Four of my post-CHI Barcelona photos: Sagrada Família from Montjuïc, the dragon's back on the roof of Casa Batlló, the harbor in Barceloneta, and cascading ponds on Montjuïc.

Me on top of Krujë Moutain.

Albania was my 50th country.

Market and mosque, Krujë.

Performer, Albanian Night, a live show about an Albanian wedding.

Carpet weaver, Krujë.

Fortress of Krujë.

Four pictures from my recent pre-CHI visit to Albania.

Page views and other analytics mean little to me because I have nothing to sell. However, knowing the impact of this quasi-work---it resembles the faculty duty of service, but it's often deeply personal---motivates me to continue writing.

I’ve probably said something like this before, but thanks to anyone who has told me that my advice pages or my posts helped them understand academia or overcome obstacles. Several times at CHI this past week, PhD students and junior faculty whom I hadn't met before approached me to say that.

Don’t worry. There were just over 10K people in person at AAAI this year. They’ll help eat it too.

5.5K people registered for #chi2026, according to badge pickup volunteer. That’s fewer than AAAI 2026 (just over 10K) but more than SIGCSE 2026, my two conferences earlier this year.

This isn’t the longest line I’ve been in at a conference—that was the line to get into the evening reception at EMNLP 2018—but it’s the longest badge pickup line by far. #chi2026

I’m at #chi2026. Find me for conversations about my research, academia, or anything else I post about.

My lifetime total as a passenger aboard planes is roughly 593K miles during 1.3K hours. Artemis II will travel 685K miles during 218 hours. Best of luck to them.

As a cisgender male, supporting my trans and nonbinary friends and relatives on the Transgender Day of Visibility. You’re important to me and I want you to feel safe and respected being who you are.

I made more lapel pins out of my photography. These are larger, and they might be entering brooch territory. The blue one is sky in Central Colorado blended with lichen in a park in Athens, Greece. The burnt orange one is a coastal cliff blended with two rock faces in Point Lobos, California.

Every talk is also practice for the next talk. You can learn a lot of the basic skills practicing on your own, but the intermediate and advanced skills come from time in front of an audience.

At least twice in my career I’ve misspelled “research” in NSF proposals and still got funded.

IST researcher earns Best Paper Award for student mentorship framework | Penn State University Shomir Wilson, associate professor in the Penn State College of IST, received a Best Paper Award at the Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education.

www.psu.edu/news/informa...

Graph theory was one of my favorite math courses in college. That's fortunate, because I'm currently knee-deep in it. Curriculum management is a complicated activity.

A few weeks ago when the snow melted, it revealed a hockey puck abandoned in our front yard. "OFFICIAL", "CANADA", "LINDSAY" (with the shown logo), and "19" are written on the sides. Friends with hockey knowledge, what should I know about this puck?

USB thumb drives from NAACL 2010, ACL 2012, and CSCW 2013

Curios from a different time.

Need more time for a PrivateNLP submission? The deadline has been extended to March 19. sites.google.com/view/private...

My dissertation (2011) on metalanguage in natural language might qualify as an attempt at this, though machine learning was already pulling the field in a different direction.

Shomir Wilson - Where I'm From Origins, identities, and an inescapable question.

I first shared this a year ago. I wanted to write something broadly relatable, for people with lots of different identities and experiences. The stories people shared with me in return make it one of my favorite things I've written. shomir.net/where_from.h...

Reflections on 20 Years as an AI Researcher I first called myself an artificial intelligence (AI) researcher 20 years ago in 2006, when I joined my PhD advisor’s lab. Being an AI…

I wanted to write some big-picture thoughts about AI research, especially for junior researchers. Separating ourselves from the jargon, the cliches, and the false dilemmas allows us to reflect on the stunning changes we're witnessing.
medium.com/@shomir/brie...

I ask Facilities to install mounting points for frames on my office wall two at a time. Because of that, this placeholder has been hiding in plain sight among my publication awards for over a year. Today the SIGCSE Best Paper certificate replaced it.

Hat tip to @askamanager.org for writing this.

Employers: Stop Doing Surprise Phone Interviews It's rude and a bad use of everyone's time.

I hear stories about surprise phone interviews and exploding job offers from my students. Employers, if you want professionalism out of your future employees, remember the power dynamics. The responsibility to be professional starts with you. www.inc.com/alison-green...

Also: When I started writing this, I thought of it as an analytic philosophy paper and especially aligned with traditions from philosophy of language. It's a computing education paper too, but if you want evidence of the importance of the liberal arts for computing, it can be an example.

I really didn’t know what to expect when I submitted this paper. Thanks so much to the reviewers and the organizers of #sigcse2026 for supporting it.

Rethinking How We Discuss the Guidance of Student Researchers in Computing | Proceedings of the 57th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V.1

Also today at #sigcse2026: I’ll present “Rethinking How We Discuss the Guidance of Student Researchers in Computing” (which received a Best Paper Award) this afternoon in the Curriculum Changes session, 3:40pm - 5pm in Meeting Room 260-267. dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

If you’re at #sigcse2026 and want to talk about resources for new faculty in computing, come visit me at Poster #42

Thanks to @amyko.phd for an all-timer of a conference keynote on the role of love in computing education. Standing applause at the end. #sigcse2026