Rocket Science

Ok, this is a conference for which I’ve had a paper accepted…but, perhaps in a typical Indian sense, they’ve made things a whole lot more difficult and confusing than they needed to.

First, the conference submission system they’ve used EADS just plain sucks. Someone has suckered them into using it, and boy is it lousy. It also looks like it was designed in 1999. I am constantly guessing what it wants me to do to interact with it.

Specifically conference registration is confusing and difficult. As is customary these days, in order to present the paper, one of the authors has to register. Below are a series of screen shots of the registration process.

First, I’m asked to pay for Sahana Murthy. Um, no.

Why am I registering someone else? And what timezone?

So I bail out of that screen, and click back on http://eads.info and then try registering again. How do I do it? Click on the green thingie in the Registration Box next to my paper title–that’s not obvious that I need to click it to register.

What is that green thingie?

And then after registering I get a “Thank you for registering” and no confirmation information. Um, great. Where’s my receipt? Basically any web payment system displays a receipt after making the purchase–except for EADS. It turns out I can find that information by going back to my home screen and then clicking on the registration thingie image and then clicking on the “Paid” image. Sure, that makes sense, gee thanks.

Why would I click on the Paid image to get a receipt???

I’m halfway through my marathon two-week, around the world trip. I’m not dead yet, but I think I flew over it sometime on Saturday/Sunday.

I gave three presentations (2009 Technology for Education Workshop, Microsoft Research India and IEEE Computer Society Bangalore Section) while in India, basically the same one–but in three different durations. First was 20 minutes, then 5 minutes and then an hour. Needless to say by the third one, I had things down pat.

My presentation to the IEEE-CS Bangalore Section was also the best presentation of the three–I was able to spend the time to present the material, and got great questions from the audience. I’m really annoyed at myself that I didn’t record the presentation, it would have made a great slidecast.

I’m embedding the first presentation, the one with a slidecast, below.