[visitect]

Professor Jack. What a gentleman. He's a friend of my graduate lab PI and visited our scientific and information visualization-focused lab in 2008. He made the rounds, quietly and attentively listening to each of us demonstrate and discuss in-progress work. I remember expressing some frustration that academic work in sci- and infovis felt like to complete crapshoot with respect to publication in "respected" journals (e.g. IEEE Vis, SIGGRAPH). The community felt exceedingly subjective, particularly when compared to other branches of computer science. I remember he just smiled, said "May I?" reaching for the keyboard. He typed in the address for this very page. Paraphrasing him: "I sent this paper to all the typical Information Visualization conferences, and they all rejected it. All of them. So I sent it instead to the top cartographic journal in the world. It won best paper," said with a smile. This made a HUGE impression on me, and I appreciated his sincerity, humor, and general infectiously positive demeanor. More than any direct statement, this demonstrated the importance of believing in your own good ideas, even when others are quick to dismiss them. For Professor van Wijk, this was just one of countless interactions with graduate students from across the globe. But it certainly bettered me as a person, and I will never forget it. Thanks, Professor, if you're out there.