review of my ontology for errors and/or issues.
- A domain name and possibly server with which I can build my application.
In the top left, you will see Kristel and I in the plane on the way to Boston. The right picture is me at the hotel, and the bottom left is the view from the window. It was great to be somewhere that neither of us had been before; the weather wasn't too miserable and luckily we both came very prepared.
Above is Kristel, standing in front of a giant snow bank. Its a good think she bought a new winter coat and boots! The hotel we stayed at was much cheaper than the conference venue, and it was only about a 5 minute walk away. We actually were able to get outside and see Boston a lot more than the other attendees did.
Here is Kristel and myself on Friday night. A huge group of Tapia attendees went out after the banquet to an 18+, no alcohol club. We all had a blast dancing and hanging out. Who knew computing kids could get down??
On Saturday Kristel, David (one of our new friends), and I went out to brunch and then explored the Boston library, as per a notification I received from my new addition to the Hispanics in Computing listserv. It was amazing. We really enjoyed being able to see the historical and artistic aspects of Boston.
David left to check out and catch his flight, while Kristel and I decided to brave the public transportation rather than catch a cab as we had been all weekend. We used both the subway and the bus system in combination to reach our destination. We wanted to take a tour of the Boston Harpoon Brewery, but by the time we got there the line was too long and we had to leave for the airport...
... so we instead visited the Harpoon on Tap bar which was inside the airport, about a 5 minute walk from our gate! We got the taste and experience of Harpoon without the long line. In the end everything worked out awesome.
All good things must come to an end, and after a long wait for the crew to de ice the plane we were taking off for home. As you can see, the weather was terrible! I'm glad that we did not get held up in Boston. And looking at the news, more bad weather is headed their way. Kristel and I are nice and warm, back home in Phoenix, Arizona.
At the conference I gained many great experiences, connections, and friends. Here's the awesome information I gleaned from different sessions and discussions:
- For my research project, I was able to ask a Twitter engineer who works on the content and user recommendation systems about their machine learning algorithms. To my surprise, Twitter actually uses ontologies for their recommendations! This was a big relief because all the research I've done so far indicates pure machine learning for recommendation systems. I was given several articles to read to learn more about how Twitter does this.
- For my thesis, I met many other people interested in graphics in general and VR (virtual reality) in particular. I connected with a student at Utah State who is working with the Oculus Rift, which is what I'm working with. We plan to stay in touch. I also met a student who has vision in only one eye. Through my conversations with her, I have decided to include accessibility topics in my thesis.
- For my capstone, which entails social media data mining, I was able to discuss our entire technology stack with a different Twitter engineer. This was INCREDIBLY useful for me and I was very encouraged and excited about the advice and information that he gave me.