Howdy y’all,

The next coffee is all Spaghetti Western [1] style. Yup, we’re in for a wild ride with the sharp-shooting, fast-drawing, dirty talking, injun huntin’…. (wait for it)… Marco “Snakeeyes” Bulettzini [2].

Marco’s gonna round us up an overview of data structures and shoot through some low level functions that Git is built on. It’s all stuff you thought you could skip but turns out to be useful to live happily and peacefully back on the ranch.

Gosh Marco, using Git sure sounds like a love-hate relationship!

Bring your tin cups ‘cus this time the coffee’s ready when the horseshoe floats [3].

Giddy up! Yee-haw!
Walter Rudametkin

PS. A little somethin’ from Nico for y’all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MqTlo1laA0

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_Western
[2] http://cinemur.fr/personnes/mario-brega-32114/photos/161766-3
[3] http://www.specialty-coffee-advisor.com/cowboy-coffee.html

Update: Here’s the presentation.

Hi everybody,

Don’t miss the next DiverSE Coffee because it’s going to be *Formidable*, with a capital F!

Our recently imported genius from the Americas… wait… imported from England… no, hold on… from Ghana… hmm…. Yes, as I was saying, our only black team member—who successfully and grandiosely increased both our inner-team diversity and uniqueness in a single swipe—will be competing for the ultimate prize of Best Coffee Presenter in Hiiiistoorrryyyyy (iiiistooryyy, stoooryyy, toorryyy, yyy, y, …).

Kwaku Yeboah-Antwi, also known as Mr. Wednesday [1], is going to present his work on evolutionary computation techniques (specifically genetic programming) to automatically synthesize software applications. Kwaku will present the methodology and challenges involved in synthesizing a simple calculator, completely from scratch. I agree, this looks like the workings of a “Social Autistic Savant”, if ever an autistic savant was social. Kwaku will surely achieve his lifetime goal of producing the world’s first living ArmBird in the years to come [2].

Let’s give Kwaku a warm welcome!

Best regards,
Walter Rudametkin

PS. Double dose your coffee and brush up on your english ‘cus Kwaku ain’t gonna wait for no slow minds! [3]

[1] Kwaku means something like “Boy Born on a Wednesday” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akan_names#Day_names
[2] http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/1867808/ARMBIRDS%20/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFEoMO0pc7k

Hi Everybody,

Today’s DiverSE coffee is going to be totally frickin’ awesome… It’s demo time with Maxime!

Maxime, a.k.a Pretty Boy, is one of our smartest and hardest working engineers. In case you don’t know him, he’s timid, he’s pretty, and he’s brilliant. I’m particularly glad to see him present because Maxime is what I call a coffee-dodger: he has managed to avoid at least 3 coffee presentations in the past. But finally, he has been caught. No more escaping from the coffee gods Maxime, you must present!

Maxime has been diligently working on the Kevoree component framework and, more specifically, on the Kevoree JS project for a long time now. We all think that Javascript is a crappy language that can’t be tested or used to build complex systems (right Johann?), but Maxime is here to prove us wrong. He will show us what can and can’t be done, once and for all! Maxime will present the latest evolutions of Kevoree and the new management framework that has been written in Javascript.

Let’s all give a warm welcome to the pretty boy, Maxime Tricoire!

Best regards,
Walter Rudametkin

PS. Please note that the coffee will be extraordinarily held in the _Markov_ room.

Hi Everybody,

Today’s DiverSE coffee is special, so please behave (or you’ll scare the normal people). We have people coming to present Open Mole. The presenters might be coming from Paris, and open mole might be a genetic project to release the mole genome, or it might be a robotic swarm technology built to destroy your Grandma’s flower garden, or it might be the open-source workflow engine designed to leverage the computing power of distributed execution environments (i.e., Open MOdeL Experiment [1]).

It’s hard to be precise because André forgot to send me the summary (probably all of those beers didn’t help, right André). All I know for sure is that these are André’s friends (yes, the guy has friends… really, he does… and they actually seem smart, too!).

So let’s give a nice, warm, DiverSE welcome to whoever is coming to present.
Walter Rudametkin

PS. Maxime, be prepared, we are coming for _you_!

[1] http://www.openmole.org/

Hi Everybody,

Today’s presentation will be about variability management in metaheuristics-based algorithms, such as simulated annealing or taboo search (oh, sounds so dirty!). The presentation will be given by our newly incorporated Ph.D. student and colombian national, David Méndez-Acuña, a.k.a., the guy that is always cold.

In particular, the talk will explore the case study of a family of algorithms where the members share some commonalities and where the variability can be modeled through feature models. We will also talk about how to use these ideas for building an experimentation platform that allows algorithms to be compared each other in order to find the one offering the best results for a specific problem.

This work was funded by the University of Los Andes (in Bogotá, Colombia). The objective was to find good algorithms for solving some combinatorial problems in the context of sustainable mobility in big Latin-American cities.

Don’t forget your coffee cups and your scientific spirit.

Best regards,
Walter Rudametkin

Update: here’s David’s presentation.

Hi Everybody,

Tomorrow’s presentation will be about product comparators and configurators. Although both aim to assist customers in choosing products that meet their expectations, they function quite differently. While comparators present similarities and differences, configurators assist in gradually customizing products. The two systems have pros and cons but they both share the same variability information.

The talk will present:
- What’s a Product Comparison Matrix
- Their advantages
- And 5 open research questions on improving PCMs using variability models.

And to answer the question of who will present. Well, it’s someone you might, or might not, know. Yes, this person is so discreet that if not for the paychecks sent to his bank account, few would know of his existence. He’s so quiet that when people leave his office, they lock the door with him still inside. Mr. Incognito he has been called by the few who have actually seen him. He has somewhat of a mysterious and ghostly feel to him, so quiet it’s almost as if he lives between this dimension and the next. This person’s name is Guillaume Becan, one of our brightest and newest Ph.D students.

FYI, Guillaume will be presenting this work at VaMoS (http://vamos2014.unice.fr/), so this will be his warm-up presentation.

Let’s wish him the best,
Walter Rudametkin

Hi everyone,

We will be having our first DIVERSE-Coffee of all time today. Hooray!

The agenda is:
- Initial speech by our glorious founder and leader, Benoit Baudry, who will encourage us to fight the hordes of “ignorants” by enlightening them with our research.
- Mohamed, one of our first year Ph.D students, will be presenting his master’s degree work; valuable work that lead him into our graces and the future salvation given through the Doctorate degree.

Remember, coffees are Thursdays at 1pm, almost always in the Minquiers room.

Happy new year!

Walter Rudametkin

Hi Everybody,

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the American holiday of Thanks Giving [1] than to have a Coffee. We were worried we wouldn’t find a turkey for our Coffee, but luckily enough, we found the next best thing to a loud, abnoxious animal that runs around and nobody really understands… Thomas!

Thomas is an extremely chatty yet deeply sensitive young man with strong convictions that has but recently begun his studies towards the holy grail of education, his PhD. Thomas will be presenting his master’s degree project and will talk about mutation analyses of model transformations.

Let’s give Thomas a nice gobble [2] and welcome him to the team.

Walter Rudametkin

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qafbJkacX8E

Hi Everybody,

Today’s coffee is going to be about Git.

The Urban Dictionary defines Git as “A completely ignorant, childish person with no manners” [1], so it is no wonder that our dear Erwan is such an expert

Wait a second, I think Erwan is referring to Git [2], the decentralized version control system. All the better we have this talk since Git is a powerful and majestic tool that deserves to be used in only the most respectful manner. Just for the anecdote, after a fallout with a tool provider, Git was developed by Linus Torvalds et al. to be used for developing the most awesome operating system in the known universe, Linux! Git is now quite a success and is leading the way towards social coding with sites like Github and Bitbucket building collaborative environments around it.

I don’t want to spoil anything else, so let’s give Erwan a big hand.

Best regards,
Walter Rudametkin

[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=git
[2] http://git-scm.com/