I’m pleased to announce that I finally got my shit together and made the Spring 2020 schedule for my interview prep events and research meetings. I’ve done a little rebranding, “interview prep” is now Interview Skills, and “research meetings” are now Pickup Research. I highly recommend subscribing to the Google Calendar. (iCal Format) If you add the Google Calendar to your own, it will update if I make any changes, but do note that if you opt to do it the iCal way, it won’t, so please stay on top of the emails.

The content of all the events should be pretty familiar if you went to my events last semester, with a few changes due to feedback recieved last semester. Every Interview Skills session we will run through a topic that is often tested in technical interviews, and practice common interview problems. During Pickup Research we’ll continue the robotics projects we started last semester. When the precise topics of events are decided, they’ll get their own posts, so check back over the next few weeks.

The end goal of Pickup Research will still be to complete the robotic arm project we set out to build at the beginning of last semester. However, to make the individual events more interesting, and valuable for one-time attendees, I have decided that every weekly event will have some sort of small workshop or challenge associated with it, that will bring help us learn the skills required to make our robotic arm perform useful work. So, now, instead of each event being a largely unstructured brainstorming and working group, I will prepare content and activities for the first half of the event, and then we’ll spend the second half working on the actual research project. This means that casual attendees that are interested in the skills workshops but not the research initiative are welcome to only attend the first half of the event.

As always, anybody is welcome to drop into any of my events, regardless of experience, previous attendance, or intention to attend future events. I’ll do my best to make it clear what sort of experience is expected before events via the email list, and on this blog. If time permits, I’m also more than willing to work individually with people that want to participate in events, but aren’t quite sure if they’ve got what it takes to fully enjoy the content. Feel free to shoot me an email at research@fordhamcss.org if you have any questions, or would like advice on how you can prepare for upcoming events. Most Interview Skills events, and all Pickup Research events require at most basic knowledge of any programming language. (i.e. If you’re in CS1, or have already taken it, you’re fine.)