SDSU: an updated invitation!

As you may know, a winter storm is ending its trip through the east coast. I got a phone call from the airline a while ago: my flight to the west coast was cancelled, and the next seat they had for me is on Sunday (at 6:30am, of course). Thus, I can't be at SDSU on the 16th, and the presentation has been canceled for this Friday.

I wish I had not had to write that, but I hope you understand I could do nothing about it. I even double checked the flights myself --- no dice. But no matter how bad things are, it is always possible to make something good out of them. Roger Whitney has been very kind, and we have rescheduled the presentation for Friday, February 23rd at 1pm in room GMCS-308.

However, I have more news. I also received a phone call from JP Morgan. Although the presentation had been formally approved before hand, their compliance department later determined that some additional process has to be completed before the presentation can be shown. The things that have to be done are quite reasonable and can be taken care of very quickly. However, a signature of a certain manager is now required. This manager is currently unable to spend time on the slides to review them. Although this is being actively followed up on, there is no firm time frame as to when all the compliance requirements will be satisfied. Thus, painfully, I have to temporarily withdraw the Kapital presentation.

Nevertheless, there is always a way to make things better. We have scheduled an alternate presentation. It is called "A Pattern of Perception", and it develops ideas I found at the 2006 Coding Contest much further. AGC will use the pattern of perception. AOStA is another example where it will come into play. I showed a beta of it in Buenos Aires last year and reception was very good, so I hope you will enjoy its first formal presentation in final form as well.

The official abstract is below. See you there!

A Pattern of Perception

The pattern describes a way to make explicit a model by which one can explain how the interaction between observers and their environments occurs. The pattern applies to a complex system, or information manifold, under observation and a player interacting with it. A game is an example of such an information manifold. A program playing the game is an example of a player. An adaptive compiler (player) observing the execution of a program (information manifold) to modify the performance of the program is another example.

Without an observer, the information manifold is nothing but a blob. The player, however, is able to make sense of that blob by following a sequential approach of perception, processing, and action. The processing is based on the individualization of distinctions that capture relevant pieces of information. These distinctions are evaluated and a strategy is applied so that the objectives can be met. As a result, the player reacts, influencing the manifold, and the cycle starts again.

The player is divided into an interface, eyes, hands and strategy. The eyes of the player discover some few relevant distinctions (the ball, other players, etc). Based on his strategy, the player selects some objectives to be met. Finally, his hands perform some action as throwing the ball in some direction, guided by the objectives.

Andres Valloud, until recently a consultant at JP Morgan in New York City and now lead Smalltalk virtual machine engineer at Cincom Systems, will describe the pattern of perception. He will also discuss a framework in Smalltalk that implements the pattern that has been used in games and an adaptive approach to garbage collection self-tuning.