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We are in the middle of a week rich of
technology and talent. What are your
initial thoughts about the first days of
the conference?
It is amazing. It’s an amazing
conference. To tell you the truth, we
were planning to have 1,800 people,
maximum. We were in Chile last year,
and we had 1,500 people. We said,
because we are going to be in Europe,
we’re going to have 1,500 people. We
have over 3,100 people today. It is an
amazing conference. The other part is
that we have a large number of
companies that are coming to attend.
If you go back about four or five years
for ICCV, ECCV, and CVPR, we had
some companies, but never to that
scale. What it shows is that our field
has matured to the point where we
can create real
solutions with
computer vision. That is why these
companies are coming and looking for
talent, showcasing their abilities to
deliver real solutions.
Were these two successes, the large
attendance and the large response
from companies joining the expo,
something that you expected or were
you surprised?
It was a surprise. We were not
planning to have that many. We made
sure that we could expand, that we
would have the room to expand, but
even then we were surprised. We
could not accommodate 4,000 people,
for example. We were hoping no more
than 3,200 people would show up.
Otherwise, we would have to cap the
attendance which we don’t want to do.
It’s very painful for an organizer to say,
“
Sorry, you cannot come because we
don’t have any more space.
”
Actually, the hotel will tell them to
sleep in the street.
Absolutely! [
both laugh
]
So we were surprised. We were
surprised both by the number of
attendees and also by the number of
companies that came and wanted to
sponsor an exhibit. We had one
company, I’m not going to name it,
that came about a week before it
started and said, “
Can I please still
join?
” Of
course,
we did
accommodate.
You have been at this kind of
conference for many years. What
strikes you about the people you are
4
Friday
Gérard Médioni is a professor at
the University of Southern
California, Director of Research at
Amazon, as well as General Chair
at ICCV 2017.
Gérard Medioni