This week I attended the IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications in Galveston, TX. I was there to present my paper Opening Pervasive Computing to the Masses Using the SEAP Middleware. If you’re interested, here are the slides I presented at the PerWare workshop Monday morning: seap-sethholloway-perware2009.

The conference itself was a good experience: I received a lot of interesting questions and good feedback. The feedback focuses my future work and will help me become a better presenter. Hubert Pham, a student under Steve Ward at CSAIL, gave a stellar presentation on goal oriented programming. I also met one of Hubert’s co-authors, Justin Mazzola Paluska. Not only are they great researchers, they’re cool guys.

Beyond meeting a couple promising peers, I got to meet Dr. Gregory Abowd–the highlight of the trip. Dr. Abowd is one of my favorite researchers. He gave a very inspirational keynote to open the conference. He is a prince of a man, and I hope to interact with him more in the future.

I was also glad to see Galveston in fair shape. After Hurricane Ike the island was in very bad shape. Although the bulk of the beach is yet to be repaired this spring break the island can host a fair number of tourists. Luckily, there were signs of life outside the plethora of PerCommers.