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MS in Software Engineering, Technical Track Blog

Wondering if a Carnegie Mellon degree is right for you? Read about our students' experiences through the MS in Software Engineering, Technical Track program.

Rahul is a full-time MS Software Engineering, Technical Track student. He loves traveling, trekking, swimming and is a complete movie buff.
Anthony is a 2nd year part time student in the MS Software Engineering, Technical track program and works at OSIsoft as a Software Engineer. He loves spending time with his family, hiking, biking, gardening, cooking, and sometimes photography.
Suma is an alumna of the MS Software Engineering, Technical Track program. A Mechanical Engineering undergrad, she loves writing and is passionate about music, shopping and dogs.
Minh is a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft and alumnus of the MS Software Engineering program. He is also a Vietnamese community activist, a cat-lover and passionate fan of film music.
Nick is a Software Engineer at Google and a first-year grad student at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley. He loves hiking, gaming, and both really extremely good and extremely bad movies.

Friday, October 12, 2007

May I present to you… Scotland Yard?



Do you know those technical software engineers that are geniuses in their field, but lack every possible social or business skill? I am talking about those engineers that always know better, but just can’t explain or express themselves. Having worked in Silicon Valley for a while now, I’ve encountered my share of these guys and always find it quite shocking when they dive into a presentation without engaging the audience, providing an agenda or just even setting the stage appropriately.

Well, CMU is aware that many engineers may not have had training in these important skills, so the Carnegie Mellon West program seeks to teach a lot of soft skills that are often not necessarily related to the primary responsibilities of a software engineer. Among those skills are team-building skills, technical writing, being change agents, but an important one is of course the art of presenting effectively.

So, it’s of no coincidence that throughout the program, we are provided with ample opportunities to speak publicly. Often it’s part of the class, where we present some of our deliverables to stakeholders (aka our faculty) but also often to other classmates. I usually do one or two presentations per class, and it usually also involves remote students by use of LiveMeeting. In most of the presentations, besides getting a grade on the material we present, we are also receiving a lot of constructive feedback and critiques—both from our faculty as well as from our peers.

In addition to these class-specific presentations, each Carnegie Mellon West student must also present a topic of his/her choice during a monthly event where local students flock to campus and remote students dial-in on a conference bridge. For reasons that are still unknown to me, this monthly meet-up is referred to as Scotland Yards (the police force of greater London). I suppose it’s named this way, because it is a meeting where members of the same craft come together and share their thoughts and experience about an aspect—in our case about software engineering. I suppose it’s another name besides using the usual “Birds of a Feather” term you often see so much at technical conferences.

Anyways, during Scotland Yards, typically three or four students present for 15 minutes each on a topic of their choice in the field of Software Engineering. I really enjoy those Scotland Yards, because it’s a nice informal evening where local students come together, meet each other over pizza/sandwiches and then get a survey of what’s hot and shaking in Silicon Valley. Topics are extremely diverse, and include for instance content such as working in distributed teams, tool-assisted code reviews, technical interviews, web-deployment, Ajax, usability testing, Java unit testing tools, Adobe Flex, personal experiences with CMMI, enterprise search engines, and requirements management tools just to name a few. For me, these Scotland Yards are often an eye-opener to see what’s cooking outside of my Microsoft bubble (and to realize how much I am missing out being so focused on Microsoft technologies only).

Well, this past Monday, I had the opportunity to present my Scotland Yard about “Internet Censorship and Circumvention.” This was a topic that I have always been interested in given that my own country Vietnam heavily exercises internet censorship. So for the past weeks, I’ve researched internet circumvention techniques, found very interesting tools and techniques and presented them with my own enthusiasm, but also with much interest and participation from the audience. The hard part turned out to be managing the audience’s many questions well enough so that I won’t run over my allotted 15 minutes! Hehe, that was a fun presentation, and I am looking forward seeing the topics that my Class of 2008 peers will be rolling out this year.

posted by Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley @ 3:55 PM 

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