Conferences and friends

Presenting at the CCGrid QUICK workshop

This was a year filled with conferences. It was a perfect year as an extrovert. Now that I am in the season 3 of my life, meeting friends have become very rare. So, this was special. (Season 1 was when I was in Sri Lanka. Season 2 was my grad school and postdoc days - 2012 - 2023). CCGrid 2024 was remarkable. This was me attending a distributed computing conference after quite some time. It signified my return to my comfortable territories. This was also my second time in Philadelphia. But having a group of friends made this time feel more interesting. We dined with music and climbed the Rocky Steps. I walked and dined with CCGrid conference mates in Philadelphia, PA.

[SIIM CMIMI20] A DICOM Framework for Machine Learning Pipelines against Real-Time Radiology Images

Today I presented our Niffler open-source framework at SIIM CMIMI 2020 at ML Algorithms & Toolkits + Infrastructure to Support ML session. We had slightly more than 100 participants, including the 90+ attendees and 10 panelists. We had 8 minutes presentations followed by a unified Q&A session. My presentation slides are given below.

A DICOM Framework for Machine Learning Pipelines against Real-Time Radiology Images from Pradeeban Kathiravelu, Ph.D.

 
This is my virtual conference experience where I presented a paper. I have attended several virtual conferences such as KDD, EuroSys, and DisCoTec this year, thanks to COVID19 lock-down. I also presented my work at IEEE SDS this year. However, SDS was a recording. We already had pre-recorded the videos and shared. As such, CMIMI becomes my first virtual conference experience where I was also a presenter.
 

I miss attending conferences in-person. The virtual conferences do not feel the same at all. Yes, we still see the presentations. But I value that coffee-hour talks, going out with newly made friends/colleagues, finding potential collaborators, personal connections, and many more. But something is better than nothing. We could still watch and listen to the presentations and interact with the presenters. But the face-to-face communication -- I miss that. 

 

I hope we will overcome the pandemic together and be back to in-person or even better - hybrid conferences soon! KDD 2021 has planned to be hybrid, online as well as on-site in Singapore. I am optimistic! The 2 days with CMIMI were great. I wish success to everyone in their research.

Pandemic Atlanta Lockdown - Week 24

Malibu Summer Rose

I was busy with two conferences this week - SigKDD and EuroPar. That also means, my week was different from the regular.

I can remember things when I am drunk. My behavior doesn't change with alcohol. Not sure whether it is good or bad. I got only drunk twice outside my home. It is funny how these moments make a good memory.

The first time, Barcelona (2013) Bar and club crawl. Lost count of the shots. My bestie sensed I was slightly unstable, grabbed my last shot glass from my hand, spilled it to the ground in the bar, and told me, "Enough" (He was drinking as much as me - but he had a higher tolerance then).  I was waiting outside for a few minutes after I went out of the bar to vomit in the street corner. I couldn't bother to find the bathroom in the bar. My friend came outside to ask whether I am doing ok. I told him I vomited, and now I am ok. Then we (I guess, maybe 6 out of 17 - 20 of the original group that we were with) decided to go back to the hotel.

I went out and vomited instantly.

The second time was in San Francisco (2016) on a cruise in a conference dinner. We were student volunteers. The professor in charge had given us the drink tickets and said, "you can have as many you want." I drank maybe 8 or 9 drinks. Somehow my friends (the other student volunteers) lost me when the boat landed (I thought so - they later told me I left before them). I walked alone for 30 - 40 mins straight to the hotel using my memory - because I know I was too drunk to call an Uber and interact with a human. I judged that walking drunk is safer than an Uber (and a potential to vomit inside the Uber). I safely arrived at the hotel and fell asleep instantly after removing my shoes.

I don't get drunk as often. So when I do, my memories are vivid. Other times I drank outside my home, never reached that level at all. First, drinks outside are expensive (unless I buy bottles - which I sometimes did), unlike me stocking hard liquor at home and drinking. Second, we never had alcoholics in our bunch (usually international students). Most of us were doing one or more of the below: partying, trying to find relationships/romance/..., and exploring the new countries and cultures. Getting hard-core drunk was not anyone's goal. We were mild at our parties.

During the pandemic era, I got drunk home alone twice (and perhaps drunk more than what I am used to when I go out - as usually it is just one or two beer or cocktail - the cocktails outside are watered down with too much ice too). In any case, I know when I am getting drunk. So I stop before that.

Next weekend is a long weekend. I am looking forward to it.

SigKDD2020 and EuroPar2020

This week went with 2 virtual conferences - SigKDD and EuroPar. Due to their timezone differences, I was able to attend them both. EuroPar was in the morning, whereas SigKDD was in the afternoon. Consequently, I spent 7 am - 9 pm with these conferences for most of Sunday to Friday. I skipped most of the EuroPar workshops as they were 3 am - 7 am my time. However, all these videos are now in YouTube. Most of the conference videos were initially unlisted. But they will eventually be properly listed.

EuroPar used Slack and Zoom Webinar. SigKDD used Zoom webinar, Zoom meetings, Whova, and VFairs. There were 'introduction" threads on Slack and Whova where we all introduced ourselves. I was attending as an audience. I did not present a paper. Especially those who presented papers received a considerable interaction (Q&A and suggestions) through these channels.

Prof. Manuela M Veloso presenting her robots and AI for financial services. My most favorite session at the #KDD2020 so far!

This week, attending sessions from both #EuroPar2020 and@kdd_news.

Also nice to see papers from my colleagues from @InescID and @KAUST_News at #EuroPar. pic.twitter.com/HzX3OBUNGm

— Pradeeban (@pradeeban) August 27, 2020

Online conferences have a long way to go before they can reach their expected heights though. For instance, many times there were problems with the audio or screensharing during the conference. There was a racist sexist zoombomber once during the KDD session. There was a token registration fee from KDD and the event was free to attend for EuroPar. I believe, ideally the virtual conferences should be free for audience. You may charge the authors for the publication fee, of course. Also, I think, the zoom meetings should be configured *not* to enable everyone's cam and mic by default, especially in a large-scale event such as SigKDD. Every time someone joined we heard some disturbances in zoom meetings.

SIGKDD 2021 Goes Hybrid!

SIGKDD2021 aims to be a hybrid conference, with on-site event in Singapore with online streaming with the same or similar apps for those who cannot travel to Singapore. These are all assuming everything goes well with the COVID-19 situation, of course. Indeed, a virtual conference will never come close to the feeling of an in-person conference. But in 2015, when I had a workshop paper in SIGKDD. However, my Australian visa got delayed and I couldn't participate - my friend who lives in Sydney presented the paper on behalf of me. As such, a hybrid conference can bring the best of the both worlds. Who can afford to and like to present their paper in-person can fly to the conference on-site, whereas others can present online. This is better than a random colleague presenting the paper on-behalf of the authors and suffering to answer the questions. This will also encourage researchers to conferences regardless of the location. Often, we are forced to choose conferences in proximity, due to visa, funding limitations, and travel restrictions.

#KDD2021 goes hybrid: a combination of onsite (Singapore) and online conference.

Challenging, yet interesting, times ahead.

Finally @kdd_news #KDD2020 comes to an end. pic.twitter.com/hWTEcGlNzn

— Pradeeban (@pradeeban) August 28, 2020

EuroPar 2021 Goes Lisboa!

EuroPar2021 will be in Lisboa, organized by Tecnico-ULisboa (my university) and INESC-ID Lisboa (my research lab). I am so tempted to submit my paper, hoping the travel restrictions and COVID-19 will be history by then.

Bonus points on why one must submit their paper to #EuroPar2021 - It is organized by my university @istecnico and research lab @InescID in #Lisboa.#EuroPar2020 comes to an end! See you next year, #EuroPar. #Lisbon #Portugal. https://t.co/RacPXPUT2H

— Pradeeban (@pradeeban) August 28, 2020

EuroPar 2020

Joining the EuroPar sessions remotely

EuroPar is a top conference in parallel and distributed processing. As such, it contains topics that are directly relevant to me from my MSc/PhD days. There were so many interesting papers. 

I attended the below sessions in full or in part.
1) Cluster, Cloud and Edge Computing
2) Scheduling and Load Balancing
3) Best Paper and Best Artifact
4) Data Management, Analytics and Machine Learning
5) Parallel and Distributed Programming, Interfaces, and Languag
6) Theory and Algorithms for Parallel and Distributed Processing
7) Keynotes

KDD 2020

The papers in KDD used to focus on data mining and patter recognition more years ago. Now, everything has turned to deep learning. Especially, this year, with the COVID19, there were more sessions focused on COVID-19. Even some presentations that are not really related to COVID-19, made some reference to COVID-19. That is the impact of COVID-19 on the world.

 

Interestingly, one conference organizer mentioned how there were more participants in all the sessions that had "deep learning" in their names, whether workshops, tutorials, or the main sessions. Listed below, are a subset of the sessions that I attended:

1) Learning with Small Data
2) Fairness in ML for Healthcare
3) KDD 2020 Opening Ceremony and Keynote Address
4) Hands On Tutorials: Put Deep Learning to work: Accelerate Deep Learning through AWS EC2 and ML Services
5) KDD 2020 Opening Ceremony and Keynote Address
6) Research Track Oral Presentations: Parallel and Distributed Learning and System
7) Late-breaking Session: Emerging Data Science Problems in the Age of COVID-19
8) [DSHealth] 2020 KDD workshop on Applied data science in Healthcare: Trustable and Actionable AI for Healthcare
9) Research Track Oral Presentations: Big Data and Large Scale Methods
10) Plenary Session: Diversity & Inclusion Closing Remarks by Latifa Jackson
11) KDD 2020 Closing Ceremony - Keynote Address by Allesssandro Vespignani and Closing Remarks

Remote conferences - Conferences during the COVID19 Era

Lisboa, 2013 NY, and my Zoom background

COVID19 has made the conferences go remote. Some conferences, such as SDS 2020, were postponed in the hope that COVID19 will end soon. But eventually, COVID19 became a deadly pandemic that no conference could survive. Some conferences, such as DisCoTec 2020 became free to attend for any participants while charging the authors a negligible fee. Other conferences offered discounted rates, such as 50%. For those who have already paid the full registration fees, refunds for the overpayment were issued.

DisCoTec used the Zoom webinar for the conference. Unlike a Zoom meeting that lets you see and listen to every participant, Zoom webinar gives a monologue-kind of environment. Most, if not all, presenters had recorded their presentation as videos. It is similar to the SDS 2020 presentation that I am supposed to give by the end of June. We all have recorded PowerPoint presentations with our voice over and uploaded them as videos for the conference. DisCoTec had a similar approach, with the videos uploaded to YouTube, unlisted. I mostly attended the tutorials (Monday), and DAIS sessions (Tuesday - Thursday). I skipped the workshops (Friday).

There are several advantages in conferences going remote. First, remote online conferences let us continue conferences as usual, without giving up. Now the options are: remote conferences or postpone or cancel the conference. With the pandemic still going strong, postponing does not seem to work. That leaves us with either no conference for 2020 or a remote conference. Something is better than nothing! So remote conferences, it is. Second, they open up the conferences to a wider community - those who couldn't travel to conferences due to funding and visa limitations. Now, with less funding, we could join more conferences. OK, these advantages are quite obvious.

Now, let's look into the shortcomings of a remote conference, done in the DisCoTec way.

1. No scientific interaction between participants

Following the recorded presentations, there were live Q&A sessions that lasted up to 5 minutes. But, mostly, it was just listening to recordings. With time, I am sure the conference will list those uploads, making it possible for everyone to go and watch them on YouTube, on-demand. To incentivize attending to the conference session remotely, conferences must put additional efforts, beyond the Q&A. Otherwise, I may just watch them at leisure, and send my questions as emails to the authors.

Of course, the conference organizers created a slack channel (on Tuesday) for questions and answers from the sessions. Each conference session had its room. DisCoTec is an umbrella event with a parallel conference (including DAIS) and workshop sessions. So it had several rooms in the Slack channel with one general channel. 

2. No coffee-hour friendships and networking

One thing I usually love about conferences is the coffee hour discussions. We meet the presenter and ask questions or compliment their work. I am an extrovert when it comes to conferences. I roam around with a cup of coffee during the coffee breaks. I go and introduce myself to any lone participant and discuss their work. Penetrating an already existing group is harder. Sometimes, participants from the same university, company, or friends from the same country make a group and stick to each other. I always avoid that. Such groups usually appear less open to make new friends. On the other hand, I have always made friends with diverse groups that were formed on the spot. I have made groups at conferences, by joining several participants over the coffee hours. Then we all go for dinner or sightseeing together. The best of the conferences, indeed!

3. Less opportunity to find long-term collaborators

Conferences are an excellent opportunity to find long-term collaborators and even employers! During IC2E/SDS conference, I met my supervisor from Croatia for the first time. She had attended my presentation and found that her research aligned with my on-going Ph.D. research (which was still in its infancy). That's how I ended up in Croatia, spending a summer in a short-term scientific mission (STSM)! That STSM contributed to the core of my Ph.D. research. Such fruitful interactions won't happen easily in online conferences. At least not in this format. I tried to interact with participants on Twitter via the hashtags. But not much luck except for some minor chats. The potential to meet collaborators is highly limited in remote conferences such as this and almost non-existent for the audience. I hope that at least presenters got some visibility and interaction beyond the Q&A. Communications with potential future collaborators are the key motivation for conferences. Otherwise, I would rather publish my work in a journal instead. In fact, journals are even valued highly in academia. So there must be more incentives to submit and present our papers in conferences when the advantage of meeting researchers physically is no more.

4. Timezone differences

The timezone difference is the biggest challenge, even for an introvert who doesn't like to network with random researchers. The conference was in Malta timezone, as it was originally scheduled to be in Malta. So for the 10:00 - 18:30 sessions, I had to wake up early in the morning, as it is 4:00 - 12:30 in Atlanta time. I was planning to sleep early and wake up early. But I also had other work meetings, and I could not escape my work duties for the week. Hence, I ended up having to spend most of the week without proper sleep. I went to bed at regular times and woke up as early as 4 a.m. Given a chance, I would go to bed earlier and adjust my timing to the conference timezone, including the meal hours. That would have made me virtually travel to Malta!

Although when we travel to conferences, I still end up with little sleep - as I have to prepare my presentations and try to find some time to explore the city. I am used to timezone shifts. But the last week was like double work since I had the conference sessions followed by my regular work hours. If the conference sessions were held at Atlanta time, of course, I would have to sacrifice one of the two - either the work for the week or the conference.

Can we do better?

Yes. My university in Portugal (IST/Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa) is hosting remote seminars on Mathematics, Physics & Machine Learning weekly. I joined the session on "Learning from Distributed Datasets: An introduction with two examples" last week. It was interactive. The session was hosted in a Zoom meeting. So the participants were able to see each other and even interact with the presenters before the event. It was nice to introduce myself to my ex-colleagues remotely. It was my first IST seminar after two years. Also, it is my first remote IST seminar ever. These online open seminars are one good thing that happened out of the pandemic. The recordings are, of course, available to watch later.

So in my opinion, such Zoom meetings that allow the participants to see and interact with each other before the sessions and during the "virtual coffee breaks" is a better option. Of course, zoombombing will be an issue. Password-protected conference zoom meetings can fix that.

The current move towards online conferences to combat COVID-19 travel limitations is a welcome move. However, it is not sure how long this will last. It will depend on the COVID-19 as well as the associated travel restrictions. The conference committees should take extra measures to make the conferences more interactive, to encourage communications between the participants and networking, rather than merely playing the recorded videos followed by a customary Q&A. This is new to all of us. So, of course, this is going to take a lot of iterations. Moreover, I empathize with all the conference organizers. They all have made tremendous efforts to organize the conferences physically. But they had to cancel their plans and again prepare for the online conferences.

Now CoopIS 2020 has gone online. It is one of the conferences I have presented in the past (I had papers there in 2015 and 2016). I am looking forward to attending more remote conferences whenever the topic is relevant to me, as long as the registration is free for the participants. I am yet not sure whether paying the registration fee is justified for a remote session, unless my paper is published in the conference.

The Conference Survival Guide

SoCPar 2010, Paris

I enjoy attending conferences. I never attended a conference when I did not have something to present. This is usually because of the funding, as it is unlikely for me to get funded to a conference when I am not presenting my work. So far, WWW2011 is the only conference that I attended without having a paper to present. Conferences help me fine tune my research, make new friends and build a network. I still vividly recall my first conference, SoCPaR 2010. I was presenting our paper, and luckily for me, I had 3 of my best friends with me. I was not alone. We all were co-authors of the paper, a team effort during our BSc times. I recall presenting the paper confidently and discussing with other researchers. Prof. Ajith Abraham of MIRLABS, who was organizing the conference remarked that he remembered us, a 4-member team arriving in Paris all the way from Sri Lanka to present our paper. It was a nice experience to travel to Paris, my first overseas trip. It was a cold winter, full of snow. The conference was held in Université de Cergy-Pontoise. I met two researchers from the same university in latter conferences, bringing back memories from 2010. 

Be prepared for the delayed luggage

Interestingly, the second conference I presented my paper was again in Paris in 2014. This time, it was MASCOTS, and this was the first paper of my MSc, and also the first paper as the first author. The other conference as part of my MSc research was UCC'14 in London. I met my friend there after a long time, and we had some good chat!

I love visiting different countries and various cities. Attending conferences also offers this opportunity. Moreover, the conferences immediately give you some partners to travel with. You meet some random researchers and make friends with them - because of the shared research interest (or purely because you are from the same university, country, or have something in common other than the research interest). For the rest of the conference, you can explore the city with them.

I try my best to attend all the sessions at the conferences. However, sometimes it is inevitable that I miss one session. Especially the earliest one on the day following my presentation. This is because sometimes I feel tired after the long presentation and its preparations and oversleep the following day. I also enjoy the coffee breaks, lunch times, and the gala dinner. The ideal time to make friends. You are lucky if your presentation comes on the first day. You can relax and enjoy the remaining talks/sessions without having to check your presentation once in a while.

I have attended several conferences during my Ph.D. As a result, I have traveled to several cities: Tempe, AZ, USA (IC2E'15); Berlin, Germany (IC2E'16); San Francisco, CA, USA (AMIA'16 and ICWS'16); Rhodes, Greece (CoopIS'16); Valencia, Spain (SDS'17); Munich, Germany (VLDB'17); Barcelona, Spain (SDS'18); and Zurich, Switzerland (Networking'18). Sometimes, I have one or two additional days following a conference. I use these days to travel to a near-by country or a city.

IFIP Networking'18 is my last conference as a Ph.D. student. It was also my best conference experience so far. I thoroughly enjoyed and actively participated in IFIP where I presented my paper, NetUber. I attended all the sessions. Conferences make me happy. And caffeine helps me remain super-active throughout the whole day of sessions, followed by evening and nightly walks. An overdose of caffeine made me super-active throughout the IFIP sessions. However, after I returned from the conference I became a zombie, with the withdrawal symptoms. :D

Conferences always leave me with good memories - no exceptions so far. They give me more knowledge, and also other experiences with travels. I thank all the conference organizers and volunteers who make sure that we all have good experience attending the conference.