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This past Thursday and Friday, I presented my (in-progress) Master's thesis at Midwest Verification Day 2012 (a misnomer on two counts; a couple of students that came aren't strictly from midwest schools, and it was two days). I mostly enjoyed myself, though I regret that I was pretty unable to follow most of the other presentations. I ultimately don't actually have that much experience with formal methods; I just happen to be doing a thesis that involves ACL2.

I can definitely say that the experience was very affirming for my project and how I've elected to go about it. I got a lot of positive feedback (along with a lot of "but why didn't you do X?", but I guess that's to be expected no matter what).

I completely switched projects at some point last year, at least partially because I went through a bit of an existential crisis because my old project was too difficult to explain to my friends/family. I was afraid of becoming too entrenched in academia and of making myself and my work irrelevant to, well, 99% of the world. So I switched. I mean, there were other reasons (probably better ones, don't worry). But that was always part of it. And it actually worked out well. In a room full of people who I thought would surely look down on my more accessible, more straightforward project, I was actually met with praise and support and at least one person who expressed admiration for doing something that he didn't think he would have been able to do (specifically, my user testing method). So that's cool.

Anyway, here are my slides: