Had a great after-class discussion with Steve. He gave us the lowdown on some of SIAT organizational history. Highlights included the hiring 'waves,' institutional memory, and the politics of place in the Academy. This last is very important to me personally; since those politics impinge on the domain of my studies. Given that CS and EnG are withdrawing from FAS, that leaves Contemporary Arts, Communications and us. The name of the new faculty is the issue under contention. I don't want to end up in faculty of Contemporary Arts! Euch.

What can the Graduate Students Association here at SIAT do about this? I am training as a scientist; I cannot apply for, get, or retain science grants from inside a faculty of arts! Makes me wonder if my NSERC application ever had a snowballs chance in hell.

The discussion went on to politics of CS and how the biggest names and most innovative people from that area at SFU, Calvert and Dill, are respectively responsible for the creation and renown of SIAT. Particularly, how the sun is setting on CS in terms of enrolment; yet they are powerful enough to 'get what they want.' For example; when TechOne was amalgamated; Science and Compu* were disallowed as names for SIAT. For example, CS convinces EnG to leave FAS; leaving behind the rabble of Contemporary Arts (im not a drama major, despite what you've heard) Communications (been there, done that) and US.

Floated ideas for GSA action; tried to get at where the nexus of power was located and was referred to Calvert as in the know.

The discussion was great, because as it evolved organically, I was able to introduce my research interests, and discover that my ultimate, downstream interest (evocative, appealing, and non-linear processing, representation, and mobilization of text contents; eventually in ubiquitous, interactive and/or wearable and/or 3D information environments (or to use the term i have been promoting, 'interactive information ecologies') that facilitate each phases of collecting, scrubbing, scraping, evaluating, analysing & mobilizing (Learning, Using & Creating) new knowledge) are very closely related to Steve's own work in intelligent conversational agents, and even visualization of music with 3D faces.

He introduced me to three names on(& off) campus that I should be looking up:

Toby Donaldson, CS
Zope, Python, NLP

Jane Fee, Linguistics
Natural Language

Justine Castell, ??
conversational agents

Also, we talked about Steve's idea for a lunch seminar on managing the research process. Its basically the tools and methods he uses (and recommends we use or find for ourselves) to gather and process new knowledge. It is PKM from my masters' work all the way! He invited me to speak, to present the processes and tools I use.

This could be a great opportunity to formalize the 'best practice' section, and as well to get feedback.

I showed him some of the 'system' I use to manage articles; and he floated ideas about the scope (huge programming job) and feasibility (so long as you get a good microsoft UI) of formalizing the 'cobbled together' tool set into one application.

We both mentioned the 30 tools we havent been able to test for apple users...

We agreed we should meet to swap ideas and toolshare, and as well to see how possible research collaboration (a paid gig? you never know...) in the area of natural language, intelligent agents, and visualization.

We hardly spoke about my term project; or my late assignment. That is what I have to hammer out tonight and tomorrow.