Ganesh Swami

Every year about 200 engineering from western and central Canada come together for a conference known as WEC. This year the event is to be held at UBC. My team’s representing SFU in the innovative design competition.

I’ve been super-super-super busy the last few days throwing together a demo for our technology. This also includes the hours I’ve spent talking and demonstrating to potential customers the features of our product. And passing along some of my enthusiasm. What I’ve really done is setup a feedback cycle between the customers and the engineers – it’s been working great so far.

We’ve just finished the poster for the project. We brainstormed the content and the basic layout earlier today. After about seven revisions Calin did for me, I was happy with the outcome. It’s about 3am right now, and this is the earliest I’m going to bed this week.

This is easily the best part of my life — I’m enjoying every moment of it. Thinking and solving problems during the day, while in transit or while tucking yourself in bed. Innovation without constraints to hold you back.

I’ll be offline for the rest of this week.

PS: I don’t want to disclose the idea just yet because some of the folks involved in this project want to protect it.

One of the biggest advantages of being in school (while most of your friends are graduating soon) is the immense opportunity to learn at all times. The Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Science center at SFU has lined up a list of high profile speakers over the next few months.

They are: Jesper Lutzen, Efim Zelmanov, David Brillinger, Craig Evans, Herbert Wilf, John Mason, Paul Seymour, George Papanicolau, Christos H. Papadimitriou and Marsha Berger.

As always, I’ll be writing about the “take home message” from these talks. For those at SFU, these will be held in the IRMACS center as usual.

About a month back, I had written about winds that had knocked out power in my area. Well, the last two weeks have been hell for us here in Vancouver. Last week, there was heavy snowing that lead to a closure of the school. In about 45 minutes, the condition had become so bad that they had to close all roads leading to and from the mountain (SFU is atop a mountain.)

When my friend finally dropped me home later that day, the roads looked like an ice-rink. With a bunch of amateur skaters. Stalled cars, jack-knifed buses and people shoveling snow to uncover their vehicles. Funny sight. Not.

School’s closed today as well.