| Report
on IEEE SMC 2004
Enjoying
drinks and having fun during the reception |
Conference
banquet in the great hall of the Kurhaus, Scheveningen |
With almost 1100 papers in the proceedings, and over
1100 registrations, The IEEE SMC2004 International
conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics exceeded
expectations. Participation was truly international,
with strong representations of Asia, Europe and North
America. The largest numbers of registrations were
from mainland China (222), Japan (191), The Netherlands
(134), USA (95), Taiwan (68), France( 59) and the
UK (55). About 770 registrants actually participated
in the meeting which was held in the Netherlands Congress
Centre in The Hague, Netherlands, Oct. 10-13.
The
program consisted of 196 technical sessions, covering
the large spectrum of fields of interest to the SMC
community. Many of these sessions were well attended
with lively discussions.
Program
highlights included the three plenary presentations
in which addressed the state-of-the-art in three different
fields of interest to the SMC society. Margot Weijnen
of Delft University of Technology gave an excellent
presentation on dealing with complexities in networked
systems, focusing on infrastructure systems in which
complexity covers both technical as well as organizational
and human networks. Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann of the
University of Geneva gave a very lively and visual
presentation of the latest developments in simulation
of virtual humans illustrated with a virtual fashion
show and a perspective on virtual fashion design.
John Flach of Wright State University presented the
intriguing results of some of his latest research
in the field of human sense-making, and finished his
presentation by elaborating on the challenges of cooperation
and integration between disciplines. All three presentations
were well tuned to the broad audience, and we note
that two of the three plenary speakers were women
– a novelty, we believe, in the traditionally
male-dominated SMC society.
SMC board
members enjoying dinner |
The
student paper competition attracted 148 participants.
After a pre-screening, 75 student-written full papers
were subjected to an additional review process, leading
to the selection of five finalists. The winner and
runners-up awards were given at the conference banquet.
Various
kinds of demonstrations were given during lunch breaks,
including pattern and facial expression recognition,
and robotics.
In
addition to the technical program the social events
were highly appreciated by the participants. The welcome
reception was held in the GEM Museum of modern art
in the Hague, and attracted a crowd of about 500.
Absolute
highlight in the social program was the Tuesday conference
banquet, held in the great hall of the Kurhaus in
Scheveningen, a sumptuous surrounding with decorations
dating back to the late 19th century. During the banquet,
the SMC awards as well as the best student paper awards
were given, a virtual fashion show was projected,
and this was alternated with music played by a live
band. At the end, we looked forward to IEEESMC2005
in Hawaii, where we hope to see many of this year’s
participants again!
The
photographs below illustrate the atmosphere, more
photographs can be found on the conference website:
http://www.ieeesmc2004.tudelft.nl
Wil
Thissen
General Chair, IEEESMC2004
<
BACK to NEWS >
|
