Welcome

I haven't had time to post since I have been busy attending the conference during the day and working/going to parties at night.

In general the sessions have been pretty good. I have been to a variety of different presentations which have triggered a lot of thoughts for me about my research for next year.

Monday - The CHI finalists were announced after the poster session. We had 2 teams move on to the final round. A bunch of us went out as a group that night to celebrate. We had a few professors with us and a few Informatics alums with us.

Tuesday - The first of the parties. A large number of us went to the eBay/PayPal party. It was held at the tech museum which was really nice. The food was quite good and there was an open bar with good drinks. I got to talk to a lot of interesting people and meet some of the people I will be working with this summer.

Wednesday - IU placed 3rd and 4th in the design competition. Everyone was very happy about the showing we had and the teams both got a lot of really good feedback from the judges.

That night some of us went to the Adobe party. This was defiantly the best party. Adobe held their party in their newly redesigned studio. I wish I could have taken pictures because the space was so awesome. Before I went up there I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement so I couldn't.

They had a bunch of offices and cubes on that floor and decided to tear those down to put in open cubes, white board tables, a white board that ran along the wall with magnetic markers and really cool flat panel boards that you could write on using special pens and they also work like TVs since they had Wiis set up. From their windows you could see mountains off in the distance. They also had nice snacks. I got to talk to a few people who worked there about some of the stuff they were working on in a very vague sense.

After the Adobe party we headed to the Google party at the Tech Museum. Everyone was invited to this party so it was a madhouse. The whole museum was open and packed. We explored the exhibits and since there were so many people there I didn't get a chance to talk to any Google employees. I got a chance to ride a segway. I'll post some photos of it later.

When they kicked us out of the museum we went to a bar in San Jose with most of the professors and just about all of the IU students. We had a bunch of the other CHI student design competition finalists join us at the bar.

After identifying myself as being from IU many people said wow you guys are everywhere. I don't even know how many students we have here but it is almost all of the first year class.

Tonight we are going to see Spiderman 3 at midnight and then just about everyone is leaving. I am going to take the tour of Berkley and Yahoo Research Berkley before spending next week in San Francisco.