Wow, what a day. Actually, it started last night! Joe, Dane and I went to find an acceptable cutting tool to trim our poster. You would have thought we were getting ready to perform open heart surgery. There has never in history been so much discussion about the pros and cons of various cutting devices. Once we finally overcame that tremendous hurdle, we ventured off to the Hynes Convention Center in search of an acceptable straight edge and cutting surface. Fortunately, we succeeded at achieving these tasks much quicker. We found one of the conference rooms that had several large writing pads that fit the requirements nicely. Dane proceeded to carve away at the patient with ninja-like skills with much needed assistance from Joe. I provided emotional support and recorded images of the ordeal for archival purposes. I guess we are finally getting around to taking Marty's advice of documenting our work. With poster safely and securely prepared for display, we initiated it on the designated poster wall in accordance with all of the ritual and ceremony deserving of such a moment - along with some more archival documentation.

This afternoon, the moment we have been anxiously awaiting for over two months finally arrived - the poster presentation. All ten teams were lined up like kids at the elementary school science fair. Of course, before that, our team gathered in the Student Volunteer room to go over our game plan and get our stories straight. After all, we had to tell them three times to three different judges. So, fast forward back to the poster presentation. In the blink of an eye, there was Jon Kolko in the flesh and the competition was on - kind of. Only two of the judges were there but we started anyway. The third judge showed up shortly after we started. We went through our presentation three times, critiquing ourselves after each one and talking about what each judge commented on. All during the session, our classmates from IU came by to support us, give us a pat on the back or just a smile! It was a real morale booster to see everyone coming by. Dane was especially excited when Kate made a "surprise" visit disquised as Binaebi (well, she was wearing Binaebi's name badge). The session lasted 90 minutes but it seemed to be much shorter than that.

At 4pm all the teams gathered and apparently Jon got right down to business and announced the four teams that were going through. I could not be present for the moment because I had a student volunteer commitment at that time. My phone rang about 30 seconds after the announcement. It was Adam Williams calling to congratulate me for going through to the presentation round. Wow! A moment that I have been thinking about for a really long time just arrived. The team that I am a member of is going to be one of the final four teams to present at CHI. We are joining a very prestigous list of IU HCI/d alums that have achieved this honor. It is a rather humbling feeling and a wonderful challenge. It almost seemed surreal but it was most definitely AN experience!

I just got back from a late night meeting with Joe, Dane and Kevin Makice where we virtually tore apart every single element of our design and analyzed it with an electron microscope to determine what needs to be done to develop the most compelling design argument possible for the design we came up with. In spite of the fact that we have been working on this project for the past six months (hard to believe it has been that long!) I found myself uncovering even more new research material that further informed and inspired our design. We have a great framework for our presentation in the works and are ready to start pulling it all together tomorrow. Tons of work to do over the next two days but this is an opportunity that very few ever get to experience. We are all ready to put our absolute best into this design project and continue to push ourselves beyond where we ever dreamed or imagined we would be when we started this program last August. I am exhausted, excited, anxious, grateful and proud to be on a team and in a program that has encouraged all of us to become the designers that we are capable of becoming. Good night.

This is Jay Steele at CHI 2009 in Boston.