Microsoft Experience              [SomePictures]

 

Invitation:

Microsoft, the biggest software company of the world, invited me and my wife (Moushumi Sharmin Nila) to join an event named “Microsoft Academic Days”.

Jim Kavanaugh, the Academic Developer Evangelist- North Central, Microsoft Corporation, USA, visited our lab named “Ubicomp Lab” in May 3, 2005. We have shown him our research as well as our developed projects. Being satisfied with our performance (I guess), he invited three people of our lab including me and my wife. Jim also promised us to provide some facility to get Microsoft Software at a cheap rate. Besides he managed 8 smart phones for our lab (Now we are using those one in our research). I was planning to participate in “Mobile to Market”, a software development competition for mobile devices arranged by Microsoft and he (Jim) made all arrangement to waive the very high fee to participate over there. Though due to some personal reason, I could not finally participate. However I really appreciate all of his help.

 

Ready for trip:

Microsoft Academic Days was held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada from May 24 to May 26. First of all, our itinerary was only for those 2 days. Later we thought that why don’t we extend the time to visit the most enjoyable sight of Toronto. We talked to corresponding person named Barbara Green and she did all the arrangement. I understood that Microsoft is not only a big company from monetary perspective but also it has very qualified people who try to help the people cordially. Finally we started our journey at 24th May (3:00 am).

 

Journey:

We went from Milwaukee to Chicago first. Then we did catch another plane to journey to Toronto. In the second journey, most of the people were going to attend the same event, but while I was in the plane, I could not understand that. Later I saw all those people in the event and became astonished.

 

Participators:

About 250 people were invited from US and Canada to attend that event. First of all, I thought that probably the ratio of students and faculty would be 1:1. But later I found that only 9-10 students were invited over there and except us, all of them are PhD students. Also the faculties are from very renowned universities. I felt really honored to be present among them.

 

Hotel:

Microsoft arranged the best rooms of Delta Meadowvale Resort, one of the best hotels of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada for their participators.  My wife and I got a room at 7th floor. The room was really fabulous. We could see a very big part of that city from the balcony of the hotel room.

 

The main event:

The conference was really awesome. The speakers tried to give us some future directions about the research of Microsoft. Also how Microsoft product can be used in university academic and research, they helped in that direction too.

There were 16 individual presentation in 2 and ½ days, each of which 1 hr long. It was really tough to attend all of the events. I tried my best to do that. Even then I missed couple of presentations.

I liked the following presentations:

  1. SLAM and Static Driver Verifier: Technology Transfer of Formal Methods inside Microsoft By Tom Bill
  2. Verifying the Four Color Theorem by Georges Gonthier
  3. Component and Services by Clemens Szyperski
  4. Phoenix by John Lefor
  5. Innovation in Curriculum by John Nordilnger

 

Some comments about the presentations:

  1. It was great to see that Microsoft really involved itself in security issues. It has some good research unit for providing more security in Microsoft products.
  2. I did not understand why Microsoft needs another language (C Omega) to develop while Microsoft is also doing research to develop C #. Most irony is that there is no link between these two researches.
  3. Microsoft is giving fund to do research on Tablet PC but right now they don’t have any fund for hand held devices like PDA, Smart phone, etc.
  4. While I visited the Microsoft office at Toronto, I was really impressed to see their arrangement for their employee. They try to provide the supreme facility for their employees.
  5. There number of presentations was higher with respect to the time schedule.

 

Fun:

Microsoft really arranged many things for fun for the participators like:

  1. Global food in dinner at Microsoft office (the food of most of the country were available)
  2. Movie (We watched Star Wars 2; Only the participators joined in that theater)
  3. The great dinner at a very nice restaurant

 

Meeting with Participators and Microsoft guys

It was really great to meet with those people. I talked to them about my research. I also told them about my “Ubicomp Assistant” and “Assessment Tool”. They praised a lot about these and requested me to send them the executable copies. I am planning to make those softwares freely available for all of the interested people. I really want to show how mobile devices (PDA, Smart phones) can be useful in our day to day life.

 

Others:

I also visited some very enjoyable sites like Niagara Falls, Ontario Lake, CN Tower, The Bangladeshi shops, etc. It was really fun. Most interesting is that I drove in big highway first after reaching in Canada. That was a great experience.