My first in-person conference experience! CVPR 2022
Hi there,
Sorry, this post is a bit of an anomaly compared to my other recent blogs. I am going to share my first in-person conference experience. I attended CVPR in New Orleans last week, and it was fun!
Instead of writing long-ass paragraphs about my experience, I will just split my experience into 4 segments with bullet points.
What I liked:
- Man, there was a lot of energy and excitement all around. Seeing other people excited makes me more excited.
- There is a little bit of something for everyone. If you work in a niche field, bam, there’s a workshop, if you are interested in learning some new techniques, bam! there’s a tutorial. You will not get bored, and you can spend 8–5 at the convention center.
- People are nice in general and they are open to talking. Unless you want to meet some super busy hot-shot prof, you can reach out to a researcher and they are generally down to meet you.
- You will get a quick overview of what’s happening in the field. I absorbed more information in this conference than I ever did in virtual conferences in the last 2 years.
- You can make friends in other universities. I was contacted on Twitter (Thanks Vikram if you are reading this) to have lunch together, and I ended up meeting the whole gang and I met folks from CMU, MILA, MIT, and so on. All of them work in diverse fields and it was a lot of fun talking to them.
What I did not like so much:
- Food. :| I wish the conference food was a bit better. As a vegetarian who does not eat mushrooms, it was a bit hard for me.
- Coffee. There are only fixed times where we can get coffee, and it sucked. I wish conference organizers made sure there is coffee all the time.
- A lot of interesting workshops/oral sessions were happening at the same time. So it was a bit hard to decide on which one to go to.
- Meeting people and also attending talks is a bit exhausting. I tried to do both this time, but next time I’ll plan better.
- Special 2022 entry — Covid & Masks
Things I wish there were more of:
- There was a student mentorship session that happened and it had very few spots, I wish there are more interactive sessions like that.
- At the end of Day 2, after NeRF workshop, a bunch of people spontaneously walked to the Marriot bar next door and did an informal gathering of sorts. I met a lot of interesting people there. I just happened to be at the right place. I wish conferences organize such after-hour informal meetings where we can just chat and meet people.
- Have all workshops, and tutorials recorded and share them later.
Takeaways for the next conference:
- Do not carry your laptop/other electronics if you are not going to use them. I carried them every day thinking I will need them, but I did not, and it unnecessarily exhausted me.
- Make a list of sessions you want to attend before the conference or at least make a rough plan.
- Do not be too aggressive with the plan, don’t fill up all 8–5 slots with something. Talking to people/Learning new things is exhausting.
- Make a list of people you want to meet and message them before the conference and schedule the meetings.
- The strategy of twos: This is a good one. I realized I am best at socializing if I have a friend around. So if you are on a mission to socialize, going with one friend might work out better than going alone.
- Don’t have lunch with friends. Instead, sit at a random table. I met some awesome folks that way.
- Have some fruit/energy bar on you at all times.
Overall, I had a lot of fun. And I am looking forward to going to more in-person conferences in the future. :)
I hope you found this blog post helpful. If you have any tricks to optimize attending a conference, please drop them in the comments. I will add them to the post and attribute them to you. :)
Thank you Kamal Gupta for contributing some of the points, and proofreading the post.
Cheers, G 💯.