Report on EMP Open Studio 2016

2016/05/07

EMP Open Studio 2016, which combined presentation of research results with an introduction to the Program and a briefing on admissions examinations, was held at the Empowerment Studio over the two-day period of Friday, May 6 and Saturday, May 7, 2016. Planned and managed by an organizing committee consisting of six EMP students (fifth-year students Shota Ekuni and Koichi Murata, third-year student Tadayuki Tone, and second-year students Yasunari Asakura, Koya Sato, and Karlos Ishac), this event welcomed more than 60 participants including students from the University of Tsukuba and elsewhere with an interest in the EMP Program, staff and faculty members, and members of the general public.

The briefings on the program held on both May 6 and May 7 featured an overview of the Program provided by Prof. Hiroo Iwata, EMP Program Leader, followed by a briefing on entrance examinations by Assistant Professor Masakazu Hirokawa, a member of the examination committee.

A briefing on the program

On May 7, EMP students participated in a roundtable discussion led by Tadayuki Tone on the theme of “The Actual State of the EMP Program and Empowerment Informatics as Seen by Current Students.” During this discussion, second-year students Nobumitsu Shikine and Ryo Itoigawa and fifth-year student Ryo Wako discussed their individual views on “empowerment” and the Program. More than 15 students took part in the roundtable discussion, which featured amiable discussions in a homelike atmosphere from start to finish.

The roundtable discussion

EMP Open Studio 2016 was a meeting featuring presentations of research results intended to publicize EMP activities to people both on and off campus, planned and managed mainly by EMP students. Since this was the first attempt to have students organize such a meeting on their own, the committee started out by trying to find its way around, solidifying the framework for the event by sharing ideas with each other on presentation methods befitting EMP and discussing the operation of other academic meetings for reference.

As chair of the committee, I focused mainly on management including moving discussions forward and managing the tasks of each member. I think that it proved very beneficial from a standpoint of team efficiency to adopt online tools that made possible group chatting and shared editing of documents in performing our responsibilities.

Thanks to these efforts, we were able to welcome a large number of participants on the day of the event. I hope that we will be able to put to use the knowledge gained from this year’s event to make the next one even better. Lastly, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all the people who attended the event, the instructors, administrators, and EMP students who cooperated in it, and the other members of the committee.

I was responsible for accounting and publicity for EMP Open Studio 2016. My accounting duties included selecting and ordering supplies for the event, and my publicity duties included preparing posters and a webpage. Under Mr. Ekuni’s leadership, I was able to demonstrate leadership in my own areas of responsibility, and I felt a sense of achievement when we were able to realize this event successfully. I also was happy to be able to provide EMP students with an opportunity to improve their presentation abilities, one of the educational goals of the Program. While I was unable to participate as an exhibitor this year, I would like to contribute to the event in future years as an exhibitor as well.

I was responsible for organizing the posters displayed at the EMP Open Studio as a member of the organizing committee. Students in the EMP Program submitted a very wide range of posters, which gave me a sense of the breadth of the domains covered by the Program. We displayed the posters by hanging them from ropes suspended between the beams of the ceiling. While this task required special skills that usually would involve having a specialist vendor handle it, members of the organizing committee joined together to complete it by hand. As somebody who mainly works on data analysis of the Web, I completely lacked the relevant skills, and this experience gave me a feel for the possibilities of collaboration.