EXPERIENCE: First Time Attending A Conference

Hello everyone. In previous entry, I have mentioned that I went to KL to attend an international conference. It was my first time attended such event. So, I would like to share my experience.

The first conference that I attended is International Conference on Information and Communication Technology (ICOICT) 2019 at The Federal Hotel Kuala Lumpur. Actually, the conference is more to IT than bioinformatics.

Since I only attended the conference for day 1, I will only share my experience based on what I went through during that day. Sorry if it does not give full overview about how a conference is actually being conducted.

Before I arrived at the venue, I totally only knew that there would be two parts,  keynotes and tutorial. There were three keynotes and two tutorials. Based on the program's tentative, I got some idea about the flow of the conference. When I heard the word keynote, I knew that the speaker will present his/her paper. For the tutorial session, I was a bit confused because in the official website, it was stated that tutorial session involves demos and hands-on. However, we were not being asked to bring our own laptop for the tutorial. Since the conference was held at hotel, I knew that there would be no computer lab.

At the conference, I saw many people from different background and countries. There were students and also working people from academic field. I did expect that there would be participant from various countries as the word "international" was part of the name for the conference.

Honestly, I can only relate first talk with my study. This is because it was about big data in biology. The keynote speaker explained about bioinformatics and machine learning. At that time, I felt like attending lecture for one of the subjects that I am taking this semester. I really could link the information with what I have learnt in class. So, I can say that I enjoyed the first session.

However, when the topic started to be pure IT, I started to lost already. It was quite difficult for me to understand the concept as it was new thing. I have too admit that I totally did not understand the last tutorial because it involved programming which was really beyond from what I have learnt.

I was glad that I only joined the first day. At least, there was one topic that was related to my study. The second day would be pure IT and I did not think that I can follow.

Attending a conference for the first time is a good experience for me. I obtained new knowledge and at the same time improve bonding between me and my classmates.

That's all for this entry. Have a nice day😊.

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