Recently I attended ICDCN 2018 Conference, held in IIT BHU, Varanasi, India. This was one of the conferences that I really enjoyed and was very productive for me. When I went to attend the conference I did not know anyone there but I came back with a lot of memories, friends, and of course, collaboration offers ๐ So, I thought to share my experience briefly.
Few points about what I liked:
- Talks: ICDCN is mainly a conference on Distributed Computing and Communication Networks and they also have a track on social networks. I work on social networks and I attended the related sessions that I shortlisted prior and discussed with the speakers after the talks. Most of the sessions were on distributed computing and I found that less related to my work but I still attended some of them. I will say, I enjoyed after talk discussions more than the talks, maybe because there we have open time and can ask ample number of questions ๐
- Doctoral Symposium: I was there to present my work in Doctoral Symposium. Every speaker was given around 20-25 minutes to present the work and it was a very open and helpful discussion with Professors, other fellow presenters, and attendees. Most of the speakers were graduate students, so we also discussed our work after the session and it helped us to connect with each other.
Young Researchers from IIT Hyderabad, ETH Zurich and me ๐ - Open Discussion: The best thing that I enjoyed the most was open discussions. I met many professors there and discussed my work, their works and this was the best part, especially when someone appreciates your work ๐ . It helped me to get more suggestions and to know more about othersโ work. The best discussion was with Dr. Roger (Keynote Speaker) and we discussed everything starting from my thesis, to gender bias, collaboration network, Google, Family system, Indian Culture, behavioral economics, research in music, and so on. Actually, the list is really long.
Dr. Roger Wattenhofer and me (from Banquet dinner) - Local Trip and Food: Varanasi is located on the bank of Ganges and known as the cultural city of India. It is famous for Lord Shiva temples and Ganga ghats. People come here from all over the world for inner peace. Given a chance, I also enjoyed the beauty of the city and cultural richness. The next thing, I enjoyed after local trips was food. I also belong to the same state and I really liked the food very much. I think I gained 1-2 Kg extra weight too ๐ , will try to loose it ๐
Temple in IIT BHU
I really would like to thank the organizing committee for the warm welcome and all the volunteers for their help. For more details you can visit the conference website here.
Akrati Saxena 