Homeless in Cali

I think I could be a homeless person, but only if I didn’t have any stuff. Or anything to do. Or was tired. Or hungry. Otherwise, I think I could be homeless. I had practice yesterday, with everything I own (locally) in a giant suitcase that might also double as a shelter. It lived in the SV lounge for the day, then Amaya-Friend-of-Erik‘s room, and finally rolled to Kynthia‘s room, where I ran out of gas while sitting on a couch waiting for Richie and Justin to end their extra-long trip from the Midwest. Now rested and showered, I’m a ready for another day of waiting for access to someone else’s room.

Such is my chosen fate at CHI 2007. The commute to Matt‘s place in San Francisco seemed a better idea a couple months ago then after getting assigned to some 7a student volunteer tasks. I still hope to see him this weekend, although leftover academic responsibilities keep me attached to the spring semester in Bloomington.

This is a week of reunion as much as sharing of knowledge. Our mPath team from CHI 2005 will be mostly reunited. In addition to Matt, Shveta works in the area and will be giving a talk next week. We will miss Apurva, who couldn’t convince his company it was a worthwhile expense and is now (or soon will be) headed to India for some home cooking. Also absent this week—unless a barrage of text messages isn’t enough of a push to convince him otherwise—is Josh of Thoughtworks. However, there is a great mix of alumni and current Informatics students descending on San Jose this weekend.

I showed up at 8a Friday for my SV duties as conference reporter (a cool gig), not realizing I didn’t have to show up at 8a on Friday. As the first to arrive, it made it easier to meet some people, starting with Victor from Oregon. Also among the first to arrive was Erik, who came with another San Diego cognitive scientist. Amaya is in the student research competition with a study of social impacts of video blogging on dentistry students. She was also the Keeper of the SV Mascot—a stuffed frog, Schmitty. She dressed it up in small suits, took him to Burning Man and made a research poster for the conference. I also ran into another Josh, a student from Michigan. I commented on his blog after the student design competition teams were announced, and we talked a lot about the similarities in our two programs. I also met Zhiwei Guan from U-Dub, who has two papers to present on Tuesday in Gaze and Eye Tracking. It runs opposite Eli Blevis’s sustainability and interaction SIG, though, so I probably will miss it.

Wishing I had a camera.