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Deadlines are for wimps

… but wimps with a better chance of being published.

So, a funny thing happened on the way to CHI. Turns out, the work-in-progress I had on the shelf for two month, the same one I casually pecked at over the break, the same exact one on which I worked this weekend … it was due last Friday. Bummer. Understatement. I’ll recover by pretending you, gentle reader, are the review committee and as it turns out the deadline is RIGHT NOW. Submitted: Visual Gestalt in Campaign Web Sites. (Whew.)

Despondent, I almost didn’t make the effort to finish the submission for the Doctoral Consortium. That was the main focus for me all fall, although you wouldn’t have known it by watching me procrastinate. I hemmed when other work piled up and hawed when I had the flu. Each time, I kept coming back to the fact that (a) it’s free to enter, and (b) there’s a free-ish trip to California in April if I get lucky. I also liked the idea of taking one of my various ideas and making it more tangible. That’s what got me back on track today — that, and a stunning letter of recommendation from Eli.

It took the full day, working an hour at a time, but I managed to submit something at 7:58p, a good two minutes before another deadline passed. My reward for today’s effort — greatly facilitated by Amy, who took care of my extended family today while I camped out in front of the laptop — is reading five articles by tomorrow morning for a seminar class.

It’s nothing $1200 wouldn’t cure, I’m sure. (Hey, I’ve got a 12 in 345 chance, at least.)

By Kevin Makice

A Ph.D student in informatics at Indiana University, Kevin is rich in spirit. He wrestles and reads with his kids, does a hilarious Christian Slater imitation and lights up his wife's days. He thinks deeply about many things, including but not limited to basketball, politics, microblogging, parenting, online communities, complex systems and design theory. He didn't, however, think up this profile.

7 replies on “Deadlines are for wimps”

Kevin,

My group submitted to the design competition at 7:56pm with 333 submissions. I bet your 345 is from the same pool which includes all items that were due on 1/15.

Using that logic, you have a 24 in 345 chance.

However, 2 minutes is enough time for a good number of applications to enter the system. In the 2 minutes from 7:56 to 7:58 the system received 12 new submissions. Knowing that procrastination is non-linear, we can only assume that the growth rate from 7:58 to 7:59:59 was greater than the previous 2 minute interval. Assuming a simple 2x relationship, we can estimate 24 new submissions in the final interval.

Therfore, you have a 24 in 369 chance.

Congratulations!

The math hurts my head.

You’re probably right. Eli thinks a large chunk of those numbers are probably people who register but never submit, so maybe I have a 12 in 12 chance!

I lucked out.

You didn’t notice that 2x is a linear relationship which makes for a pretty bad example of a non-linear relationship.

In other news, I think your “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” function may be broken. I never received an email letting me know about your followup comment.

Not to spam your site, but I think the link to your WIP paper is broken. Firefox downloads a 1kb PDF and IE can’t find the file.

Yes, and yes. Thanks.

WordPress just uploaded the file name, not the path. That part has been fixed.

I think the subscribe to comments tools were broken in my last upgrade. There’s a new WordPress version on the near horizon, so I’ll attend to all the broken stuff once that shows up.

Total submissions turned out to be 96, of which only 15 were invited to go. I was not among them. (However, I’m still happy I went through the process. My hard drive crash killed a bunch of my legwork, but at least my brain drive wasn’t erased.)

Still going to CHI

There is still (bleak) hope to become a student volunteer. Feb. 26 is the deadline for the current chosen 120 to be registered. There has been a little movement on the waiting list already, but I need another 37 to drop out in order to get the free conference admission.

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