A 500-STRONG contingent from China were among the 1,450 delegates attending The Web Conference which comes to a close at ICC Sydney on Friday.
The stars of the event’s speakers line-up, however, were China Computer Federation chairman Wen Gao and Jürgen Schmidhuber, who was hailed by The New York Times as the “Dad of AI”. The German computer scientist’s AI creations are on over three billion smartphones and used billions of times per day.
The Web Conference, or the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Web Conference as it is officially titled, has been held annually since the World Wide Web went public in 1989, and has been the launching pad for some of the most important web technologies invented.
It is regarded as being the world’s longest-running web-technology conference.
ICMS Australasia managed the five-day conference, which included a high-quality programme of research sessions, more than 500 scientific posters and demonstrations, a PhD symposium for junior scholars, workshops, tutorials, and thought-provoking keynotes, panels and more.
The 1,450 delegates from 50 countries and regions at the in-person event were joined by 100 watching online across the world. Virtual elements including live streaming of keynotes, oral presentations, workshops and tutorials, and access to pre-recorded videos were also facilitated.
“The level of sponsorship support from companies including Meta, Huawei, Alibaba and Google go a long way to demonstrating the quality of this conference,” said Emma Bowyer, ICMS Australasia’s CEO.
“We know our local hosts, the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Technology Sydney, are thrilled that there is such a strong international presence of attendees because it provides Australian delegates and organisations with an opportunity to develop deeper connections with their global peers.”
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Bowyer said of particular importance for her at this conference was the PhD Symposium where doctoral students were invited to present and receive feedback on their ongoing research.
“Overall, there will be no less than five social events to ensure some light relief from the heavy technical program and to give delegates opportunities for networking,” she said.
The conference will conclude with a gala dinner at the Watersedge at Campbell’s Store in the historic Rocks area of the city near Sydney Harbour Bridge.
