Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!apple!malcolm
From: malcolm@Apple.COM (Malcolm Slaney)
Newsgroups: comp.org.ieee
Subject: Re: How about all-poster conferences?
Message-ID: <32325@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 9 Jun 89 03:48:36 GMT
References: <55337@linus.UUCP>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 44

In article <55337@linus.UUCP> dhf@linus.UUCP (David H. Friedman) writes:
>   Every year I am struck by the low quality of the presentations in the
>traditional lecture sessions. 
You mean you go to see the lectures?  Everbody knows the good stuff is always
in the hallway.  I'm on the organizing committee for the 1992 ICASSP and we
have made sure that the hallways are all very large :-).  We will provide 
chairs in the lecture halls so people can rest between hallway talks. :-)

Seriously though....we have talked alot about how to make the lectures a
bit more useful.  We can't do much about the speaker quality but one thing
we have talked about is having the session chairman lead a discussion after
all the papers comparing and contrasting the material discussed.  This way
you could ask one speaker why he disagrees with the material in the other 
sessions.  Given the cross cultural differences this is going to be 
difficult to make work.

The lecture format has a big advantage.  It is very efficient.  Can you 
imagine 1000 people all trying to gather around the posters from IBM, BBN, 
AT&T, SRI, etc to see the latest Connected Speech Recognition results?  It
just wouldn't work.  

I wasn't able to go to Glasgow but all of us on the 92 ICASSP committee
were agast at the overcrowding in the poster sessions.  We are planning to
use a space that is about 50% as large as the exhibit hall for posters.  
Also, as it turns out the poster session will be the closest to the hotel
lobby.  Behind the posters (as you come down the stairs) will be the 
exhibits and in front of the posters (and through the walkway) will be 
all of the technical sessions.  Of course all of this is subject to change
in the next three years.

Also, we have suggested to the ASSP conference committee that we have an
all day video session running.  People could submit video tapes (some work
is better shown as video then slides) and a series of video tapes would be
shown continuously (but on a schedule so you could plan ahead.)  Ideally 
you would be able to see them in your hotel room but we would also have to
have them in a room available for people not staying at the hotel.  A hard
problem would be figuring out some way for people to ask questions of the
authors.

Finally, I agree about the larger type on the name badges.  I've passed your
note on to the rest of the committee.

							Malcolm Slaney
							malcolm@apple.com