critiques at, nicely, the top of the month. This time, there was a brief delay of a couple of week.
The explanation was convention journey.
To place issues into perspective for readers unfamiliar with the convention recreation in machine studying (ML) analysis, right here is the story, barely abridged.
For those who do ML analysis, you often wish to publish your work as a paper at a convention. Attention-grabbing however unpublished work doesn’t depend for a lot, so it’s typically publish or perish. To publish a paper, nonetheless, you first want a becoming outlet. In ML, the primary retailers are three premier conferences: ICML, NeurIPS, and ICLR.
The Worldwide Convention on Machine Studying (ICML) was first held in 1980. For its first decade, it was organized as a workshop; afterwards, it continued as a full convention.
In 1987, the primary Convention on Neural Info Processing Methods (NeurIPS) was held in Denver, USA.
ICLR joined the ranks extra lately. In 2013, researchers based the Worldwide Convention on Studying Representations (ICLR).
To publish a paper at one in every of these conferences, it’s a must to undergo the typically annoying strategy of peer evaluation. First, you submit an anonymized model of your paper, that means that you just take away names, affiliations, and different figuring out data. This model is then anonymously reviewed by — hopefully — extra educated friends out of your analysis subject.
You obtain their suggestions, get some alternative to make clear or enhance the paper, after which wait for one more month or two. Primarily based on the standard of the preliminary submission and the way nicely you addressed the reviewers’ considerations, your paper will both be accepted or rejected.
That is the vital half: acceptance charges are low. Normally, solely someplace between 20% and 30% of submitted papers are accepted. It’s a aggressive recreation.
Thus, should you handle to publish a paper at one in every of these conferences, you may think about your self fortunate. You possibly can then go to the convention itself, which brings me again to the subject of this text.
Attending to the convention
The conferences are held yearly at totally different areas internationally. Relying on the place you reside, you might need fairly a ways to cowl.
In case you are primarily based in China and the convention takes place in South Korea, you will get there comparatively rapidly. In case you are coming from Europe or america, nonetheless, you’ll in all probability spend most of a day travelling. The identical applies in reverse when a convention is held within the States.
My final go to to such a big convention was ICLR 2024, which was hosted in Vienna. For me, that was fairly snug to achieve.
Final month — and this explains the delay in penning this month-to-month evaluation — I attended ICML in South Korea. The convention itself was good, it was the getting there took fairly a while.
And it’s not solely the travelling that issues. There may be additionally the organizational overhead and, maybe extra importantly, the chance price.
Let me clarify.
The hidden overhead of convention journey
First, it’s essential guide the flights and the resort. Normally, you additionally want to remain inside sure per-diem limits, that means that you’ve got a every day finances of a certain quantity to spend on lodging.
You due to this fact survey the resorts near the convention venue, examine whether or not they match the finances, get one accepted, and eventually guide it. The identical applies to the flights. Altogether, this may simply take half a day — typically a full one.
Then the precise journey begins…
Attending to the airport takes time. Ready on the airport takes extra time. The flight itself can take greater than ten hours. Lastly, travelling from the vacation spot airport to the resort provides one other hour or two.
After roughly 24 hours, you have got reached your vacation spot. Nice.
However then there’s the jet lag. The convention takes place in one other time zone, so your physique wants time to regulate — ideally if you are already purported to attend talks, meet folks, and current your work.
On the best way again, the identical factor occurs in reverse. You spend one other day travelling house, adopted by one other spherical of jet lag.
All in all, you have got now spent two or three days organizing and finishing the journey. On prime of that come the precise convention days, which could add one other three to seven days.
In whole, the convention can occupy round ten days.
That may be tremendous if the remainder of life merely paused throughout that point. Sadly, it doesn’t.
The backlog waits at house
Once you return, your common work continues to be there. Emails have accrued. Duties have been ready. Tasks have continued with out you — or, maybe worse, haven’t continued in any respect.
Which is what occurred to me. After returning, I first needed to work by means of my private backlog. There have been issues to are inclined to, duties to redo, and a number of other free ends to select up once more. On prime of that, I needed to put together a journal revision and a convention rebuttal.
The convention itself had ended, however the disruption round it had not.
And that, to me, is the actual draw back of convention journey. It isn’t merely the lengthy flight or the jet lag. It’s this interruption of your regular rhythm: the preparation beforehand, the journey itself, the time spent on the occasion, and the backlog ready afterwards.
All this simply kills every week or two of progress on a brand new analysis challenge. And, every week or two extra on a paper could make fairly a big distinction. It could possibly be one other proof, it could possibly be coding a troublesome experiment, writing a whole draft. For all this stuff, you want prolonged, uninterrupted time, ideally for a number of days in a row. Deep work, it’s (a favourite matter of mine, see additionally my latest evaluation of my final 8.5 years in machine studying),
This isn’t to say that conferences are pointless. No, conferences are beneficial. You meet different researchers, talk about concepts, see new work, and eventually put faces to names you’ll have identified solely from papers. Nonetheless, that worth comes at a substantial price in time and vitality.
This month’s lesson was due to this fact reasonably easy: when planning convention journey, don’t depend solely the times written within the convention program. Rely the preparation, the journey, the restoration, and the work that shall be ready while you return.
In any other case, a five-day convention can quietly devour two full weeks with out making an allowance for the chance prices.
