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Life at SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH is the
premier conference for computer graphics. It brings together researchers,
professionals, artists, students and teachers. The conference
mission says among other things that SIGGRAPH presents "leading-edge
theory and practice of computer graphics and interactive techniques".
It is an intense week of technical wonders and old friends.
Here are a few
reports on life at SIGGRAPH outside of the technical agenda.
Sake
Party
Sights
and Sounds: Sunday at SIGGRAPH
The
Figueroa Hotel
International
Scene
Ben's
impressions
 Food court at LACC
The exhibition (photo Frank Nocke)
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MDBF
You may
have heard of the engineering concept, "MTBF," meaning
Mean (or average) Time Between Failures. It's a commonly used
measure of the expected number of
hours a mechanism can work without requiring some sort of
repair. A more important measure at SIGGRAPH is "MDBF,"
or Mean Distance Between Friends. This refers to the distance
you can travel down a SIGGRAPH hallway without running into
someone
you know. As you attend more SIGGRAPHs, your MDBF in a SIGGRAPH
hallway declines
precipitously.
Since seeing
someone you know requires initiating a conversation (however
short) with them (see "Upgrading"), as your MDBF
declines over the years, you become unable to move effectively
around the conference. You need to plan ahead for the ten
minute walk over to the panels room, which will take you 45-50
minutes due to MDBF issues. Eventually, you are reduced to
standing in the lobby of the convention center, greeting friends
and finding out from them what's happening at the conference
you won't get inside to see.
See also:
upgrading
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