Thanks for the summary. Sounds like it would have been interesting for more folks to participate, One thing that I don’t quite understand is:
We also learned too late into planning that another AI-related conference had been organized for the same weekend, which reduced Japanese participation.
Is the AI community in Japan really so large that this would have been missed by the ARAYA organizers in their initial inquiries?
Or was it more of a communications problem where they knew but wasn’t shared in time?
Thanks for the question. “Conference” might be the wrong word.
RIKEN, one of the top research institutions in Japan, held a (AFAIK) whole-company event that same weekend. My understanding is that ARAYA did a public sweep of events but didn’t learn about this conflict until a few weeks after the date had been set and we sent out invitations. While some RIKEN members attended our conference, others who expressed interest declined (“I would have attended but...”). Asking key participants ahead of the conference about the date probably could have avoided this.
Ah that is a tough problem to resolve. Unless they have contacts within RIKEN willing to share future scheduling that is probably not possible to fix.
By the way, where was this event hosted? Because your point about the quality of audio-visual facilities, or lack thereof, suggests it wasn’t in a typical conference venue.
It was held at a standard conference centre in Kudanshita. This one is completely on me/Katrina as the ops team! We bought our own equipment last minute and should have instead used the venue’s, or bought better equipment.
Thanks for the summary. Sounds like it would have been interesting for more folks to participate, One thing that I don’t quite understand is:
Is the AI community in Japan really so large that this would have been missed by the ARAYA organizers in their initial inquiries?
Or was it more of a communications problem where they knew but wasn’t shared in time?
Thanks for the question. “Conference” might be the wrong word.
RIKEN, one of the top research institutions in Japan, held a (AFAIK) whole-company event that same weekend. My understanding is that ARAYA did a public sweep of events but didn’t learn about this conflict until a few weeks after the date had been set and we sent out invitations. While some RIKEN members attended our conference, others who expressed interest declined (“I would have attended but...”). Asking key participants ahead of the conference about the date probably could have avoided this.
Ah that is a tough problem to resolve. Unless they have contacts within RIKEN willing to share future scheduling that is probably not possible to fix.
By the way, where was this event hosted? Because your point about the quality of audio-visual facilities, or lack thereof, suggests it wasn’t in a typical conference venue.
It was held at a standard conference centre in Kudanshita. This one is completely on me/Katrina as the ops team! We bought our own equipment last minute and should have instead used the venue’s, or bought better equipment.