7th CLUK Colloquium

The colloquium is for PhD students to present their current work was held at the University of Birmingham, UK. The colloquium ran for two full days; the 6th and 7th of January and included both paper and poster presentations. I gave the first talk introducing AnswerFinder to a wider audience than just the University of Sheffield and anyone who has visited this website.

Monday 5^th January

Although the colloquium wasn't going to start until the Tuesday morning a lot of people had organised to travel to Birmingham the day before and then meet for a meal. Fortunately for me Nick Weaver from Sheffield was also going to CLUK and had offered to drive both Diana Maynard and myself to Birmingham. This sounded like a great idea until he turned up at my house at about 4 o'clock in a car that was just moving. Well that's not completely fair, once you had it started it would drive it was just the getting it started that was a problem. Anyway after picking up Diana we set of on an uneventful trip to the University of Birmingham's Edgbaston campus - specifically Mason Hall of Residence.

We arrived at the hall of residence with about half an hour to wait before we had agreed to meet Mark Lee (the organiser) and anyone else who had arrived at the Staff House Bar so we had time to find our rooms. Now I've slept in University accommodation before but nothing compares to the beds in Mason Hall - using the term bed probably violates the trade description act. Basically it was a think sheet suspended from a metal rectangle using rope. I guess we all decided that we weren't going to get much in the way of sleep for two nights! I would have taken a photo of the room so you could all see what I mean but it was at this point that I realised I'd left my camera on my study desk back in Sheffield.

Anyway 7:30 saw the three of us arrive at the Staff House bar and meeting both Mark Lee and some of the other participants in the colloquium for a nice cheep pint of beer. We then went off for a very nice curry (and more beer) at a local restaurant. I made the mistake of ordering a dish that warned it was exceptionally hot - Chicken tikka chilli masala. It was wonderful and I really didn't see what the problem was until almost my last mouthful which contained the stalk and seeds of a small chilli - boy was that hot! Having washed it down with most of another pint of beer I was beginning to feel human again.

Tuesday 6^th January

After very little sleep I awoke to find that I was definitely developing a cold with a sore throat, not what I needed as I had another day to wait before presenting my paper. Breakfast in the hall of residence was much better than the bed I had slept on although it would be nice if the coffee had actually had much in the way of caffeine in it. Both Diana and I had to drink multiple cups before we even started to wake up properly.

I've not got much to say about the papers that were presented. This wasn't because they were boring or anything but rather that most were outside my field of expertise and so I either didn't understand them properly or didn't concentrate hard enough. I did, however, enjoy Ted Briscoe's invited talk about languages being complex adaptive systems. At the close of the presentations there was a reception in the entrance to the computer science department where I said hello to Tiphaine Dalmas. She had also presented a paper in Budapest so we at least knew each others names! We had a great long talk about QA especially TREC and our own work, which carried on as we walked back to the Staff House for the colloquium dinner. As we arrived at the same time we ended sitting at the same table and continued talking, albeit with other people (including Adam Funk from UMIST) about a range of different things including roundabouts, queuing and Thomas Edison! A very interesting meal - the food wasn't bad either.

Having finished dinner most of us wandered to the nearest pub to grab a pint before closing time. I did really well as I was talking to Mark Lee as we walked to the pub (he knew where we were going) and so even before I could offer he had bought me a drink - thanks Mark!

By the time I got back to my room my throat was really feeling sore. I was just hoping it would at least last until the end of my talk tomorrow.

Wednesday 7^th April

Well even less sleep than the night before required four cups of coffee before I even started to feel human, especially as my throat was now really quite swollen and sore. Anyway the first talk of the day was Tiphaine's which I found really interesting (I'm sure I'll want to implement something similar eventually for AnswerFinder) although I didn't have any questions to ask at the end due to the length of time we had talked yesterday.

Now it was my turn. Having presented the paper last year in Budapest I wasn't as nervous as I thought I might be and so I sailed through the talk with no problems with the talk or the time limit. I got some really interesting questions afterwards all of which I was at least able to give some answer to. The coffee break came straight after my talk and I was inundated with people saying that my talk was good and offering a whole load of ideas and suggestions. It's really quite nice when a lot of people have been kept awake and inspired by your talk.

The rest of the day passed in a bit of a blur as my throat got worse and worse. Unfortunately Rob Gaizauskas (my supervisor) was giving the closing invited talk and was also suffering from a sore throat although I doubt my inability to stop coughing really helped him. As soon as the colloquium finished we left and made our way back to Nick's car for the trip back to Sheffield and a comfortable bed.