Thanks for the comments from Derek and Bob! Here are some assumptions made when planning AGI-08:
(1) As the very first conference in the field, it should play an important role in the forming of the community, which means to let the researchers know each other. For this reason, it was decided to have a single track, rather than parallel ones; also, to let more people talk, rather than to give some speakers more time. By doing that, we paid the price of longer talks. (2) Since all the papers are on-line one month in advance, it was decided to avoid the traditional "paper reading/summarizing" talks, but ask the speakers to make short talks that go beyond the papers and make connections to other talks. Also, non-speakers were given more chances to make comments. The price paid here is "in depth" descriptions and discussions. Of course, no format is perfect, but the overall responses from the conference attendance to this experiment seems to be positive (please correct me if some of you got a different feeling when left Memphis). I'm sure the AGI-09 organizers (I'm not one of them) are listening, and will do a better job by learning from people's comments. It is nice to have the videos, audios, photos, and transcripts, but believe me, there were other nice aspects of the conference that are not captured in them. For example, the long coffee breaks allowed many interesting exchanges, plus the reception, lunch, dinner, etc. You do need to come in person to have all the fun. ;-) Pei On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 1:06 PM, Derek Zahn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Bob Mottram writes: > > > I havn't watched all of the AGI-08 videos, but of those that I have > > seen the 15 minute format left me non the wiser. With limited time I > > would have preferred longer talks with more depth but perhaps fewer in > > number, especially on the more mathematical topics. > > > Another suggestion. If there is an AGI-09 perhaps part of the > > conference could be in Second Life, allowing for longer discussion if > > needed. If you wanted to get really fancy you could set up a > > projector and incorporate speakers/questioners from within SL as part > > of the live conference. > > Interesting ideas. I'm not sure the participants would have preferred 10 > in-depth math lectures to the format actually chosen, but I agree that > explaining papers with sufficient time would be better than what was > possible to actually do. I guess the only way to achieve that is break into > parallel topic sessions... though it does seem unfortunate for a field with > "general" in its name to split up into special interests. > > The second life thing seems like a good idea, though I don't see how it > helps the time issue. Perhaps a pre-first-life or post-first-life meeting > (a couple weeks before after the conference) in second life for detailed > lectures about the papers could work, on a relaxed schedule. > > Most people (especially scientists) have some access to a video camera > these days; I wonder if a longer talk could be videotaped "at home" by the > participants and then put up on google video for later viewing at leisure, > in addition to the on-site filming. > > I don't know if it's standard practice at conferences these days to > videotape the sessions and make them available like this, but it's really > wonderful. > > Bob, if you wrote a paper for the conference about state of the art vision > or robotic systems and how they relate to AGI research, that would be very > cool I think! > > > ________________________________ > > agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
