The IT Student Blog

I’ve been thinking way to long about a follow-up post on the workspace at the IT-university and been pushing it off for way to long now. Then I read this quote from 43 Folders and decided to just start! (I didn’t even finish 43′s blog post)

“Every time you sit down to write represents a new chance, and I really encourage you to make yourself see it that way. That means set aside the time (with a beginning and end, if possible), take it seriously, and, most importantly, try not to think. Thinking is not writing; thinking is thinking. Thinking does not make books.”

Unfortunately this post will not be as encouraging as the last one.

1st and 2nd year students

During the first year of the Software Engineering and Management programme there are plenty of group rooms available and when there are no on-going lectures the square is also heavily used. Since the square is dedicated to SEM 1 students only there are never any complications with colliding schedules. The latter applies also to the second year of SEM. One square, one class. The major difference is, however, that there are no more separate group available for students to use (no more in this sentence means on the 3rd floor where the SEM students reside). Instead, all group activities are forced to the square, or some other floor in the ITU building.

3rd year and master students

Are not as lucky as the 1st or 2nd year students. Instead around 50 3rd year students and another 50-60 master students share one square in which lectures are organised almost daily but rarely addressing all of the ~110 students. This is due to the change in the way the programme is organised in the later years. What’s more? No group groups.

Space addicts?

Considering there are two more floors available there should be space enough for everyone? After a quick count I’m down to two available group rooms which should be booked in advance across the two floors. Not a lot. There used to be more but these have been converted into office spaces for permanent staff and guest professors. As argued in the previous post, the squares are a phenomenal working place which stimulates creativity and enhances collaboration. But, it is not suitable for all occasions, and moreover it is frequently booked for lecture purposes.

No, these days we’re space deprived. ITU is, and has been, my workplace of choice. I want it to be that way until I graduate.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. -Winston Churchill

I believe this quote illustrates 2nd year SEM student Justin’s thoughts when he first heard about the coffee withdrawal. In my eyes he’s a faithful coffee drinker, but more importantly, he’s vary of the students well being and the university’s reputation. Over a lunch session on the 4th floor, the following scenario takes place:

If the mess in the kitchens is the real reason for the coffee removal, what if we remove all the cups in the kitchen? Another student excitingly and eager to assist in the situation consolidates with Justin. Soon, a wild lunch idea transcends into a plan of action.

The action plan roughly outlines like this:

• Inform others
• Move all cups
• Display a note

In the midst of the heat, not every student is informed (probably due to the eagerness of saving the coffee), but on the contrary every single cup, clean and dirty, is removed from the SEM kitchen. On Friday morning just before lecture time roughly 40 3rd year SEM students are somewhat upset when realising there are no more cups. Words are frown here and there, the faculty/administration mistakingly have to take a bunch of them, but all in all everyone quickly seems to adhere to the drastic change. Ironically, few students believes the chaos is caused by other students.

Revolutionary? A little. Best of all though, the SEM kitchen still shines! There is certainly a will from the students side to keep the free-coffee marketing advantage/luxury/right and this is a perfect demonstration of will. If the change persists, then I for one want to hear the bad excuses for not keeping the coffee.

A few weeks back I had the following conversation with an old classmate on Facebook about our free fuel, coffee:

E: Ursäkta?!?! Free?? Vilket uni går du på?? (Excuse me?!?! Free?? Which uni are you attending?)

Me: E, Yupp – free selecta-machine coffee! Det är nice, men som sagt… inget slår färskbryggt. (That’s nice, but ofc, nothing beats newly brewed)

E: Okej, jag sadla till IT uppenbarligen. I Örebro har de uttrycket “Ocker som i tolv spänn koppen”. (Okey, I should change to IT apparently. In Örebro we use the expression “Usury as in 12 kr per cup”)

Me: Å andra sidan kanske det inte smakar svart gift? (On the other hand, maybe it doesn’t taste like poison?)

E: Bekant med uttrycket “gratis är gott”? (Familiar with the expression “Free is good”?)

And then I realised I had just finished another conversation about how extraordinary it is to have free coffee available!

Over my two years at uni I have still to find one other university in Sweden which offers their students free coffee. Admittedly I often use it for bragging about ITU and it often feels like I’m pointing a finger in my opponents eye. While continuing to describe the luxury available to us they not too rarely end up convinced they should have gone into IT instead.

Now all this is going to go away. By 2010 there will be no more coffee advantage.

While I understand that universities should not be compared solely on their ability to provide their students with free coffee, it is one of those things that makes ITU special and somewhat geeky. By removing the coffee machines the university will loose one (out of several I hope) competitive advantages.

So what is the reason for this sudden change? Watch this:

Not a clean kitchen (by mett)

Evidently the administration/teachers/other staff, who also uses the coffee machines, are tired of finding the kitchen in this state. I admit, so am I, and many with me. So what’s stopping students (and staff?!?) to bring their own coffee machines? According to insurance (or safety) rules these are not permitted on the premises. Eventually, we’ll all have to pay for our coffee like at any other Swedish university. How boring.

Students, get your act together:

• put your cup in the washing machine after you’ve used it
• help empty a washing machine once in a while
• remind your friends to do the same

and together we can show the administration once again that ITU actually is a kind of cool place to study at.

Ps. I forgot to say thanks to those I regularly see cleaning up in the kitchen (they refers to both students and staff)

Lars Pareto eagerly examining some new piece of technology.

Actually, physically it is not that hard. Chalmers is generous enough to give us cards to enter the doors we need (most of the times). Then there’s the not-so-tangible areas which is crawling around on the Interwebs.

IT-Sektionen – http://its.ituniv.org -
To this one we all belong. Make sure to pay your union fee and the board treats everyone nicely. Also follow them on twitter @itsektionen

ITIT Students – http://www.ait.gu.se/student_pa_itit/ -
Refreshed with lots of practicalities that students ought to know about.

Systemsex – http://systemsex.net -
The students with something orange and black attached to their leg.

Camera Obsüra – http://camera.ituniv.org -
Ka pika picha? (+ spelling, my Swahili isn’t very good) They take photos.

IRC – irc.ituniv.org -
There’s always current and alumni students available to discuss even the craziest matters.

Shell – http://shell.ituniv.org -
Need a *nix shell account to deploy that latest hack of yours?

Wiki – http://wiki.ituniv.org -
Useful, and not so useful, content. Feel free to add more!

Forum – http://forum.ituniv.org -
Maybe this picks up speed again, or is forums too much 90s?

Google – http://google.se -
Also called Brain by some students.

IT-universitetet Official Website – http://www.ituniversitetet.se/ -
So far no one has been able to explain in simple terms what the IT-university really is. I bet a more comprehensive description can be found here though.

Gothenburg University – http://www.gu.se -
They have links to your grades and so on from here.

Chalmers Mail – http://www.outlook.com -
This one is new, let us know if it works please.

GU Mail – http://gmail.com -
They also sold their soul, but to Google instead.

I’m sure there are many more to be listed. Please drop a comment if you spot one which ought to be here.

Oh, and by the way, a warm welcome new students!

A Square at ITU (By McB of Camera Obscüra)

Considering my summer in terms of employment is rather patchy, I early April decided to apply for two summer courses. In case I found myself in a position of having too much free time, at least I would learn something new. Thus, off to Kalmar (on the east coast of Sweden) to take an introductory course in rhetorics. I didn’t have any expectations of facilities when I arrived but my first impression stuck with me the entire day.

So during a short break a few things struck me as I was sitting in the old dimly lit classroom waiting for the lecturer to start again – what a workplace IT-university offers in comparison! Here are five reasons why I like the workplace at ITU.

1. Everything is new
Surely, the furniture probably cost a lot of money, but there’s enough tables and chairs (of different characters) for everyone. Nothing feels rusty, smells old, or is worn.

2. Open areas
As mentioned in a previous post most curricular activities are centered around the squares. The squares are perfect for communication! It’s a place to meet, discuss, debate, lecture and work. Moreover, there’s plenty of light in the squares.

3. White-boards everywhere
When you need some group-alone time, perhaps brainstorming “the next big thing”, there’s plenty of white-boards to go around for everyone. Basically every bit of glass wall is a white-board and can be used as such!

4. Shared space
Teachers and students share kitchen, meeting rooms, and so on. At least in theory. Here’s a big room for a huge debate, I’m not going to go into the details, but I and many students with me I know, value the shared space. Let’s hope it will be this way also in the future.

5. Free coffee
Coffee fuels. And at ITU, the coffee is free. Students I meet from other universities are always shocked when I say this. “Unbelievable!”, “You’re kidding with me?”, and “Riiiiight… oh, you really mean it. Damn.” are just some of the responses I’ve heard.

My first impression of Kalmar University Collage is mundane. It works, but it doesn’t provide added value. They have a lot to learn from ITU.

What do you expect from your workplace? What does your favourite workplace look like? Let me know.

Ubuntu Linux by phylevn@flickr

The never-ending war. The free vs the proprietary. The scattered vs the one. The culture vs the company. GNU/Linux vs Windows. Hesa, one of the teachers at ITU, wrote a blog post about students preferences concerning their operating system and programming editor.

Needless to say, these are the two things which probably have caused the vast majority of all flame wars to date. The possible exception might be Nikon vs Canon. And so it was with great pleasure I read his post and quickly recalled the first few days of uni. Coming from a GNU/Linux background I found it remarkable to be the only one in my class running it. Out of a 100 people I would expect at least(!) one more to run a Linux based os. Well, except a few people who insists on running Mac!

Why I choose Linux
Personally I started using Linux on the server side sometime during 7th or 8th grade. I began tweaking with Gentoo and spent an unimaginable amount of hours on only getting the OS installed! All this happened on some old Pentium I which I had around at the time. Compiling the kernel took a mere 8 hours if I recall correctly.

Time moved on, Gentoo got replaced by FreeBSD on the server, and instead I started using Gentoo on my desktop computer. However, while not fully satisfied with all the applications I kept dual-booting for quite some time. It wasn’t until my computer got old and basically too slow for Windows that I migrated to Linux completely. There was no chance I could afford a new computer and with Linux I could get the latest software on the same hardware as before.

Today, despite having a new computer I’m still on Linux, more precisely Ubuntu, and it suits me perfectly! Maybe it isn’t faster than Windows or OSX but it works faster for me. In fact, when I’m back in Windows these days it makes me as a user feel stupid.

Making your pick
As students in IT I believe it is our job to be familiar, no I would even say be comfortable, with more than one operating system. As software engineers we should satisfy expectations of our users. We do that by understanding them.

Start a flame war with yourself! Question your choice of operating system, irrespective of whether it is Windows, Linux, OS X or some obscure dialect of Lisp. Find out what you like and be ready to motivate it. That’s what counts.

Hesa’s statistics shows that SEM students are exploring alternatives to Windows and I’m very happy to see this. It shows we’re open and ready to understand the ones we will work for!

What is the motivation behind your choice of operating system?

Ps. Just to clarify: I’ve worked with Macs too.

Once in a while I usually find myself in a discussion about productivity. The topics covered so far is broad and it is everything from that nifty python script to what kind of programming fuel you should take. Another not so uncommon discussion is about work environment.

First, let me give you a quick description of the facilities we have at the IT-university which I must say are very pleasant. The university is located in the midst of numerous respectful IT-companies (such as Ericsson, Sigma, and Findwise to name a few). Nearby are also several upper secondary schools where I think Ester Mossesson’s gymnasium is the most visited one by university students as they have a bakery with awesome “fika.” University staff, students and faculty is housed more specifically in renovated buildings originally used for building ships and today owned by Chalmers and part of Lindholmen Campus.

Cafées are perfect for reading and writing blogposts

What about the inside then? In the case of the Software Engineering and Management programme all bachelor students are found at the top floor. Each year has their own “square” and a number of group rooms to go with them. We have our own kitchen with plenty of microwave ovens for everyone and not that many forks (I’ll give you the fork-story another day). Due to the “square” idea students work in an open environment with plenty of possibilities to exchange wild ideas.

Obviously, working in open environments have both its advantages and disadvantages. It is amazing how quick ideas are shared, spread and elaborated upon when so many active brains are in the same square! Lately, however, I’ve found myself distracted by the working atmosphere all too often. It is not so much about lack of productivity, more so it is my creativity which is hampered. And for those of you who didn’t know already, programming is a lot about creativity. Thus, in my case when creativity is inflicted upon my productivity level decrease.

So I started a social experiment with myself and investigated areas where I can place my self in a “creative mode”. It turns out that environment is closely linked with what tasks at hand. Here is a list of a few tasks that I commonly do these days:

• Managing my mailbox: train or bus (I’m not used to my current mail load so it tends to get messy once in a while)

• Writing blog posts: café or other public space

• Updating the project’s Software Design Description: kitchen table

• Programming: Norton’s coffee corner (a corner of our square)

So, the open environment, the square; what happened to that? If found it to be a corner stone in my day-to-day communication. An equally important but perhaps less obvious task which doesn’t always come for free.

I wonder what it would have been like without our squares? Do have other examples of communication squares?