At the end of last month, I travelled to Baltimore to attend the annual IEEE Visualization conference (a.k.a. Visweek). As in the previous year, the conference also included a session for selected papers published in the IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications (CG&A) journal. I presented the work in my CG&A paper on "Evauating Shape Alignment via Ensemble Visualization".
This also happened to be my first Visweek conference, and I was exited to be part of it. Apart from the interesting line up of research presentations, I liked the meetups that were organized on the side; during the breaks. These were more informal gatherings to have an open discussion on specific topics (e.g. the blogging and podcasting meetup!). I thought that these were particularly helpful for the newer attendees. Another tradition I found out about, although too late for me this year, was the Velo Club de VIS; a post-vis bicycling club. I hope to be able to make it back next year and join the bike ride in Phoenix. It was also nice to see and meet researchers whom I knew from their work.
This year the conference introduced "The Test of Time awards" to recognize decades old research that have stood the test of time. It made me think of the incremental nature of research, and all the other pieces of work that are key to the conceptualization of the most successful research ideas, in the past and in the future. I also enjoyed talking to fellow student presenters on their conference experience, often eliciting interesting responses that made me smile, and think. It was a great experience overall, however one thing I'd do differently in the future would be to read the abstracts of interesting papers before landing at the conference. This blog post has turned out to be just like my trip, comprising mostly of the conference, and very little of Baltimore!
