MEETING-DATE:December 1, 2011 MEETING-LOCATION:DC 2303 MEETING-TIME:11:30 MEETING-CHAIR:Stephen Mann MEETING-CHAIRPIC:smann-3.jpg COFFEE-HOUR-LAST-WEEK:Phil COFFEE-HOUR-THIS-WEEK:Volunteers? (Craig's bday) COFFEE-HOUR-NEXT-WEEK:Volunteers? FORTH-DATE1:December 8, 2011 FORTH-DATE2:December 15, 2011 FORTH-DATE3:December 22, 2011 FORTH-DATE4:January 5, 2012 FORTH-LOCATION1:DC 2303 11:30 FORTH-LOCATION2:DC 1331 11:30 FORTH-LOCATION3:DC 1331 11:30 FORTH-LOCATION4:DC 1331 11:30 FORTH-CHAIR1:Simon Parent FORTH-CHAIR2:Matei Negulescu FORTH-CHAIR3:Alex Pytel FORTH-CHAIR4: FORTH-CHAIRPIC1:Simon2.png FORTH-CHAIRPIC2:matei.png FORTH-CHAIRPIC3:apytel1.jpg FORTH-CHAIRPIC4: FORTH-TP1:Philippe Lamoureux FORTH-TP2:Stephen Mann FORTH-TP3:Matei Negulescu FORTH-TP4:Simon Parent FORTH-TPPIC1:philippe-bright.jpg FORTH-TPPIC2:smann-3.jpg FORTH-TPPIC3:matei.png FORTH-TPPIC4:Simon2.png TPNAME:Ben Lafreniere TPTITLE:Understanding the Faces and Uses of Online Tutorials TPABSTRACT:Despite their prevalence, little is known about how users make use ofweb tutorials for feature-rich applications, and why authors take thetime to create them. We analyzed comments posted to web tutorials tounderstand the purposes that tutorials serve for users, and examinedthe tutorials themselves to understand their structure and forinsights into why authors create them. Our results indicate that userscome to tutorials for help performing specific tasks, but also tocheck their existing skills, learn new techniques with applications,and for the experience of following an advanced workflow step-by-stepto create a complex end result. As for tutorial authors, we found thatmost tutorials had clear extrinsic reasons for existing, includingearning ad or referral revenue, promoting premium products orservices, or acting as a portfolio for the author's skills andabilities. We suggest a number of improvements to current tutorialinterfaces based on our findings. TPPIC:ben.jpg DIONE:Lab meeting room, day, time for next term - we'll try to hold the meetings on the same day at the same time. DITWO:Agenda creation form modified.

Reminder to create minutes for the meeting. DITHREE:Old books. We moved some outdated books from the library and put them on the coffee table where we hold coffee hour. If you think they should remain in the library, please return them there. Or feel free to take any of them if you want. DIFOUR:DC 1331 is not available next week for our meeting, so we'll hold it in DC 2303. AIONE:?-mas party on December 10. Be there. AITWO: AITHREE: AIFOUR: DMONE: DMTWO: DMTHREE: DMFOUR: SEMINARS:

Tuesday, 29 November 2011, 2:00PM - Computer Science (Symbolic Computation Group), DC 1304: Michael Monagan: -- Computing Tutte Polynomials
Friday, 2 December 2011, 11:00AM - Computer Science (Symbolic Computation Group), DC 1304: Reinhold Burger: -- Closed form solutions of linear odes with elliptic function coefficients: the higher order case
Friday, 2 December 2011, 11:30AM - Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence Lab), DC 2306C(AI Lab): Marek Grzes: -- Relational Approach to Knowledge Engineering for POMDP-based Assistance Systems as a Translation of a Psychological Model
Monday, 5 December 2011, 1:30PM - Computer Science (Symbolic Computation Group), DC 1304: Soumojit Sarkit: -- Computing Popov Forms of Polynomial Matrices
Tuesday, 6 December 2011, 12:00PM - Computer Science (Institute for Quantum Computing), RAC 2009: Sev Gharibian: -- Hardness of approximation for quantum problems
Tuesday, 6 December 2011, 2:00PM - Computer Science (Bioinformatics Group), DC 2310: Xi Han: -- Effective Strategies for Improving Peptide Identification with Tandem Mass Spectrometry.
Wednesday, 7 December 2011, 10:00AM - Computer Science (Software Engineering Research Group), DC 1304: Colin Werner: -- A Case Study of a Very Large Organization