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After some coffee, the keynote of Nigel Shadbolt started. Nigel is a professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the University of Southampton. As I had supposed before, Tim-Berners Lee and hid proposal of internet was mentioned. Then he presented the overview of the Information Extraction field as it is supposed to be for opening talks. His also introduced us his notion about the importance of people over algorithms we are forgetting about. The next big words I remember were that subfields of IR are not connected to traditional Artificial Intelligence, but may be better to say Augmented Intelligence.

As the keynote presentation is too big, you can retrieve it here: http://zitnik.si/temp/essir2011/01_NigelShatbolt_keynote.pdf

The next two-part lecture Foundations: Models and Methods was given by Hinrich Schuetze. He was one of the authors of the book Introduction to information retrieval which I read before writing my bachelor thesis. That is why I was very familiar with presentation. His presentations and links are also available on http://informationretrieval.org/essir2011. He lectured some introduction to Boolean model (he emphasized about feast or famine mostly), Vector model, Ranking (interesting was what is the sequence user looks at the results, that 30% users will click even the nonrelevant result, nicely presented difference between Euclidean and cosine similarity, pivot normalization, …), Probabilistic models, Language models and finally Learning to Rank.

Schuetze’s presentation:

The las lecture was given by Vladimir Batagelj, the “godfather” of Pajek. He presented the program Pajek and many interesting properties of network analysis, which I’ve also heard about at his course on Large network analysis during my PhD study.

In the evening the beachvolley was planned but because of the wind we went to mexican restaurant Enchiliada. There Lars showed us some game with glasses (by that you may separate stupid and smart people – maybe :), I successfully passed the test).

Before going back to hotel Sholz we needed to go to the German corner to take some pictures:

First we flew from Brnik to Frankfurt at 8 a.m. in the morning. In Frankfurt we bought tickets for regional train to Koblenz at 10:37. As there were no data about the route, we somehow managed to get some information from sour lady at DBahn info-point. At around 1 p.m. we got to Sholz hotel, where we checked in and first unpacked our laptops.

After some time, we got out. We got over almost the whole Koblenz on foot, eat at MacDonald’s and got acquainted with the city. At 7:40 p.m. we entered the Gecko lounge where there was a Get-together event for the participants. We got to know some nice people, mostly younger researchers, mainly from the fields of Information Retrival, Data Mining, Social Network Analysis and also Software Engineering.

At around midnight we arrived to Sholz hotel, where I am writing this post.

Prvi dan: Jaz sem pot pričel na Vrbičju proti Ljubljani. Okoli 6h zjutraj sva se z Miho dobila pred FRI-jem in se napotila proti Portorožu. Prvi incident se je zgodil že na Vrhniškem klancu, ko je Mihi počila zadnja guma. Na srečo sem imel s sabo rezervno, zato sva lahko problem hitro rešila. Nadalje sva se ustavila v Logatcu na bencinski črpalki, kjer sva se okrepčala. Tam sem tudi v obcestni trgovini s kolesi Cult kupil novo zračnico. Do Kopra pa je manjše tehnične težave imelo moje kolo, saj sem moral nekajkrat ročno priviti “špice” na zadnjem platišču. V Kopru sva si v Tuš centru privoščila kosilo – seveda na študentske bone. Nato naju je le kratka razdalja ločila do Lucije, ki sva jo hitro dosegla. Pred tem pa je meni v Portorožu počila sprednja guma, ki sem jo lahko na srečo spet zamenjal in spet privil zadnje “špice”. Zvečer sva se prehitro podala na žur, ki se je začel šele po 23h, zato sva se optimistično odločila nekaj časa spočiti v kampu, kar je seveda pomenilo, da sva vse prespala.

Drugi dan: Ta dan sva preživela na slovenski obali. Zajtrk in kosilo je bilo seveda na študentske bone, zvečer pa ni bilo nobenega dogajanja. Kolegica iz avtobusne postaje nama je namignila, da se zna kaj dogajati v klubu Ayala, vendar ni bilo nič. Torej je sledilo spanje, pred katerim sem si še kupil penasto podlogo za spanje. Zaradi bolj primerne temperature sem spal zunaj v sožitju z lokalnimi ježi.

Tretji dan: Miha je predčasno ustal in še preden sem dojel, je spakiral šotor in mi sporočil, da zaradi boležin v mišicah in glavobola odhaja domov. Na recepciji si je izprosil lekadol, poklical taxi, ki ga je zapeljal do Kopra in z vlakom odšel domov. Jaz sem se ta dan zapeljal do Umaga, kjer sem na poti v Villi Zianni preveril, če imajo moj polnilec za mobitel, ki ga niso imeli. Nato sem se vrnil v portorož, kjer me je popoldne prišel iskat Peter Virant, saj se mi ni ljubilo samemu nadaljevati vožnje.

Ker se je “planirana tura” končala prehitro, bo treba splanirati novo.

Zame je bila to že 5. udeležba konference zapored. V prvih treh primerih je bila organizirana na Bledu v hotelu Golf, četrtič pa v protokolarnem objektu na Brdu. V vseh primerih sem se je udeležil kot študent ali inštruktor lokalne Cisco akademije na Vegovi.

Mogoče je bilo opaziti, da so bila nekatera predavanja bolj marketinško kot tehnično obarvana.

V četrtek – prvi dan,  sem zamudil uvodno plenarno predavanje.

Zvečer se je pričela zabava, ki je trajala do jutranjih ur.  ”Izgovor” za tradicionalno neformalno druženje je  bila tudi 25. obletnica Cisca. Naslednje leto pa bo 10. obletnica Cisca Expa v Sloveniji.

Naslednji dan so se predavanja pričakovano nadaljevala.

Konferenca se je zaključila s podelitvijo nagrad izžrebanim obiskovalcem in tekmovalcem, ki so zmagali na tekmovanju iz znanja omrežij. Eden izmed njih je bil tudi kolega iz Vegove – Primož Črnigoj.

Nekaj slik:

He got his new camera few weeks ago (some Canon heavy piece ) and took some incredibly nice photos:

Letošnja ponudba se mi ni zdela nič kaj revolucionarna, oz. lahko bi rekel, da se vsako leto vidi manj novosti. Mogoče zato, ker se preko drugih kanalov – “interneta” lahko širšo množico hitro obvesti o potencialno zanimivih produktih.

Pa začnimo:

Hostes kot promotork ni bilo veliko ali jih ni bilo, saj ne gre za avtomobilski sejem. Če seveda malih Aixam-ov ne štejemo k avtomobilom.

Vrhunsko policijsko vozilo:

Deska za sneg (normalna izvedba):

Stol, pridobljen iz oblikovane korenine:

Železni komplet:

Vino z okusom jagode (prvotno predstavljen s strani Matica P.):

Na “glavnem” odru so se na pol ure predstavljali desetniki slovenske vojaške policije in obiskovalcem kazali obvladovanje borilnih veščin s 60% moči. Med njimi je bilo tudi nekaj žensk s katerimi ne bi bilo dobro nepravično zobati češenj. Ko pa je okoli 13h začelo deževati, je sejem začel naglo izgubljati obiskovalce in gotovo se jim bo to tudi poznalo na dnevnem zaslužku.

Pleskavice pa so bile po 6€, srednje kvalitete.

http://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/user/profile.do?u=szitnik

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