Prof. Kristin Stephens-Martinez

The SIGCSE Technical Symposium 2021 happened! So that means it’s time for a conference reflection. However, this blog post is going to be a little different. I’m going to try writing a letter to my future self focusing on how the conference went and how I can do online conferences better in the future. [Also posted on  medium .] Dear Future Self, So you are planning to attend another online conference. And I know there are online conferences in your future because you got a paper accepted to ITiCSE . And then ICER and Grace Hopper are both online (Wow, writing that makes me realize that we attend more conferences than I thought.). You’ve done a few online conferences now, so it’s time to remember what happened last time and learn the lessons from them. We don’t want to repeat the “I’m up to my eyeballs in work!” experience. Especially considering we wrote an entire blog post about attending two conferences at once, ICER and Learning@Scale (are we going to Learning@Scale this ye...

I went to a workshop the week of 7/15 and tried out my new travel routines that I articulated in my post "Conference Reflection: SIGCSE 2019 - " What I will do next time" (Part 3 of 3) ". I thought it would be appropriate to reflect on how my plan compared to reality, as Helmuth von Moltke the Elder  said, "No plan survives contact with the enemy." Though in this case, the enemy is my present self when trying to execute the plan made by my well-intentioned past self. This post specifically reflects on my morning and night routines. And I'm posting this reflection now because next week I'm going to ICER , where my new travel routine will really get tested. This workshop had the best circumstances for my travel routine to succeed. It was close enough for me to drive, which meant I could bring whatever I wanted instead of what I was willing to lug through an airport. Therefore, I brought my foam roller that I use for physical therapy back exercises....

So given what did and did not go well, this section outlines three things that will hopefully make things better next time. The first is an overarching career task that will help me articulate my priorities, which will help me make decisions more quickly. The second is my first attempt at a travel routine that will hopefully help me better sustain myself both during and after an event. And the third is my plan on how to prepare for conferences, so I get the most out of them. Articulate my "Professor Platform" To help me prioritize and quickly assess an opportunity, I want to think on my "Professor Platform." I got this idea from "The Professor is In: The Essential Guide To Turning Your Ph.D. Into a Job" by Karen Kelsky . I read this book when I was job hunting. It describes the need to create a "Campaign Platform" to help frame how to present yourself to search committees. Moreover, it helps you have a set of "things about you" you c...