I got back from SXSW 2010 a few days ago, and I thought I would write a post about what it was like to moderate a panel while it’s fresh in my mind. As you may know, my panel submission, “Student Startups: Entrepreneurship in the University” was selected to be a real panel at SXSW 2010! From the time that I knew it was accepted, I sprung into action and got my panelists together. Ellen from Alight Learning, Ben from Olark (formerly Hab.la) and Rishi from Underground Printing.

While I did my research beforehand (I was a student entrepreneur myself, to begin with), I felt the need to cram some preparation a few days before the panel, too. I guess I should have gotten everything ready before the conference started, but I also wanted to get proper feedback from my panelists.

One way I prepared to moderate was by reading a few blog posts on the subject that were linked to from the Speaker FAQ. Most agree that one should not over-prepare the panelists. You want the discussion to happen during the panel itself and not before. In the hour before the panel, inside the green room, I had to sort of referee the panelists to avoid discussing too much. Most also agree that the moderator needs to do the most homework. I had to come up with the focus of my panel, questions to ask to reach that focus, and I had to be prepared to follow up with more questions depending on where the conversation went (which included asking questions to get the discussion back on track if it was going off on a tangent).

At first the panel was going to be about details: where to get money, what kind of corporate structure to use, etc. When I started thinking about the potential panel attendee, I realized that these questions would probably be really boring and unnecessary. I tried to frame my panel from the viewpoint of a college undergrad who just wants to get something started. I hoped that by the end of the panel, at least one person in the room would decide to give startups a try, or at least be excited enough by the idea to do more research into it.

My biggest worries were that no one would come, or that too many people would come. I also worried that people would be mean on the backchannel (as I have witnessed during other panels). I worried that I would not have enough questions to ask and that there would be a bunch of dead silence. Luckily, none of these things happened. The audience was a good size, I treated the audience with respect from the beginning and asked them to do the same on our hashtag, and my panelists were really interesting and led me to ask other followup questions. I don’t think there was much filler content at all.

Probably the only truly stressful part of the process was when Rishi called me the day before the panel and told me he couldn’t make it, by no fault of his own. I had to find a replacement panelist within less than 24 hours! Luckily, I am an entrepreneur at heart and rose to the challenge. I went to the trade show floor and started asking the startup-looking companies if their founder was there, and if so, if he/she had started a company while in school. I got incredibly lucky the first time I asked, at Tungle.me‘s booth. I ended up meeting Marc Gingras, a really awesome guy who ended up working out perfectly. Marc rounded out the panel as the guy who started a company during the dotcom boom. He also has experience being a VC and doing other startups after his first. I really can’t thank Marc enough for spending his time sitting on my panel and helping it become a great success.

My basic strategy during the panel was to break the ice by asking the audience to participate a bit first. I stole this from the App-Vertising panel I saw a few days before. I asked who in the audience were students, investors, entrepreneurs or educators. Next, I had my panel introduce themselves and then I introduced myself. I started with an easy question: “I am a student who wants to get into startups, what should I do?” From there I listened to the panelists and tried to anticipate where the discussion was heading. I had a few points I wanted to hit, so if I heard something that related to another topic, I segued into it. For example, I might’ve said “Ben, you mentioned finding your co-founders at a student group, did anyone else have a similar experience? If not, where did you find your co-founders?”

The backchannel on Twitter also provided a good source of questions. I’m really glad that people asked them because it kept the conversation relevant to what people wanted to know and it gave me a chance to save my questions for a more relevant time to ask them.

I haven’t gotten the official feedback on the panel yet, but I think that it was overall a success. Very few people left in the during the panel and many people were nice enough to come up and talk to me and the panelists afterward. I wish I could have talked to every single person to see if the panel was helpful, but I think they had to run to the keynote right after (and so did we)! I really hope that the panel inspired some people to take a chance and become an entrepreneur. I think that if one person became more inspired after hearing the panel, our mission was definitely accomplished.

While the process was a bit stressful and required a fair amount of work, I’d love to either moderate or participate in a panel again, someday. I’ve got to start thinking of panel ideas for SXSW 2011!

[Photo credit: Chris Norred]

The first celebrity of South By came fairly early. While leaving the Windows Phone party on Friday night, I ran into my old friend Pete Cashmore. I can call him my old friend because we used to be in that 9rules thing together and he wrote about Notecentric and MapsKrieg on his Mashable blog. I chatted him up a bit to see if he remembered me (he either did or was being nice). And he was pretty nice, too! He told me about the Mashable party at Buffalo Billiards (that I didn’t actually get a chance to go to). Then I had to run off because there was a free taco truck nearby and Pete was trying to get into the Speakeasy anyway.

That same night I also spotted Scobleizer, but I didn’t talk to him because I was looking for additional Korean tacos and I already met him last year. I also met some Jonas Brothers but later found out they were just cardboard cutouts.

The next night, at the Frog Design opening party, I was waiting in line and met a cool guy named Mike D’Amico. The line was for a photo booth. I guess we’re both pretty narcissistic. Anyway, some gals ran up to mike and started talking to him. They seemed strangely familiar. I thought they were maybe in a TV show or small-time movie actors. Once they started handing Threadless buttons to me I realized the magnitude of the situation.

They were Threadless t-shirt models!!! Kristen and Colleen were both really nice. I took a picture with them, Threadless style, though I didn’t have a Threadless shirt on at the time. We exchanged business cards and I promised them I’d wear my Three Keyboard Cat Moon shirt the next day.

Sunday was a slow day for celebrity sightings but that was probably due to the fact that I was busy preparing for my panel the next day. Monday turned out to be a good day, both for my panel (more on that in a later post!) and for celebrity sightings!

My friends Sameer and Maureen and I were heading to the 20×2 party but found the foursquare party along the way. The line was huge but somehow we became VIPs by drinking some Vitamin Water and having out pictures taken. The party had a bunch of tables with t-shirts and schwag lined up. I got a Brizzly, Foursquare and something else (some kind of iPhone app company) shirt. While at the foursquare table I saw that iJustine girl. I talked with her for a second and got a picture with her. She seemed nice enough, but kinda had other things to do besides talk to me. She probably needed to go stream her life or something, whatevs!

danah boyd was also at the party but someone was chatting her up relentlessly. Sameer got her to say “Hi” (he’s met her before) but she had to run to the VIP area or something. She also seemed nice but kinda busy.

Later that night, Sameer and I were in the line for the Mens room and ran into the CEO of Twitter, Evan Williams! He was wearing the same dress shirt/sweater combo as during his keynote earlier in the day. Sameer asked for his business card and Ev nicely obliged. We didn’t get a picture. That might’ve been a bit too odd, given we were waiting for the bathroom. I heard that Ashton Kutcher was also at the party but I didn’t head up to the VIP area to check him out.

Overall it was a very good year for celebrity sightings at SXSW. I really wanted to meet Cashmore last year, so it’s great I finally got to talk with him a bit this time. Next year I hope to run into even more famous celebrities like Guy Kawasaki or Leo Laporte! See you soon, SXSW 2011!

This weekend, I was in Gettysburg, PA visiting a pal. Besides enjoying history, there are many other things to do. One of these things is riding a Segway around the historic battlegrounds. I guess that counts as enjoying history as well…

Emily, Katie and I set up an appointment at SegTours of Gettysburg for a “Segway Experience.” This did not include an actual tour. While we were getting ready for basic training, the lady asked us if we’d mind going on the real tour (she claimed she wanted to get more practice doing the tour). We were really happy to get a free upgrade since the reason for choosing the “experience” was to lessen the burden on our pocketbooks.

Basic training consists of Segwaying around in a parking lot until you get the hang of it. There are also cones involved. I got going pretty quickly. It probably has to do with the fact that I do Wii Fit a lot and thus am quite aware of my balance most of the time. The Segway accelerates backward and forward based on how much weight you put forward or backward. Staying stationary is kind of a challenge as you must keep your balance completely in the center. The video above is of basic training. There was an older couple who also did the training but didn’t feel confident enough to go on the tour. They were nice though; the older gentleman was smoking a pipe on his Segway.

The actual tour had us going through the Eastern battlefield. I must say, it was really fun going through alleyways and roads on the way to the actual battlefield. We also went through a hotel parking lot and passed a swimming pool. It’s really fun just effortlessly accelerating around while everyone else needs to walk up a hill. While the others complained about the Segway being a lot of work to ride, I thought it was pretty decent; just like standing.

What did I learn on my tour? That I want a Segway. I should really just get something more reasonable like a bike (which I think would provide the same kind of exhilaration, but with pedaling). Segway-riding is really fun and I hope to do it again some time. Oh, and history is also good, I guess.

In a few days, I am going to SXSW with my company, Troubadour Mobile. It’ll be cool. It’ll be awesome. I’ll miss lots of school.

Ever since I heard of SXSW, probably from Valleywag, I’ve wanted to go. There’ll be cool music, parties, swag, nerds, etc. I’m pretty stoked.

If you are also going to SXSW and you want to “follow” me (on the custom social network for conference attendees, my.sxsw.com, which is kinda cool), you can find me here.

I have been noticeably absent in this blog and others this month. So in typical Hung Truong Blog fashion, I felt like I should write about what’s going on in my life, including my everlasting job hunt. I know some have gained quite a lot of pleasure in reading about my various job hunt activities. Job hunting is kind of fun, especially when you’re in school and you don’t actually have a dire need for a job (well, I already have a job, but I know it’s gonna run out when I graduate).

Anyway, last weekend I interviewed at Microsoft for a Program Manager position. You might recall that I interviewed with Orbitz a few weeks prior. I got an offer from Orbitz and let the recruiters at MS know. Then the MS recruiters hurried up the process and let me interview with them. Pretty cool! I ended up declining the Orbitz offer (but it was awesome and I would have taken it if I hadn’t gotten a better offer, more on that later).

Um, I realize at this point that in the interest of actually getting a job, I should be neutral when I talk about companies. Luckily, all of the companies I’ve dealt with so far have been class acts. So I don’t really need to hold anything back. They’ve been awesome. The whole experience of job hunting has been a real eye-opener for me. From exploding offers and figuring out offer goodness, I’ve been learning a lot.

So anyway, I flew to Seattle and got there at around 11am. I got a rental car (a Toyota Highlander SUV) and drove to the Pike Place Market, which is apparently one of the really cool places to see. I got lunch there and wandered around various shops. Then I decided to go to the Seattle Library, which is really super awesome. And being a student at a library school, I knew I needed to check it out. The library had multiple floors of awesome. The decor in there is like Ikea, except cooler! And it’s in a library!

On my interview day, I tried leaving early but it took me a while to find Building 19 (the HR building) where I was supposed to meet with my recruiter. Microsoft campus is huge-ass. I was a little late. 19 is probably the spiffiest building I encountered, with its sorta dim lighting (for mood), Microsoft Surface to play with, and Rock Band! There were a lot of other students there waiting for their recruiter to get them. They all seemed kinda nervous. It was hard to get them to even acknowledge I was trying to joke around with them and get a posse to play. Then, I was about to start a song when my recruiter called my name. Ah, well.

From 10-4 it was interviews. They were each an hour long, except for a “lunch” interview which lasted 1.5 hours. And I had 30 minutes to sort of pass out after lunch before the final two interviews. Note to people looking for info on questions they ask in Microsoft interviews: don’t bother. I’ve noticed that a lot of people find my blog while they’re looking for interview questions to prepare for their own interviews. The thing that people don’t understand is that everyone asks different questions. And you don’t need to know the answers beforehand anyway. The whole point of the questions is that you answer them on the spot, and that the process of answering the question is what the interviewer wants to see. So if you knew the answer already, you might do worse in the interviewer’s eyes because they’d be like, “what the heck? This person doesn’t think!” Also, most of my questions were about me, so you’d have to do a lot of studying about Hung Truong if you wanted to ace my particular interview questions. </rant>

The interviews themselves were thoughtful and pretty cool. The people interviewing me were really smart and all seemed like cool dudes to work with. I mean, as a self-respecting geek I know that Microsoft has a certain reputation for software. The thing is that a company as big as Microsoft will inevitably have great products and not-so-great products. Also, I read this article in Fast Company about Gary Flake, my new(est) role model! MS is finally entering the web space like they mean it and it’ll be interesting to see how they approach it and how it will affect the other big players (Google and Yahoo… to some extent).

Finally, I had a chance to have dinner with a current MS employee. I chose my former classmate, Sameer. He and his wife took me to the Space Needle Restaurant, which was incredibly touristy and awesome. Oh, and expensive. Thanks for footing the bill, Microsoft! Seriously!

I know that most of my job hunt posts end in some kind of failure post (example 1, example 2, example 3, example 4, etc). I’ve gotten pretty used to rejection over the past few years. But! It seems I’ve gotten better at interviewing! For I got an offer! I can’t (and probably shouldn’t) disclose certain things, so let’s just leave it at that. I have about a week to make my decision. I will probably make another post when I do make a final decision. And then we’ll finally have a proper burial for my series of job hunt posts, once and for all (or at least hopefully for a while!).

I’m going to Chicago this Thursay and Friday for an interview with orbitz.com. With the help of some friends (and Google Maps) I compiled a map of stuff I should see while I’m there. The timing might be kinda tight since I also have to interview (the main reason I’m there) but hopefully I can do things like:

• See the mirror blob thing
• Eat some pizza (Giordano’s seems to be the most popular choice)
• Go up to the top (or almost the top) of the John Hancock building
• Eat some popcorn
• Go to the Apple Store (low priority but I need to do some name dropping or something

This is my first time in Chicago (well, I drove through once to get to Michigan but didn’t stop) so it should be interesting. I wonder if Obama is still hanging around. Maybe I can do the fist bump with him if I run into him…

My sister’s friend Juli was nice enough to pick me up from the airport and show me around the town the first day I was there. After that, I met up with Adam, another SI grad student who I met at visiting days. So me, Adam, and Adam’s wife sorta just wandered around for a few days.

Let’s see… I went to Pinball Pete’s and played some kind of light gun game in Japanese starring a bunch of cats shooting at ghosts… or something like that. It was really easy, which means it’s probably a kid’s game. I beat all of the levels and then it gave me a game over thing.

I walked around campus a lot. Saw stuff like the fish bowl and the cube, and other random stuff I didn’t see during visiting days. I also got my MCard, which is just the university student id card. I wore my red Google shirt, then realized I wore Ohio State colors!!! NOOOO! I might need to get them to replace it with me wearing a yellow shirt or something.

I went to the Hatcher Graduate Library to finish up all of the paperwork for my job with the university. Glad that’s over with. I had to sign something and get it “notorized.” Luckily, one of the people in the administrative offices is a notary public, so I just had her “witness” me sign the paper.

Of course, I also went to look at apartments. There were some pretty crappy ones and some nice ones. There was one that was super nice in the middle of Kerrytown right above a Smoothie King! But there wasn’t any parking nearby. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be going with the Nob Hill apartments, since they seem decent and they’re only about a mile away from campus. So they’re sort of a good compromise between price, distance, and quality.

One of the realty companies I went to look at apartments with, Varsity Management, seemed kind of creepy. Like we just went to apartments that still had people living in them, then we knocked on the door to see if they were home. And they weren’t so we just went in. I felt like I was in some kind of cop show or something. Like I was scared there’d be bodies or dead hookers, etc. Apparently it’s part of the lease agreement, but that seems like a pretty crappy lease agreement.

There’s an Ikea in Canton, which is like 20 minutes or so from Ann Arbor. We went twice. That’s how much I like Ikea. The second time we went, I even bought a few random office organization thingys. I’m probably going to Ikea again next week when I go visit my brother in California… and buy more random stuff.

We also hit some pretty cool restaurants. Like umm… well, the only one I can remember is Champion House, where they do that Japanese cooking thing in front of you. It was pretty neat. Way expensive, though. But tasty. I suspect that our cook was Chinese, though, and not Japanese. Which is cool either way.

And I guess that’s it. Overall, it was a pretty fun trip, though somewhat stressful due to the quality (or lack thereof) of apartments. I guess I should’ve prepared for crapiness, but still, seeing it in person is quite harsh.

I might check out other random attractions too, like Pinball Pete’s, which is apparently a huge ass arcade!

Luckily I’ll have something to do on the plane, since I just bought Pokemon Pearl yesterday. And if my batteries run out, I can practice showing people where Ann Arbor is in Michigan by pointing to my hand! I gotta get that down ASAP.

[Edit 11-13-2010 Hi Techcrunch! This is an old post I made more than 3 years ago about Google. tl;dr I interviewed and didn't get a job. I've done some stuff since then. Check me out on LinkedIn and look at my portfolio. I'm currently looking for interesting stuff to do. And now back to this lengthy post about Google...]

So last Thursday I flew out to Google to visit in the context of their College Days program to do some interviews / take a tour of the Googleplex and eat their food. Google had me sign a pretty hefty NDA (Non-disclosure agreement) so I’ll try to be careful with what I say. Basically, I believe that if what I say is pretty much common net knowledge, I’ll be ok. I don’t really think they told me any Google secrets.

The main point of the NDA, I think, is not to reveal any of the interview questions, since they’re important to keep under wraps so that interviewees will see them as fresh questions instead of being coached on them.

So on Thursday, I flew out to a very nice hotel called The Grand Hotel in Sunnyvale, CA. It was very nice. The bathroom was really huge. The bed was really huge. I felt pampered from the very beginning. They even had a bathrobe! Upon arriving, I used Google Earth (quick plug!) to find some fast food places nearby. I walked to Taco Bell and back and had some burritos for dinner. I took a mineral bath (to calm down for tomorrow’s interview) and tried to sleep, but that was kind of hard to do, considering.

The next morning, I woke up semi-early to eat a light breakfast. I realized that I forgot to bring deodorant (which is kind of a big deal) so I walked about three blocks to get to a drug store. These were no ordinary blocks, however. These were Sunnyvale blocks! I got back to the hotel and applied the deodorant (which at that point, I urgently needed due to the walk).

I didn’t have much time, so I ran down to the lobby to find that the hotel’s limo had already departed for Google! Me and a couple of other candidates were freaking out (but not too terribly badly) but we then realized that the limo would come back for us. It was pretty cool riding in the limo. It didn’t have champagne or a pool or anything though.

The first thing that I was upon arriving to Google was a ping-pong table. Cool! We introduced ourselves to the recruiters and relations people, and listened to a quick talk from Peter Norvig, who is now a research director at Google. I’m not really into AI, so I didn’t know who he was, but one of the other college day visitors was studying AI as a PhD so he was pretty stoked.

After that, we did three interviews in a row which were 45 minutes each and done by different engineers at Google. One of the things that sets Google apart from other companies is that it seems to like having fun. As an example of this, all of the interview rooms were named after programming languages. There were all sorts of languages, including some I’d never heard of before.

I thought the interviews went pretty well. There were some hard problems (NP-Complete hard even) and some easier problems. I did have sort of a hard time writing down the code, since I hadn’t done any formal code in Java for quite some time. I guess that during my second interview, I chose a weird way of solving the problem that sort of confused the interviewer, but other than that, I thought I did well.

After the interviews, we had lunch. We ate at Charlie’s Cafe, which had a bunch of types of food. I guess the special that day was seafood. One of the nice things is that each dish was labeled with 0, 1 or 2 asterisks. They went from 0 – not vegetarian, 1 – vegetarian, 2 – vegan. Since I’m a vegetarian, it’s nice to see this kind of thoughtfulness. It sure helps choosing food when you don’t have to ask “does this have meat in it?” for each dish. The food was pretty good, but I got a seriously burned Focaccia which I didn’t finish.

After that, we had a game of Google Trivia for Google prizes, and some massages. The recruiters were evidently not engineers. One question (I think I can reveal these since they’ll never ask them as interview questions) was how much is a googol? One person said “10^100″ and the recruiters were like, what? Then one guy said “1 followed by 100 zeroes” and the recruiters were like, correct! Then we had to explain that the first guy got the question right first.

After that we had a Q&A session with two Google engineers. One worked on Google Earth and the other had created Google Movies as a 20% project. I asked a question about doing grad school + Google and the answer was that it was really hard. They seemed like really nice people, and it was reassuring to see that the engineers of Google can be social (unlike many engineers in general).

The last thing of the day was the Google Tour. We walked around and saw all of the weird, quirky things that makes Google Google. Like the T-Rex skeleton, and the volleyball court that had sand imported from Mexico, or the micro-kitchens that you come across every 150 feet or so, or those infinity pools where there’s a constant current pushing against you. One thing that I noticed was that there was a lifeguard there. Just watching one guy swimming in the very small pool.

Finally, we said goodbye to all of the recruiters and took the limo back to our hotel. The general vibe of the place was that Google is still the place to work. I don’t think there is a work environment like it anywhere else (besides all of their other offices). The culture still seems fun, the atmosphere seems creative, and I really want to work there.

As it so happens, I didn’t get offered a job. The recruiter tried calling me yesterday but I was probably in the air when she tried. I called her today and she gave me the bad news. So it looks like most likely I’ll be going to grad school at Michigan. Hopefully I can find a good way to pay for tuition; maybe a research assistantship, a position as ULA, or something else.

I can still try again after about a year. Since I’m planning on grad school it’ll probably end up being in two years. When I asked if there was any feedback I could hear about my interviews, the recruiter told me that in a high level sense, coding was an issue. I suppose I should have studied my OOP a bit more (I’ve gotten a bit rusty). It is frustrating since I honestly believe that I could make an impact on the projects that are going on at Google. I see this as a false negative, but I really have no one to blame but myself for it.

I do hope I can come back after I’ve completed grad school and try again at Google. There’s really nowhere else I can see myself ending up. This is a small defeat for me, but I know that I can definitely make myself a better candidate with hard work and guts!

Also, the visit itself to Google was invaluable. I had the chance to visit my favorite company and literally eat with the people who were making the company what it is. I actually look forward to interviewing with Google again in the future. The interviews were all very interesting and I was treated very well. Hopefully I can do better the next time.

My consolation prize

After my Google Visit, I left early on Saturday morning to fly to Michigan. Michigan is my top (and sadly, only) school right now as far as graduate school possibilities go. It’s okay though, because I think Michigan would be my top school even if I was admitted to all the schools that I applied to.

I arrived to the school somewhat late. I missed the registration and about half of the introduction talk. I sat down at a table whose occupants were librarians. Pretty much everyone there was an LIS (library and information services) specialist. This wasn’t really a great first impression, since I applied under the HCI (human-computer interaction) specialization, and to be honest, libraries aren’t really my thing. Not to say that I don’t like them, but the people there just didn’t have the same interests as me.

After dinner, we broke into groups with current SI students leading the way. I went with the group that promised a song and dance routine, though unfortunately, they were only kidding. We went to Cafe Ambrosia, where I didn’t actually get anything. Instead, some random person walked up to me and said “hey, are you my room mate?”

Indeed, I was his room mate. I hadn’t met him before since I was totally late. Anyway, Adam and I started chatting about stuff outside the cafe while everyone else was talking inside the cafe. I guess we should’ve stayed inside, but whatever; we had a good chat.

The next day, we woke up to a crazy hell alarm! Like seriously, the alarm was very dissonant, and for a second, I thought I had woken up in some kind of hell. Adam thought it was scary, too. We went to get breakfast in the really snobby restaurant of the Bell Tower hotel. By snobby, I mean they played Canon in D without even thinking about it.

Then we went to the West Hall for some lectures. Like we had a few professors talk about what the program at SI was all about and some of the details of what we’d be expected to do at SI. Of special note was the PEP system, where each student is expected to do some “Practical Engagement” before he/she graduates.

After that, there were a few information sessions about the varying specializations. I chose to go to the HCI information session, then the introduction to the new MSI specializations, of which social computing is very interesting to me. I really wish the introductions to the new specializations would have lasted longer. It felt really rushed, and before we knew it, it was time for lunch.

For lunch, we walked to the Michigan League building and sat down at specified tables. We were paired up with faculty who had the same interests as us. Our table featured Thomas Finholt, a dean of research at the information school. We had some cool candid conversations regarding the new dean of the school of information. He also discussed the differences between the mentalities of the professors at Michigan vs. those at Carnegie Mellon, who both have very highly respected HCI programs but very different way of approaching it.

I also would have liked to talked to Paul Resnick, the faculty coordinator for the Social Computing specialization. I think I’ll email him separately with my questions on the subject.

After lunch we had a lot of lectures. I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, and I just had lunch, so it was really tough not sleeping through them. Not to say they weren’t full of useful information, but at that point I was kind of information’ed out. This is a School of Information, though, so I guess I should’ve expected it. There was a talk about career services (of which the SI actually has its own department), a panel of alumni and their experiences, and a presentation about financial aid opportunities.

Afterwards, we again broke off into groups, going to local eateries and whatnot. I followed the SAA around the whole night due to their excellent choice of venues. I probably should’ve gone with the HCI group, but I didn’t want to go to the Japanese place and have nothing to eat (seafood = gross!). The SAA people were nice too, though.

Finally, the next day I had time to attend the employment information fair over at the Michigan League. I had a chance to meet the people who had interviewed me for the ULA position over at the Public Health and Informatics Library. They seemed really nice and even tried drawing a map to the library for me until we decided I’d probably get lost and miss my flight. Hopefully I’ll be chosen for that position since it seems like a way cool opportunity to affect some real changes in a real life library.

Overall, my impressions of SI were sort of mixed, but still really positive. I knew coming in that the school was very interdisciplinary, but I didn’t realize the degree to which it was. There was a statistic thrown around that 100 people were visiting this weekend, and they represented around 50 undergraduate concentrations! I thought that for sure there would be more CS majors around, but I only ran into one or two.

In a way, I felt uncomfortable due to the lack of other CS people. Hardly anyone I had met had any experience with programming, and I think they had some misconceptions about programming and programmers in general. I guess I could say I also have misconceptions about librarians and archivists too, though. It didn’t really bother me that much, but I definitely felt as though I was in an intellectual minority as far as undergraduate interests went.

This kind of intellectual dissonance made me unsure as to whether or not the coursework at SI could really challenge me and if I would actually learn anything there. I have been slightly reassured by looking at the coursework. For example, the Design of Complex Websites course is offered in Ruby on Rails. It’s very cool that the school is able to give a course like this, even though I already know Ruby on Rails fairly well. Many of the other courses, like Recommender Systems and Game Theory sound very interesting as well.

I am a little worried that the courses might be too “soft” for me because of my CS background. I have a feeling that as long as I actively try to get as much out of a class as possible, I will learn something. Hopefully the professors can push me and I can push back. In the end, I’m probably just being a CS snob about it and I have a feeling my worries will go away quickly after taking a few classes. I wish we had a chance to attend a course or two to see what they were like, though that would’ve been pretty difficult to arrange, I imagine.

I think that more importantly, the people I met this past weekend were very cool. The faculty all seems very nice and intelligent. Apparently Judy and Gary Olson are superstars in the field of HCI. I also met some really cool potential peers who are very intelligent and show a lot of passion and potential in their interests.

I think that other intangibles will make Michigan a very worthwhile experience for me if I choose to attend. During the alumni panel, it was said that Michigan has the largest alumni base in the entire United States. Though it seems a bit unfair, a few alumni talked about how their job search replies were post-scripted with “Go Blue!” at the end. Being a Michigan alumni probably doesn’t mean instant employment anywhere you want, but I’m sure it helps at least a bit.

I’ll have to wait for a reply from Google and the ULA program before I make a final decision. I’m very happy that between my two choices, I see a huge deal of potential. I think either choice will be a good one for me; it’s definitely a win-win situation. Despite my few remaining reservations about the program, I am really stoked about possibly going to Michigan for grad school.