I’m currently at ICIP2010 in Hong Kong, which is a massive multi-track image processing conference organised by the IEEE. I think it’s one of the larger conferences I’ve ever been to – there are over a thousand people here, and at any one time there are 10 sets of paper presentations (lectures) and 10 sets of poster presentations. It’s at the Hong Kong Conference and Exhibition centre which is a humungous building built on reclaimed land to the north of Hong Kong Island. It’s supposed to look like a seabird, but I’m not so sure it manages to pull that off.
There are quite a few other things going on in the same conference centre, including a fashion conference (it is not hard to spot the difference between a computer science conference attendee and a fashion one!) and something called “REIGN OF ASSASSINS”, which is a little alarming.
My poster was on Monday afternoon: here’s a picture of me proving that a) I presented; b) I could never be mistaken for a delegate at a fashion conference; and c) I really need to get back to weightwatchers.
I’ve seen some good stuff here. Usually at computer vision conferences the best submissions get to give a lecture presentation, and the rest get posters. The organisers of this conference stated that the poster/oral-presentation distinction was not made on submission quality and I think that’s actually true. I’m not just saying this because I got a poster – I’ve seen some cracking work in the posters and some utter dross in the orals. The best thing I’ve seen so far (it’s not quite over yet – one more session to go) was the keynote on the first day, which was given by Prof. Tony Chan of Hong Kong university – a very clear and interesting talk.
The banquet is always an entertaining part of the conference experience and this one was no different. They chose to have an entertaining and utterly bizarre drum troupe, who were (unless I am seriously mistaken) actually miming, and who had all seen far too many Kate Bush videos. Big Hair! Demonstrative arm movements! They were followed by some Cantonese opera and then by another group of big-haired dancing ladies playing electric violins and an electric cello. Strange.
The food at the banquet was not to my taste. It was dominated by seafood – 5 out of 10 courses – and as I’m allergic to that, it wasn’t the best conference dinner I’d been to. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have pretended to be vegetarian…
Gosh, that fish!
Fab post, keep ’em coming
xx
the jetlag alone made me pleased not to attend. the fish confirms my decision. the vision of loveliness that is the poster presenter _just_ overcomes these compelling disadvantages.
I went to a conference in Hong Kong a few years ago. Great place. It was an INFORMS conference and they have this distinction between invited and submitted sessions. I thought that invited sessions would be good, but not so. Basically people giving maths heavy talks to a couple of people in the room that they already knew.
If you get the time I recommend trying to see the Big Buddha.
Also, avoid those Reign of Assassins folks. I got caught up with them a while back and was lucky to get out alive…
Hope you have time to see some cool sights! The fish looks very fine to me. Maybe I should go for a conference in Hong Kong.
And, Hannah, did you cut your hair?!
@Dan yes I did the big buddha on the Friday. Quite a sight!
@Sandrine yes I have had a haircut.