Every field goes through the maturation process. Multimedia academic community is going through a similar stage. Multimedia community wants to be recognized as a ‘mature’ area of computer science but wants to maintain the creativity, openness, interdisciplinary nature that is more a characteristics of young rather than a mature discipline. There was a panel on this topic. It was clear that Multimedia academic community is going through this process. Issues ranging from need for the text books to support by industry to the review process were all discussed. This two hour panel was quite engaging. Panelists debated these issues and audience participated well. See the panel here.
The highlight of the conference so far came in the evening. The banquet was arranged at the beach but in the middle of dinner, rain started – Singapore rain. The banquet had to be moved indoors. It turned out to be fun for most people. It also showed the excellence in logistics and service. Everything was moved smoothly and the function was completed indoors. In the banquet there was award ceremony also. See photos.
Through awards a community recognizes the qualities they want to see. The best paper award went to a U Mass paper (SEVA) on use of different sensors to annotate data at the acquisition time for efficient retrieval.
The conference is progressing well. It has its share of good and not so good papers. The overall trend remains positive.
ramesh – thanks for the updates – lets me keep in touch from afar!