Reflections Projections (stylized as Reflections|Projections and shortened to R|P) is an annual technology-related conference hosted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (also known as ACM). The conference has been held in October or November each year since 1995 and features two job fairs, numerous guest speakers from various fields in computing, technology and occasionally webcomics, as well as an AI programming competition, MechMania. One of the main goals of the event is to bring together midwestern ACM chapters. However, the event also open to students who are not members of ACM. The conference is noted for being free for general attendees and being run entirely by student volunteers. Students from a variety of schools attend the event to learn about new innovations in the CS field through various workshops and tech-talks.
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History
Reflections|Projections began as the 1995 Midwestern ACM Chapter Conference. The conference was originally held in the Digital Computer Laboratory but has since moved most of its operations to the Siebel Center for Computer Science. A job fair was incorporated into the conference in 1996. Other events that have been part of the conference have included movie showings, workshops, barbecues, as well as an evening social. Early instances of the conference included registration fees for general attendance, though the conference is now free.
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Conference Timeline
1995-2000
ACM@UIUC Reflections | Projections conference was built from the ground up in its first 5 years, brought both student and professional chapters together to contemplate where the computer industry has been and where it is going.
Speakers
Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer Inc (keynote), Tim Krauskopf, Founder of Spyglass Inc., Erich Ringewald, Vice-President of Engineering at Be Inc., maker of the BeBox., Alex Osadzinski, Vice-President of Marketing at Be Inc., Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++ (keynote)
2001-2005
Reflections | Projections continued to grow after the .com boom, in 2001 R|P featured a workshop in Perl and Windows.
Some Notable Speakers Speakers
- Fred Brooks - worked on development of IBM's System/360 computer family (keynote)
- Stephen Wolfram - CEO of Wolfram Research and chief designer of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha
- Blake Ross - co-creator of Mozilla Firefox browser
- Phil Zimmermann - creator of most used email encryption software
- Jimmy Wales - co-founder of Wikipedia
Other Speakers
John Draper, Alexy Pajitnov, Michael Hart, Ian Murdock, Marcus Brinkmann, Hal Berghel, Matt Blaze, Seth Schoen, Vernon Burton, Mike Kulas , Mark Allender, Thomas Cormen, Owen Astrachan, David Anderson, Richard Gray, Bruce Sterling, Peter Hofstee, Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka
2006-2010
Reflections | Projections expanded a lot in this time period by branching out to a wider variety of companies, many of which were new and growing rapidly at the time.
Speakers
Adrian Bowyer, Burnie Burns, Robert X. Cringely, Chris DiBona, Jawed Karim, Max Levchin, Yale Patt, Joel Spolsky, Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio, Randall Munroe, Gary McGraw, Jon Stokes, Eric Traut, Jeffrey Ullman, Steve Yegge, Al Aho, Jeff Bonwick, Scott Draves, Rands, David Roundy, Dave Thomas, William Townsend, Larry Wall, Alex Martelli, Bram Moolenaar, Raymond Chen, Ryan North, Douglas Crockford, Alexis Ohanian, Don Stewart, Tony Chang, Robert J. Lang., Jeph Jacques, George W. Hart, Aaron Swartz, Stephen Wolfram
2011-2015
This time period saw a lot of growth in the type of activities offered during the conference, and popularity of these events (most notably MechMania).
Speakers
Cliff Click, Joshua Bloch, Jon Hall, Mark Russinovich, Scott Klemmer, Mark Makdad, Douglas Hofstadter, Richard Powers, Ari Gesher, Jason Fennell, Rachael Brady, Fred Gallagher, Jay Kreibich, Ben Kamens, and Alex Bratton, Zed Shaw, Stefano Zacchiroli, Joe Lonsdale, Peter Norvig, Robin Walker, Steve LaValle , Jay "Saurik" Freeman , David Albrecht , Alex Polvi , James Whittaker , Garrett Eardley , Drew Winship , Roger Wolfson , Jeff Bezanson, Kevin Petrovic , James Portnow , Chris Grier , Kees Cook, Alan Braverman, Anna Patterson, Cassidy Williams, Craig Reynolds, Greg Bauges, Jason Tan, Jerry Talton, Katherine Scott, Michael Armbrust, Roy Bahat, Winnie Cheng, Yisong Yue, Gopal Kakivaya
MechMania
Running alongside guest speaker presentations at the conference is an artificial intelligence programming competition called MechMania. The competition typically attracts student groups from neighboring universities. MechMania is usually funded by a corporate sponsor which provides monetary prizes to the victors. During the opening ceremony of the conference, participants are presented with the rules to a game for which they must build an AI. Teams have twelve hours after this presentation to formulate a strategy and 24 hours to write and submit their solutions. Final judging for the competition has varied but usually involves a tournament bracket. Sponsors for the competition have included Google, Microsoft, O'Reilly & Associates, Amazon.com, Dropbox, Palantir, and others.
Some Notable Sponsors
- Boeing
- Intel
- Microsoft
- Motorola
- HP
- Apple
- NVIDIA
- Amazon
- Yahoo
- SpaceX
- NSA
- Salesforce
See also
- Association for Computing Machinery
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- MechMania
References
External links
- ACM@UIUC site
- Reflections|Projections conference site
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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