Full house at Entretiens Jacques Cartier symposiums
Graduate students who attended symposiums, held at Concordia as part of the 24th edition of the Entretiens Jacques Cartier, praised the events for the quality of its speakers, the chance to make connections and the opportunities for knowledge-sharing.
The Entretiens Jacques Cartier, held from September 29 to October 7 in Montreal, Quebec City and Ottawa, brings together researchers and industry leaders preoccupied with contemporary issues under the broad themes of economic, socio-political, scientific and cultural challenges.
Elian Angius, a graduate student in software engineering, attended the Concordia-hosted colloquium on October 2 and 3, entitled Information and Communication Technologies: Are They Green? “I’m interested in green energy, especially for software,” said Angius, who hopes to one day apply some of the techniques used to make technology more efficient in the development of his own data mining software.
He said one of the most interesting things he learned at the conference was about the so-called rebound effect, defined as behavioural or systemic responses to the introduction of new technologies designed to reduce resource use. For example, people may think sending virtual invoices rather than paper ones reduces energy consumption, but when they are printed anyway, it offsets the environmental benefits.
“People say, ‘let’s change technology because it’s good,’ but sometimes it turns out not to be good. That’s something I wasn’t really aware of,” said Angius. He also added that the conference made him realize that people need to give some thought to the environmental impacts of information and communications technology.
“Most people see the internet as an icon on their computer. But they don’t know that there are all these machines, all these routers, and this entire infrastructure running in the background. They don’t realize that these data centres are running all the time to make it all happen,” he explained.
Professor Brigitte Jaumard from Concordia’s Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering was one of the colloquium’s organizers. She said the event was very well received. “We covered all the aspects of green information and communication technologies (ICTs), from equipment to social impacts,” she said. “I really think all the participants were happy, because they are working in one area, and usually they don’t get a chance to examine the whole picture of what it means to have green ICTs.”
Jaumard echoed the conclusions made by Angius following the symposium: that people need to think about the growing impact of ICTs they use every day. “People are usually not aware of what it means in terms of health issues, and pollution,” she said, adding she hopes students came away from the conference with new ideas for research. “It’s a hot topic, and students who are studying it today will have to work on it tomorrow.”
Stories in digital games
Though attendance was very high for all three of the symposiums held at Concordia, the symposium entitled Experiencing Stories with/in Digital Game drew the largest crowd. “We had to cut off registration!” exclaimed professor Lynn Hughes, Concordia University Research Chair in Interactive Design and Games Innovation, who helped organize the symposium.
The attendees, who numbered over 300, were also much younger than most of the visitors to the 24th edition of the Entretiens Jacques Cartier, a fact that excited the organizers. “They were very pleased with us, and they want us to do the same thing next year in France,” Hughes said.
The symposium’s four panels were each organized around a different video game, a format that, Hughes said, worked very well. “You had one triple-A industry game, and then one game produced by a smaller company. So you had this contrast in the morning and the afternoon in terms of how people were looking at the games and talking about them,” she said.
The highlight of the symposium for Carolyn Jong, a master’s student in media studies at Concordia, was the discussion about the game The Graveyard, created by Tale of Tales, an independent game studio in Belgium. Two of the game’s creators, Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, participated in the panel. “They are really pushing the boundaries in terms of how we think about and define videogames,” she said. “Their approach to games as an artistic medium was refreshing and provided an interesting counterpoint to the industry model.”
The second day of the colloquium featured round-table discussions, where graduate students like Jong were able to share their research with industry professionals. “I was able to get a lot of feedback on my own project, as well as discover what some of my peers are up to,” she said. “Listening to the various presenters debate the finer points of narrative, meaning, character, agency, et cetera, was great, and I’m still trying to process everything I took in.”
Cyber crime
The final symposium held at Concordia was entitled IT Security, Cyber Forensics and Combating Cyber Crime. The Concordia graduate students in attendance heard from inspiring speakers and came away with new ideas about how to apply their new knowledge to their research, and later when they head into the job market.
One of the highlights for graduate student Pengsu Cheng was the talk by professor Engin Kirda from Northeastern University entitled, (Reverse) Social Engineering Attacks in Social Networks. “I didn’t realize that for them, it’s very hard to do research because of all the privacy issues. You are bound to touch upon some law or other,” Cheng said.
Cheng just completed his master’s thesis under the tutelage of professor Lingyu Wang from the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering. His thesis was part of Wang’s larger project to create a metric for measuring network security. Wang presented his work during the symposium.
Cheng said he was impressed by the scope of research presented during the symposium. “Seeing other people’s research definitely gives you new insight,” he said. The symposium was also a good chance for him to make connections with industry professionals who may be hiring.
“I spoke with one lady this afternoon. I think she works in risk management,” Cheng said. “She told me that in their work they don’t necessarily want a numerical score [for network security] but they want to be able to translate the risk of the network into business language — maybe what percentage of customers you might lose over time.”
Graduate student, Andre Michescu said he was most impressed by two talks on the legal aspects of cyber policing by lawyers Jean-C Hébert from Quebec and Raphaël Peuchot from France. “Any project you have in this field carries a legal risk,” said Michescu. “You risk being a criminal because you’ll touch sensitive information, or you’re attempting to exploit a vulnerability for a research perspective.”
Michescu said he is interested to see whether the new interest in cyber security among the research community translates into more security experts emerging from the legal community. “Studying security is a new trend in information technology,” he said. “The question is, will we start seeing more lawyers who are specializing in this area? If we start working in the private sector, not for the government, will we have good lawyers to back us up in our jobs?”
Next year, the Entretiens Jacques Cartier will travel back to France for its 25th edition, and Concordia’s researchers are already being encouraged to either help organize symposiums or participate as speakers. For now, though, they’re simply enjoying the feeling of having pulled off this year’s edition after a lot of hard work.
“It was a success beyond our expectations,” Hughes said. “One of the key people suggested we do it next year, and we just looked in horror at them!” Luckily for Hughes and her team at Concordia, the French contingent has said they’re happy to take the reins for next year.
Jaumard said the organizers are also keen on revisiting the discussions around ICTs and their environmental impact at next year’s edition of the Entretiens Jacques Cartier. “For sure it’s a lot of work, she said. “But the reward is that you learn a lot and you make a lot of contacts. And for the students it provides a lot of interesting new ideas for research.”
Related links:
• Watch videos from the event
• Entretiens Jacques Cartier