Summer Vacation Events | Hideyuki Tokuda (Dean of the Graduate School of Media and Governance)
2013.09.03
During the summer vacation every year, various open campus events are held for future SFC students. This year, the SFC Open Campus was held on July 31 ( http://opencampus.sfc.keio.ac.jp ), the Camp for Designing the Future on August 1 ( http://opencampus.sfc.keio.ac.jp/camp/index.html ), and the SFC Experience Tour for students from affiliated schools on August 29. Various workshops ( http://opencampus.sfc.keio.ac.jp/camp/index.html ) are held at the Camp for Designing the Future, and I visited the room just before the start of the Robotics Design Workshop. Under the guidance of Professor Takashio, with lab students acting as assistants, high school students were programming various emotional expressions that leverage the physicality of robots, under the theme of "emotional expression of, by, and for robots." It was very impressive. It reminded me of the excitement I felt when I was a student at Keio Futsubu School and participated in a computer workshop on the TOSBAC3400 using assembly language at the Faculty of Engineering, which was located in Musashi-Koganei at the time.
At the SFC Experience Tour for students from affiliated schools, we opened our research labs and had the opportunity to talk with not only students but also their parents about learning at SFC and research activities in the labs. My lab is located quite far back on campus, on the 2nd floor of the Delta Building, so I thought not many people would come to visit, but we had a great number of visitors. As someone who was also educated within Keio, I had a second-year undergraduate student who graduated from Keio Senior High School share his experiences from a student's perspective. We also held a preview screening of two projects, "EverCopter" and "FRAGWRAP," which will be presented at the Video Session II: Smart Objects ( http://www.ubicomp.org/ubicomp2013/program.php#video1 ) at UbiComp 2013 in September, and they seemed to generate a lot of interest. I hope we were able to convey the fun of practice and R&D, where you find problems on your own, think for yourself, and solve them.
Another regular event in August is the campus-wide holiday. The administrative offices and Media Center close, making it a literal holiday week. It coincides with the Obon holiday season in Japan, but I think many people at the university are not very conscious of it, as many continue their research. I myself try to plan short trips with my family, but it's often difficult, and the reality is that I can't take long vacations. Still, I have gone on trips in the past, such as climbing Mt. Fuji ( https://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/deans_diary/20090908.html ), but one of the hidden challenges is our family pet, Cookie. In our family, it's customary to take Cookie with us, so we look for pet-friendly accommodations. Even though he's a dog, he's a member of the family, and if we were to leave him at a pet hotel, he gets into a small panic out of joy at being reunited when we pick him up. It seems that among our dog-loving friends, some small dogs get sick from the stress. For this reason, for the past few years, our family trips have involved booking dog-friendly inns and traveling together with Cookie. This year, we stayed at an inn in Izu, and I acted as Cookie's swimming coach in the sea. He seemed to really enjoy being in the water and swam for a long time. When he was one or two years old, he was afraid of the sea, but now that he has learned to swim, he leisurely dog-paddles while floating.
In September, there is the international conference on ubiquitous computing, UbiComp 2013. Every year, I attend with students who present papers at the main conference and workshops, as well as those who present at demos and video sessions. If possible, I want to take as many students abroad as I can, and this is another one of the summer vacation events I participate in every year.
(Date Published: 2013/09/03)