JSAI 2012 - maybe the first time in history when a robot was a main chair for an official scientific discussion?
Organizing can be fun, too!
This year is the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing's birth and I decided to set up some events in memory of the great British thinker. The first one was an international session during JSAI 2012 - an annual conference of Japanese Society of Artificial Intelligence. The second took place in Birmingham and was a part of a bigger congress organized by the AISB (The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour) and the IACAP (The International Association for Computing and Philosophy). Calling for papers I asked for a wide range of interdisciplinary topics, but (somehow naturally) most of submissions were about language. But except emotions, common sense, humor or ethics there were also papers about Turing test, smart houses, robots and even quantum neurons, so probably everyone had an opportunity to learn something new.
Of course seeing old making new friends was, as always, very important part of every meeting!