More thoughts on the seminar

Here's some more text I wrote in another email:
The goal is to have weekly informal talks about various general interest
computing topics (or practice talks for conferences). There are probably
three categories of talks that would be most relevant
I. The practice of research (including how to use LaTeX and Word
and the preparation of camera-ready versions)
II. HOWTOs on various research technologies (MPI, Berkeley Motes,
Globus, ... ). Here's where your talk would fit, and the goal
would be to cover some of the frequently encountered problems,
common solutions, and links to the best references on various
research systems that are commonly used by the different
research groups. Usually these will be systems developed outside
the department.
III. Personal research projects. For preparation of conference and
workshop talks. This provides a wider audience than each
students' research group so we encounter questions that don't
rely on the same assumptions we make in our own research groups.

The talks are meant to be short and informal. Slides
(powerpoint/pdf/keynote) are not necessary, but are suggested. If you
like, a short demo of the software would be fine.

15 minutes is probably the shortest amount of time that it would take to
get some useful information across, so if you need more time, then it
could probably go as long as 30 minutes.

Ideas for the seminar

From my email:
I was just thinking that we should have an informal graduate seminar
next semester. What I'm thinking of is this: each week a group of
interested people (no need to limit it to graduate students or even
students) could gather and one or two folks could present a 15-20 minute
demo of either their research or some new tool they found.

The tool thing would be the most interesting/useful, I think.

Here are some topics I have in mind:
* LaTeX and Bibtex for conference proceedings and journals
* Using Word for the same thing (explain and post slides for
ignorant folks like me how to do things like references and
figures properly)
* Demo an interesting Emacs or Eclipse plugin
* Explain how to do some routine, but intricate task, such as
installing Globus or setting up a Mote.

What I'm hoping to do is create a community of practice around the
processes of research, so we all get better at using Word or or Latex
and get the steps written down (maybe even published on a web
page/wiki?) for routine tasks in our various fields for future students.

The goal is to keep talks short, informal and fun. Nobody should feel
like they are obligated to take part.

Introduction

This is the blog for the informal graduate seminars I (Michael R. Head) have decided to initiate this fall at Binghamton University. The intent is that this blog will contain a record of the talks given at the seminar at a minimum. Everyone involved should be able to post here.