1. How to make a SIGGRAPH paper while having all the fun 
Li-Yi Wei
SIGGRAPH Asia 2014

3. How to have fun

4. Do what you love
Then there can be no pain! Life is too short

5. Ask a beautiful person out
Be the best
Action
Outcome
Ask an ugly person out
Submit to XXXX …
Ask a beautiful person out
Submit to SIGGRAPH
Accepted/Succeeded  
Rejected/Failed 

6. How to make a SIGGRAPH paper while having all the fun

7. Not that hard
I am not very smart; I can do it, so can you.

8. How to make a SIGGRAPH paper
Have
ideas
Make
paper

9. How to produce ideas
Long story ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Avoid long office hours
I got ideas while doing other (fun) stuff
Hang around creative people
Fun, and productive

10. How to make the rest of the paper
Submission = paper + video
WYSIWYG - work directly on these
Manage paper via drafts
Manage video via slides

11. Paper drafts

12. We see only published papers
siga14/siggraph.pdf –r 2359

13. But not internal progress
Siga14/draft.pdf –r 2359
[colored texts are comments]

14. And discussions
[a few hundred pages like these]

15. Just write whatever Begin title + abstract with faintest idea
Introduction for basic story
Iterate everything
that you see in published papers
that you do not see
chi14/draft.pdf r 888

16. Update the draft with progress
empty figure frames
manual sketch
discussions
[about a month before deadline]

17. Visualize where you are
[about a week before deadline]

18. Why paper drafts Repository for progress
Clear visibility with low ambiguity
External RAM to increase working memory
Recall what you have done after a beer night
Communication medium
Substitute s and meetings

19. Revision control everything
SVN or GIT for source
Share with collaborators
Revert mistakes; better safe than sorry
Cloud drive for large/binary data
Experimental results
Anything not for the final paper
Did this to my Makefile
around sig01 deadline:
clean:
rm –r –f *.c

20. Automate everything One command to compile and run
Executables, results, papers, etc.
Minimize manual repetition
Long hours often caused by inefficiency

21. Use Latex, not MS Word Easier for concurrent edit and revision control
Manage multiple versions from the same source
Comments show up only in draft, not final version

22. Code
Means but not end for the product Research much more than “finish code”

23. Video slides

24. Why make a video Mandatory for animation/interaction projects
Easier to watch a video than to read a paper
5 min versus hours
People (e.g. reviewers) are busy
Help thinking and paper writing
Base for conference talk

25. Steps
Script Storyboard Detailed segments + effects Expansion for conference talk

26. Script
Express story in text + drawing Do not commit to particular media yet

27. Storyboard
Convert script into slides, e.g.

28. Detailed segments + effects
Iterative process like paper writing

29. Why slides Slides better than timeline editing
Narration vs. animation
Automate transition & animation
Save slides into video

30. Expand slides for conference talk
Video slides can be a good start for talk slides
Save a lot of redundant work
Just add more information
Algorithms, previous works, etc.
Manual control transition + effects

31. blog.liyiwei.org
Fin