Daily Archives: December 4, 2013

GlobalSIP 2014 : the format

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I’m in Austin right now for the first GlobalSIP conference. The conference has a decentralized organization, with semi-independent day-long workshops (“symposia”) scheduled in parallel with each other. There are 8 of these, with 6 running in parallel per day, with 1 session of “plenary” talks and 2 poster sessions. Each workshop is scheduled in AAB, ABA, or BAA, where A = posters and B = plenary, so there are 2 talk sessions and 4 poster sessions running in parallel.

Fortunately, there are a wide range of topics covered in the workshops, from biology to controlled sensing, to financial signal processing. The downside is that the actual papers in each workshop often fit well with other workshops. For example, the distributed optimization posters (in which I am interested), were sprinkled all over the place. This probably has a lot to do with the decentralized effects.

In terms of the “results” at the conference, it seems from my cursory view that many people are presenting “extra” results from other conference papers, or preliminary work for future papers. This actually works well in the poster format: for the former, the poster contains a lot of information about the “main result” as well, and for the latter, the poster is an invitation to think about future work. In general I’m a little ambivalent about posters, but if you’re going to have to do ’em, a conference like this may be a better way to do it.

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MIT Mystery Hunt Registration Now Open

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Hi there, puzzle hunters!

We’re pleased to announce the 2014 Mystery Hunt! This year’s Hunt will begin at 12pm on Friday, January 17, 2014 in Kresge Auditorium.

Registration for this year’s Hunt is now open. Please have one member of your team register at
http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/registration.html

Instructions for unattached hunters can be found at http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/unattached.html.

Just like in past years, we’ve obtained a number of rooms from the Schedules Office and will be assigning them to teams who need to use classroom space for their HQ. If you need classroom space for your HQ during Hunt, please indicate so on your registration form in the Base Reservation System section. Please do not contact the Schedules Office directly for space during Mystery Hunt, as we’ve already worked with them to reserve rooms. A list of this year’s rooms is available at http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/rooms-14.html.

The registration deadline for teams requesting classroom space for their HQ is December 18. We ask that all teams try to register as soon as possible. We’d prefer teams to be registered by January 6, although registration will stay open right up until the beginning of the Hunt. We’d much rather receive a partially filled out registration form now with final details emailed to us in a few weeks than a fully completed registration form submitted right before the deadline.

More details about this year’s Hunt can be found at http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/currhunt.html. We’ll email out any major updates, but up-to-date news can also be found there.

If you have any questions, you can always reach us at puzzle@mit.edu.

See you in January!
-the team formerly known as [the entire text of Atlas Shrugged]