Writing, Speaking, and
Networking
William Cook
Calvin Lin
Kathryn S McKinley
The University of Texas at Austin
About Kathryn McKinley
Love math
Love boys
Love research
Love boys
Love compilers
Computer Science
UG Research Summer
Marry Scotty 1985
Compilers, Architecture
& their interactions
Asst Prof UMass 93-99
Assc Prof UMass 99-01
Assc Prof UT 01-05
Prof UT 2005-present
Cooper 1995
Dylan 1998
Wyatt 2001
TRIPS Compiler 2001-2007
Networking
Making and using
professional
connections wisely
Seeking out & developing
relationships with
people in the service of
professional goals
It take a village, and you
get to create your own
Creating your own village
All villages need elders
All villages need regular Joes
All villages need diversity
Learn different strokes from different
folks
All villages need uniformity
Similar folks have similar issues
John S. Davis, IBM, 2003
Networking is not …
A substitute for quality work
“Using” people
Networking is …
Recognizing research is a human
process
A two way street
Benefits of Networking
Makes you known
Makes your work known
Source of new research ideas
Different slant on old ideas
Feedback on your research
Letters of recommendation
Internships opportunities
Invitations to give talks
Job Interviews
Program committees, workshops, etc.
Speak
Meet people up and down the food chain
 Away at conferences
 Plan to meet known researchers in your field
read their webpage and papers
prepare questions
get an introduction or introduce yourself
share your ideas
 Enjoy meeting random people
 Meet peers
 At home
 Faculty and peers
 Visitors
 Follow up
 Have fun
Resources
CRA-W Career Mentoring Workshops, Workshop reports and
transcripts,
http://cra.org/Activities/craw/projects/mentoring/mentorWkshp
From a summer internship to a permanent position by Keith
Farkus, DEC WRL
Finding real world problems by Dirk Grunwald, U Colorado
Networking for your students by Ken Kennedy, Rice
Go outside your department by Jan Cuny, U Oregon
Developing business contacts by Maria Klawe, UBC
Networking at NSF by Caroline Wardle, NSF
Populating a start-up by Dave Ditzel, Transmeta
The ONR program director by Susan Eggers, UW
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the following for sharing their
presentations
Jan Cuny, NSF and University of Oregon
Susan Eggers, University of Washington
John Davis, IBM
Mary Jean Harrold, Georgia Tech
Who did they thank?
Susan Owicki, Joan Feigenbaum, Judy Goldsmith,
Naomi Nishimura, David Johnson, Peter Shor,
David Applegate, Richard Beigel
Now
Elevator talks
 1 minute ice breaker
 What problem I am working on
 What is interesting about it
 What I am doing
 If they are interested, i.e., ask you a
question, go in to the 3 minute version
Me
Problem
 Even after extensive testing, deployed software
unfortunately still has bugs
Approach
 Online, low cost, detection and tolerance of bugs
 Novel ideas
 piggyback on the garbage collector to analyze the heap
behavior
 dynamic slicing to detect null pointer sources
 probabilistic calling context to find anomalous calling
sequences
You
Pair up with someone at your table
Introduce yourself (networking 101 ;-)
Practice your elevator talk
 Problem & your approach
 Note: area of interest is not enough
Volunteers show us the results
Now you have your ice breaker!