Lebeko Poulo 's Space - Academic and Personal!

On the 11th October 2009, our Digital Libraries Research Group flew to Gauteng for the SAICSIT 2009 Conference. SAICSIT is the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists, and there is a conference running in October of every year. This year I was lucky to be there and witness things myself. That doesn't make me just a spectator though! I presented my work in progress for my Masters to my peers on the 12th October, which was the first day of the conference. Thereafter, I had the honour to attend the presentations in the main SAICSIT conference. It was quite a nerve-wrecking experience indeed. There was positive feedback from the attendees although it culminated in an idiot throwing stupid questions which were way off my research topic! I took a while trying to get him to the theme of my research, but in vain! The worst was him referring to a "layman", at a conference attended by Computer Scientists and Information Technologist! how fun

Today, I turned 27. wow, I have been looking forward to this day. I am feeling great! and I can't wait for the dinner with the most awesome guy Steve McDermott and his friend Jullie. I am also humbled by the amazing wall posts on facebook, messages on facebook, phone calls, SMSes, you name them..... from my friends! Thank you so much guys! I love you all. :)

Yesterday, I did my presentation of the paper Preserving Endangered Languages using a Layered Web-based Archive, which was co-authored with Gina Paihama, Morwan Mohamed Nour and of course the great Dr Hussein Suleman. It was my first paper to get published and of course my first presentation at a conference. What an amazing experience it was. And once again, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my research group,  Digital Libraries Laboratory of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cape Town, for all their useful feedback during my dry run and for all the support they gave me to do this right. My presentation was indeed excellent, and I am proud to say that. I hope to be in SAICSIT on the 12th October 2009, should everything go well. A little bit of fun for the rest of the day in Port Elizabeth and of course back to Cape Town tomorrow. :-)

Yesterday I did my dry run for the ZA WWW Applications Conference 2009. I didn't do too bad after all. So I will be presenting my first paper at a conference and yes! "For the first time"!!! Well myself, Gina ( MSc student), Marwan ( MSc student) and Hussein (our supervisor) wrote a paper based on our honours project  titled " Wordbank - A Language Preservation Portal" **sigh**, YES its got some memories, if you know what I mean. Anyway the paper itself was titled "Preserving Endangered Languages Using a Layered Web-based Archive", gosh what a long name! So I hope all will go well in Port Elizabeth next week when I do my presentation on Thursday.... wish me luck.... ;-) Right now, I am invigilating a first year class (CSC1016S) writing their Practical Test on "recursion in Java", poor things, I hope they all get a 100% because this is their last chance. :-)

Today I am running around like a headless chicken putting up my MSc proposal presentation together. I have a dry run at 3pm tomorrow. The actual presentation is coming on Thursday, 20 th August 2009. I have one of those stage frights and I hope to be OK this time, OR rather I can't wait for all of this to come and go. :-) So I really need someone to wish me luck on this one.

hi all, First of all thank you for taking your time to read my blog. Lebeko Poulo is the 6 th in a family of 8. Yes, I come from a very big family but I love it. There is so much to learn in such a family and believe it or not, you really get educated. Anyway...... my parents, Mr. Taelo Poulo (deceased, may his soul rest in peace) and Mrs. Mmakutloano Poulo (nee Falatsa) , were born and bred in one of the smallest villages of Morataleng and Ha Falatsa respectively, in Southern Lesotho. I have been unique in several ways in my family. I have always loved my siblings (despite those trying times when you feel like "shooting them") and I have always been a school enthusiast even though my family hardly ever studied, but many thanks to them for all the support. I was born and grew up partly around my parents' home and most of my life away from home..... Being from a small village, I could ONLY go as far as Grade 5 and then had to leave for another school in the town