Reed's Ruminations: A Blog by Dan Reed

Presentations, Humor and Memes

N.B. This article was also posted on the Communications of the ACM (CACM) blog.

I have been reflecting on the nature of technical presentations. The motivations are manifold, the potential audiences are diverse, the expected outcomes varied, and there are so many ways to sink into the quicksand of somnambulant soliloquy.

Addressing the Sleepy

Let's begin with one of the most fearsome challenges – the after dinner speech. There are more difficult audiences, such as a group of restive five year olds coming down from a sugar-induced high, but not many. As dessert and coffee are served, you may well find yourself wondering what moment of foolish weakness allowed you to accept such a speaking invitation. All is not lost if one remembers key rules.

An after dinner audience is neither the time nor the place to attempt feats of technical legerdemain or cite obscure technical references. Rather, anecdotes, levity and (especially) brevity are to be prized above all else. Remember, though, that wit and humor lie in the eye of the beholder. With an after dinner audience, a rambling discourse on the funarg problem, call by name and call by value cannot be ameliorated by a retelling of Nicklaus Wirth's self-deprecating anecdote that Europeans call him by name and Americans by value!

Unlike humor, however, you, as the speaker, are in full control of brevity. If you find yourself struggling to be inspiring or entertaining, be succinct. The clearest sign and most humbling omen that you have failed, beyond the obvious signs of boredom, is when the phrase "in conclusion" silences the scrape of dessert cutlery and inspires expectant and excited looks. Sadly, I have experienced that emotion, both as audience member and as speaker.

Addressing the Curious

At the other extreme lies the technical presentation, the one most familiar to researchers as an oral exegesis of a technical paper. It has its own pitfalls, for both experienced and novice presenters.

For the newcomer, I heartily recommend the late Peter Medawar's delightful book, Advice to a Young Scientist. Although some of his presentation advice is technologically dated, the humor and academic perspective are timeless. I simply note that a modern updating of Medawar's advice would be to use a laser pointer sparingly, particularly if one is nervous, because the existence of trembling hands is wonderfully magnified.

Even in steady hands, an invited presentation should not be a complete regurgitation of a paper's content. Rather, it should eschew details in favor of describing the problem, solution approach, outcomes and implications. Do not read your slides; talk to your audience. Your objective is to make the audience want to read your paper.

Remember that few things strike more fear into the heart of even a technical audience than such phrases as "Combining lemmas 5, 12, and 19, it is obvious that …" If one has to explain why something is obvious, it probably is not. Like house guests who leave while their company is still being enjoyed, one wants to leave the audience excited and curious to know more – not less.

Addressing the Future

Finally, there is the plenary conference presentation or the vision and policy overview. It should inspire and motivate, drawing on research experience and open problems. It is usually neither as detailed as a technical presentation nor as lighthearted as an after dinner speech.

When discussing high-performance computing policy and research challenges, I have often found myself among a cadre of friends who were offering their perspectives on the same issues. In that spirit, my friends, Jack Dongarra (Tennessee/ORNL) and Rick Stevens (Chicago/ANL), have reflected on how frequently memes transit presentation boundaries.

One of us will hear the other describe an interesting idea or effective summary of an idea, morph the idea or slide, incorporate it into our talk, and present it with the others in the audience at another venue. It often passes among us several times, massaged and adapted each time, until none of know its origin, but all are invested in it. More generally, that is how new research ideas evolve and grow.

Public speaking can be great fun. When done well, it is a form of performance art. Enjoy it, and help your listeners enjoy it also!

Technology Strategy and Policy

It seems axiomatic that technology strategy must include – drumroll please – both technology and strategy. It is all about the right ideas at the right times. We live in a world of exponential technology change, and understanding when quantitative technical change begets qualitative strategic and policy change is the essence of innovation.

Technology

Last year, Microsoft formed the eXtreme Computing Group (XCG) with a charter to rethink the nature of computing at extreme scale, from alternative, quantum computing models, through the transformative effects of manycore parallelism on programming systems and architectures, to massive cloud computing designs that each drive consumer, business, research and social applications. Across all of these, security and privacy are central. Our tagline, perhaps a bit ambitiously, is "defining the future."

XCG conducts basic research, builds large-scale hardware and software prototypes, incubates new technologies for product group uptake and shapes technology adoption by Microsoft. It includes a wonderful cadre of senior researchers – individuals such as Burton Smith, Michael Freedman, John Manferdelli, Jim Larus and Dennis Gannon – as well as a host rising stars. We also have wonderful hardware engineers, software designers and system architects. XCG is part of Microsoft Research (MSR), where we report to Rick Rashid. It's a great team, and working with them and MSR may well be the most fun I have ever had in computing. That's the technology part.

Strategy and Policy

As many of you know, I am no stranger to strategy and policy, having served on the U.S. President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) and on the U.S. President's Counsel of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). I also chaired the Computing Research Association (CRA) board, which represents academic and industrial computing research policy interests in North America. I have also been on more ad hoc advisory and review panels, in Europe, Asia and the U.S., than I can count. (Jay Boisseau once claimed it was a million, but I think he was exaggerating just a little bit, Texas style!)

At the beginning of 2010, I will also take on an additional role helping lead technology policy and strategy for Microsoft, shaping the company's long-term vision and strategy for technology innovations and its associated policy engagement with governments and institutions around the world. In this capacity, I will report to and work closely with Craig Mundie, Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer.

Given the centrality of information technology to communication and social interaction, research and development, education and learning, health and safety, the environment and economic development –among others – such strategic technology identification and policy coordination are critical to Microsoft and our future. I am excited and humbled to be adding this role to my activities. That's the strategy and policy part.

I Could Smell the Smoke

Certain dates take on special meaning, as shared experiences and defining vignettes in our global consciousness. Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing on these dates. The Apollo lunar landing (July 20, 1969) is one such date. For many in the United States, September 11, 2001 is another. The recent anniversary of this date prompted me to reflect on my experiences

On that day, I was hosting a National Science Foundation (NSF) workshop on Computation as a Tool for Discovery in Physics at NCSA's Access Center, adjacent to NSF, in Arlington, Virginia. After the meeting opened, I ran downstairs to hail a taxi and head to Capitol Hill for a meeting at U.S. Representative Dennis Hastert's office in one of the Congressional office buildings. At the time, Rep. Hastert was Speaker of the House and second in line to the U.S. Presidency, a fact I had not considered particularly noteworthy until that day.

I arrived a few minutes early for my appointment with one of Rep Hastert's legislative affairs directors and was waiting for my other Illinois colleague in the hallway outside when my Blackberry began buzzing. Argonne's Rick Stevens had sent me a message asking if I were okay. I thought this curious and responded, "Of course, why wouldn't I be?" as I ambled into the office anteroom. Like almost all Senate and House offices, the anteroom contained televisions tuned to CSPAN and CNN, with the sound off.

At that point, I heard a mumbled comment about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. My immediate thought was that the pilot of a single engine plane must have done something incredibly stupid. As I was thinking this, the person I was waiting to meet emerged and told me we would need to postpone our meeting. "Why?" I asked. Pointing to the television, which was now showing a replay of American Airlines Flight 11 hitting the first World Trade Center tower, he said, "That's why."

Unbeknownst to either of us, a third plane had just hit the Pentagon, a few miles away. As we stood chatting, the Capitol Police began a leisurely evacuation process for the building. As I emerged into the fall sunlight, small groups of people were wandering slowly around the House and Senate office buildings. There was no panic, because most of us had no idea what was happening, at least until we looked to the southwest, where a column of smoke was now rising from the Pentagon.

My Illinois colleague and I retreated to the Bullfeathers, a bar just off the Capitol, where we joined a growing group of members of Congress and staffers. Rumors were rampant, including one that a plane was headed for the Capitol, and none of us really knew what was happening. Cell phone service was non-existent, overloaded by call attempts, and we had only relayed information from the single television in the bar. Through it all, my Blackberry continued to operate, though, and I received brief news updates from my friends.

Why didn't we leave a high value target area, you might ask? The Washington Metro was closed, taxis were non-existent, there was a security cordon around the area, and it was too far to walk. As we waited, fighter jets were flying low over the Capitol, sirens wailed regularly and bomb squads flew past.

After several hours, some semblance of normality began returning and the Metro reopened. My colleague and I boarded the Metro, which was packed with worried people. Their fear rose further when the train passed the smoke-filled Pentagon stop at high speed.

After what seemed a lifetime, but which was really only about three hours, I found myself again sitting in my meeting at NSF, discussing the future of computational physics. All the attendees had agreed that continuing the meeting was the best policy. It was somber and subdued, and we struggled to focus on plasma physics, molecular dynamics, or accelerator physics.

We now knew the airports were closed, and most of us knew we would need to find alternative transportation to our varied homes across the country. At least one of the workshop attendees had immediate family within blocks of the New York ground zero site, which triggered collective attempts to find any working communication channel to New York City.

Throughout the day, I continued to track developments on MSNBC, where I began experiencing timeouts due to query volume. That evening, I walked through the deserted streets of Arlington to reach my nearby hotel. Seeing the National Guard armed and ready outside buildings was sobering. It was a surreal time, with great uncertainty about what might happen.

Over the next three days, I collected information on various faculty, staff and students stranded in greater Washington, DC. Eventually, we found a rental car (no mean feat) and drove back to Champaign, Illinois.

Doctoral Comedy: Which Way Is The Door?

One of the great lessons of sociology is the power of shared experience, whether positive or negative, to create deep and lasting human bonds. From the horror and misery of war and abduction (Stockholm syndrome) through the fun and excitement of athletic camaraderie and competition to the caffeine and adrenalin fueled pressure of a "ship or die" venture-funded startup, shared experiences can define one's life. This even extends to pursuing a Ph.D., where the long, sometimes strange and unpredictable journey can create its own ethos and breed a certain gallows humor.

This is why I am enjoying the great comic strip, Piled Higher and Deeper, also known as PhDComics, drawn by Jorge Cham. As an aside, the phrase "piled higher and deeper," of course, is an old and hoary wordplay on the progression from B.S. through "more of the same" (M.S.) to – all together now – "piled higher and deeper." (Ph.D.) If you ever spent Saturday night working in the lab, and every graduate student has, you understand the stable cleaning analogy.

The first time I saw the PhDComics strip, I knew that Jorge must have been a Ph.D. student, because only someone who has experienced graduate school and faculty life, particularly in a technical discipline, could have that much insight regarding the joy and misery of graduate student life and the trials and foibles of faculty members. I spent thirty years in that world, and I recognize myself, my friends and my colleagues in the strip. (No, not thirty as a graduate student, though it certainly seemed so at the time!) Perhaps the following anecdotes will trigger some memories of your own.

The Netherworld

As a graduate student, you live in a netherworld, not quite a student nor a faculty member either. The undergraduate students see you as faculty, especially if you are a teaching assistant, and the faculty members see you as a student, especially if you have not yet crossed the River Styx, otherwise known as the Ph.D. qualifying examination. From the university's bureaucratic perspective, you are a chameleon, classified as either a student (see parking privileges and health benefits) or staff (see student discounts and athletic tickets) when convenient.

One of my Illinois Ph.D. students came to our weekly group meeting absolutely furious. He'd driven to the Digital Computer Laboratory (DCL) about 3 A.M. that morning to check on the progress of some research simulations. When he returned to his car about 15 minutes later, he found a ticket on his windshield. My student was absolutely adamant that it was unfair and that he would not pay the fine. It looked like a mano-a-mano smackdown – irate graduate student versus implacable bureaucracy.

I was sympathetic; after all, Urbana at 3 A.M. has a surfeit of parking places. I asked him on which of the streets near DCL he'd parked his car. He asked why it mattered. I patiently explained that some of the streets were within the jurisdiction of the university police, whereas others were within the jurisdiction of the city of Urbana. The city – and by extension, the U.S. government – might have the power to fine him, jail him or even deport him, but the university wielded a far more important power over his fate and future. It could prevent him from graduating by simply encumbering his records for failure to pay a parking ticket. Because he had parked on a university street, he had no choice; he wanted a Ph.D.; he paid the fine. Final score: university 1; graduate student 0.

The Weekly Meetings

If you have been a graduate student or a faculty member, you remember the weekly meetings with your advisor (advisees) and the group meetings and seminars. Each brings certain perspectives, and they become conjoined over time, whether it be foraging for free seminar food, trying to impress people by asking questions or simply staying awake and trying to look interested.

One my first Ph.D. students, a truly fantastic researcher who is now a very successful computer science faculty member himself, once asked me at a professional conference if there had ever been intervals where I had wondered if he were doing anything useful in the lab. After confessing that it had crossed my mind a time or two, he laughed and said he understood, as he now wondered the same about his own students.

How Many Years?

At some point during my graduate career at Purdue, I was having dinner with the parents of a friend of mine. Her mother asked when I expected to graduate, and I said, "In a year or so, I think." She replied, "That's what you said last year." In fact, I had said the same thing the year before, and both times I had been hoping it was true. Of course, she didn't know that asking a graduate student when they will finish their thesis is a bit like asking someone about their weight or their income. As the PhDComics strip notes, it's best not discussed in polite company.

In that spirit, I also distinctly remember leaving a Friday night, midnight campus showing of The Deer Hunter, thinking the odds were high that my tombstone would list me as an A.B.D. graduate student with the epitaph, "Felled by one last thesis revision." That one sentence captures so many elements of the graduate experience. First, I left the movie alone and on foot, because I had no date and no car. Second, I was attending a midnight $1 movie because I living on rather miniscule graduate fellowship stipend with little discretionary money. (See my previous comment about having no date and no car.) Third, it was The Deer Hunter, a great movie but a truly depressing moral meditation on war and death, perhaps not the best choice for a midnight screening, especially for a graduate student. Without hesitation, I walked directly back to my office in the Purdue Mathematical Sciences building and worked all night on my dissertation. I had to graduate, and I did!

Crazy Thesis Topics

My dissertation was on a wild and crazy idea – building parallel computers using large numbers of microprocessors and programming them via message passing. Like most dissertations, nothing came of it, because we all recognized the importance of purpose-built parallel systems that balanced computation, communication and I/O and that were programmed using new languages and tools that focused on human productivity. A long-term, industry-government-academic partnership in the early 1990s produced the balanced, highly productive, near-exascale systems we use today for breakthrough computational science and national defense.

What's that you say? You mean we are using commodity microprocessors and message passing for parallel computing? Bummer! I must have confused this reality with a parallel earth in a many worlds quantum interpretation.

Shared Experiences

Like most humor, the rueful elements of truth are what make PhDComics fun. I formed some of my most intense, lifelong friendships in graduate school, both with my fellow students and with faculty, especially my thesis advisor. (Yes, we called him Herb, and he was a great guy) The highs and lows, the parties, the late nights in the lab, the uncertainty and the satisfaction – they are what make research in academia a special place.

PhDComics captures all of this. It's a smash hit in the academic community, with appearances in Science, Nature and a host of other places. Here's to Jorge and continued success. (Hint, buy the books and read the strip.)

The Power of Plum Jelly

The dilapidated two story house marked the corner of two single lane roads in the Arkansas hills, and it was old and weather-beaten long before I was born. The windows stared sullenly at the sky, covered only by cheap roller shades that had never seen better days. A rusted tin roof (iron actually, but we called it tin), covered the house, hammered by the summer rains.

The old man who sat on the house's little porch was as tired and gray as the ramshackle house. He was divorced, a small scandal in the churchgoing town, and like the tin roof, he had been hammered by life's insistent pains. No family visited and no children called; he had neither telephone nor car. He looked forward to nothing. He was a patient man, though, and he sat quietly and without complaint, waiting to die.

I knew all this from observation, as I rode my bicycle along the dirt roads around his house and mine; I'd also heard the furtive whispers of divorce when my parents and grandparents talked about him. Everyone called him "Ole Man" Smith. It was such a common moniker that only later did I realize that "Ole Man" was not his first name.

The Canning Frenzy

Summer was the time for gardening and canning, for my family, like those around us, depended on home-canned food to see us through the winter. Because we were poor, we canned green beans, poke greens, peaches and corn, and we either froze juice or made jelly from blackberries, strawberries and plums. It was a frenzy of picking, cleaning, processing and storing. It was my mother's summer duty, and it was my job to help when and where I could.

During the few weeks the plums ripened, we picked them from our trees and from the ground. They were small, no bigger than the end of my thumb, struggling to grow in the rocky clay. The first time I saw plums in a city grocery store, I was stunned; they were nearly the size of tennis balls! I shook my head in wonderment at how hard my mom had worked to make jelly from those small plums. But I digress …

After pulling the stems and cutting away the bad spots with a knife, the plums are washed and then squeezed with a colander to produce the juice. After adding some sugar and pectin, the mixture was ready to pour into the Mason or Ball jars and place in the pressure cooker.

It was hot and tiring summer work. As my grandfather would say, it was "warm, powerful warm." When it's 95F in the shade, it's 110F in the kitchen, with steam escaping the pressure cooker and hot jars cooling on the windowsill. I've seen those jars explode, flinging hot peaches and syrup across room. It's not a pretty sight.

In the middle of all this, my mother looked out the kitchen window at Ole Man Smith sitting on his porch in front of the old house across the road. Without ado, she announced, "We're making plum jelly for him." And so we did.

The Gift of Jelly

A week later, I marched up to Ole Man Smith's front porch. I was holding my box of cargo carefully in both hands. I wasn't very big, it was heavy, and I knew I'd best not drop it and break the jars. "My momma asked me to bring this to you," I said. "She made it for you," I added.

I watched a panoply of expressions play across his face. First, there was the fear that I was selling plum jelly door-to-door. He fumbled with this wallet, pulling a few dog-eared one dollar bills from inside. I assured him that my momma had told me two things, very clearly. First, that I was to deliver this box of jelly jars to him. Second, and even more importantly, under no circumstances was I to accept any money from him in return.

"It's a gift from her," I added unnecessarily.

Fear was replaced by surprise that my momma had thought of him. Gratitude and appreciation soon followed. There was enough jelly to last a man all winter, perhaps even two winters.

"I reckon this will go real good with some biscuits," he said.

As he picked up the box, he turned and said, "Tell your momma, I'm much obliged." Then he did something I'd never seen him do before – he smiled.

The Lesson Learned

I walked home feeling all warm inside, knowing that even as the delivery boy I'd done a good thing. That one box of plum jelly taught me more about the power of unexpected kindness than a hundred Sunday school lessons. It really was more blessed to give than to receive.

I realized much later that she sent me as the delivery boy to save her and the old man the embarrassment of a gift offered and a gift gratefully accepted. Though she never said so, I suspect it was also so that I might be a part of the gift.

As we face difficult economic times, with people losing jobs and houses, seeing hopes dashed and dreams deferred, it's important to remember the power of simple kindness. Support your neighbor, do a good deed, help a stranger. Even the small things matter, sometimes they matter most of all.

Together, we can make a difference, and we will each be better for it. The plum jelly taught me that.