Archive for online meeting
BAYSM 2025 [registration and abstract submission]
Posted in Statistics, University life with tags Bayes theorem, Bayesian statisticians, Bayesian statistics, Bayesian Young Statisticians Meeting, BAYSM, BAYSM 2025, Blackwell-Rosenbluth Award, conference, ISBA, j-ISBA, keynote speaker, online meeting, registration, young researchers on February 19, 2025 by xi'an
news from ISBA
Posted in Kids, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags BAYSM 2018, Don Fraser, graffitis, Institut de Mathématique d'Orsay, ISBA, ISBA 2020, ISBA Bulletin, online meeting, street art, useR!, webinar on March 31, 2021 by xi'an
Some news and reminders from the latest ISBA Bulletin (which also contains an obituary of Don Fraser by Christian Genest):
- Remember that the registration for ISBA 2021 is free till 1 May! The conference is fully online, from 28 June to 2 July
- the Bayesian young statisticians meeting BAYSM 21 will take place online, 1-3 September
- the useR! 2021 conference will also take place online, July 5-9
- the MHC2021 (Mixtures, Hidden Markov models, Clustering) conference will take place physically and online at Orsay, France, 2-4 June
the future of conferences
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel, University life with tags conference picture, conferences, diversity, inclusion, meeting, Nature, NeurIPS, NIPS, online meeting, pros and cons, safeisba@bayesian.org, slides, talk, workshop on January 22, 2019 by xi'an
The last issue of Nature for 2018 offers a stunning collection of science photographs, ten portraits of people who mattered (for the editorial board of Nature), and a collection of journalists’ entries on scientific conferences. The later point leading to interesting questioning on the future of conferences, some of which relate to earlier entries on this blog. Like attempts to make them having a lesser carbon footprint, by only attending focused conferences and workshops, warning about predatory ones, creating local hives on different continents that can partake of all talks but reduce travel and size and still allow for exchanges person to person, multiply the meetings and opportunities around a major conference to induce “only” one major trip (as in the past summer of British conferences, or the incoming geographical combination of BNP and O’Bayes 2019), cut the traditional dreary succession of short talks in parallel in favour of “unconferences” where participants set communally the themes and structure of the meeting (but ware the dangers of bias brought by language, culture, seniority!). Of course, this move towards new formats will meet opposition from several corners, including administrators who too often see conferences as a pretense for paid vacations and refuse supporting costs without a “concrete” proof of work in the form of a presentation.
Another aspect of conference was discussed there, namely the art of delivering great talks. Which is indeed more an art than a science, since the impact will not only depend on the speaker and the slides, but also on the audience and the circumstances. As years pile on, I am getting less stressed and probably too relaxed about giving talks, but still rarely feel I have reached toward enough of the audience. And still falling too easily for the infodump mistake… Which reminds me of a recent column in Significance (although I cannot link to it!), complaining about “finding it hard or impossible to follow many presentations, particularly those that involved a large number of equations.” Which sounds strange to me as on the opposite I quickly loose track in talks with no equations. And as mathematical statistics or probability issues seems to imply the use of maths symbols and equations. (This reminded me of a short course I gave once in a undisclosed location, where a portion of the audience left after the first morning, due to my use of “too many Greek letters”.) Actually, I am always annoyed at apologies for using proper maths notations, since they are the tools of our trade.
Another entry of importance in this issue of Nature is an interview with Katherine Heller and Hal Daumé, as first chairs for diversity and inclusion at N[eur]IPS. Where they discuss the actions taken since the previous NIPS 2017 meeting to address the lack of inclusiveness and the harassment cases exposed there, first by Kristian Lum, Lead Statistician at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), whose blog denunciation set the wheels turning towards a safer and better environment (in stats as well as machine-learning). This included the [last minute] move towards renaming the conference as NeuroIPS to avoid sexual puns on the former acronym (which as a non-native speaker I missed until it was pointed out to me!). Judging from the feedback it seems that the wheels have indeed turned a significant amount and hopefully will continue its progress.
partly virtual meetings
Posted in Kids, pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags ABC in Montréal, Benidorm, carbon impact, flight, Montréal, NIPS, online meeting, Statistics conference, travel support, world meeting on December 29, 2014 by xi'an
A few weeks ago, I read in the NYT an article about the American Academy of Religion cancelling its 2021 annual meeting as a sabbatical year, for environmental reasons.
“We could choose to not meet at a huge annual meeting in which we take over a city. Every year, each participant going to the meeting uses a quantum of carbon that is more than considerable. Air travel, staying in hotels, all of this creates a way of living on the Earth that is carbon intensive. It could be otherwise.”
While I am not in the least interested in the conference or in the topics covered by this society or yet in the benevolent religious activities suggested as a substitute, the notion of cancelling the behemoths that are our national and international academic meetings holds some appeal. I have posted several times on the topic, especially about JSM, and I have no clear and definitive answer to the question. Still, there lies a lack of efficiency on top of the environmental impact that we could and should try to address. 
As I was thinking of those issues in the past week, I made another of my numerous “carbon footprints” by attending NIPS across the Atlantic for two workshops than ran in parallel with about twenty others. And hence could have taken place in twenty different places. Albeit without the same exciting feeling of constant intellectual simmering. And without the same mix of highly interactive scholars from all over the planet. (Although the ABC in Montréal workshop seemed predominantly European!) Since workshops are in my opinion the most profitable type of meeting, I would like to experiment with a large meeting made of those (focussed and intense) workshops in such a way that academics would benefit without travelling long distances across the World. One idea would be to have local nodes where a large enough group of researchers could gather to attend video-conferences given from any of the other nodes and to interact locally in terms of discussions and poster presentations. This should even increase the feedback on selected papers as small groups would more readily engage into discussing and criticising papers than a huge conference room. If we could build a World-wide web (!) of such nodes, we could then dream of a non-stop conference, with no central node, no gigantic conference centre, no terrifying beach-ressort…
ISBA on INLA [webinar]
Posted in R, Statistics, University life with tags Havard Rue, INLA, ISBA, Laplace's approximation, online meeting, R-INLA, webinar on April 3, 2013 by xi'anIf you have missed the item of information, Håvard Rue is giving an ISBA webinar tomorrow on INLA:
the ISBA Webinar on INLA is scheduled for April 4th, 2013 from 8:30 - 12:30 EDT. ------------------------------------------------------- To join the online meeting (Now from mobile devices using the Cisco WebEx Meeting App) ------------------------------------------------------- 1. Go to https://www.webex.com/login/attend-a-meeting 2. Enter the meeting number 730 293 070 and click Join Now 3. Enter your name and email address, the meeting password and click "Join Now" A recording of the webinar will be provided shortly after the event. Please verify that your computer is capable of connecting using WebEx at https://support.webex.com/MyAccountWeb/systemRequirement.do?root=Tools&parent=System or see https://www.webex.com/login/join-meeting-tips if you are having trouble connecting.
