Winning!

 Who knew before last week that a small liberal arts focused college computer science project stood a chance against bigger universities (like Virginia Tech, Duke, Carnegie Mellon)? As the title implies, despite going to SIGCSE with little expectation other than to have fun at the poster session I had better odds than  imagined!

Firstly some action shots from the poster session:

Me with the project poster.

Two of the judges for the competition hearing my elevator pitch.

After the poster session wrapped up, semi-finalists were posted. Naturally as the title implied I didn't just pack up and go home, I made it to the semi-finals! This required a mad dash of prep work under Dr. Rivoire's supervision to organize a talk that could make or break going on to being a finalist.

Each of the 5 semi finalists had to give a talk and be ready for a Q&A session afterwards.

Giving a talk - less scary once I got started.

The judges must have seen something in the talk because I came home with this lovely third place medal and a chance to go on to the Grand Finale!

Based on the SIGCSE results, Dr. Rivoire and I are currently looking to enter this project in the CSU Student Research Competition at CSU Long Beach and continue onward in the ACM Student Research Grand Final.