Our community (academic multimedia community) is really going thru its ‘teenage’ years and is looking for its identity. Today’s panel on Foundational issues was another example of that. In this panel, most questions were based on the feeling that we need to find our intellectual identity. In this process, ideas from fields ranging from computer vision to neuro-sciences and philosophy were brought in as relevant and something that we should explore to find our identity. This is sign that we feel that we are still not ‘mature’. It is a good sign that people are interested in developing fundational issues. On the other hand, eagerness to identify with intellectual issues in multiple disciplines is also the sign of confusion and insecurity. As teenage years pass in case of human life, so does this period in the life of a discipline. It is indeed interesting to see this stage. I witnessed it in Graphics and computer vision.
The main conference is now over. It was indeed impressive to see how smoothly all the logistics proceeded. Having the conference at a hotel where all the facilities were on the same floor and all facilities were manged efficiently does make things easier for people to explore.
I liked the participation of artists. It is nice to see their perspective and creative utilization of ideas that are being developed by technical community. Having the art exhibits at a different place is a bit of a problem, however. Most technical people do not take get to see this. I am also one of those who wanted to go but could not due to the distance (really time ) involved.
The only thing remaining now is the day of Workshops. There are many interesting workshops.
I will continue putting photos on my flickr site.