My third conference trip: EMNLP 2023 (Singapore) - Even more exciting

I just finished my PhD application, thus having some days to do my own thing. One of them is here, writing a blog to briefly describe my conference trip. I am quite sure that this post will be my very last post about “conference trips”, as when I have more experience, I will have less emotion on my trip. And probably nothing new! Yet, this trip is amazing for me.

We prepared for the trip very early. Back in Sep, our lab already managed to book flight tickets. After the result came, we quickly booked hotels as well. Even though my paper was rejected, as my supervisor had funding for our lab to travel, I decided to go with them as well.

We arrived in Singapore on Dec 5, one day before the conference. One very interesting point was that, on that day, I got an email from one of my potential supervisors (at 4:45am), scheduled the meeting (at 6am, at airport), and got interviewed on the same day (at 11pm, in the hotel in Singapore) (I loved that speedrun :D). For that day, we just take a rest and re-organize our life a bit :)). I mean, to find where to buy food for regular meals, time to wake up, where to explore in Singapore, etc.

The first day of the conference came. It was not a part of the main conference, but rather a day to organize workshops and tutorials. In fact, my plan was to select which sessions to attend the day before (Dec 5), but because of the interview, I didn’t have time to take a look at the conference schedule yet. Luckily, there were just a few sessions on the first day, and actually, the session about LLMs evaluation prevailed over other sessions. There were a lot of people attending that tutorial session (not surprised at all). Even though I was there for accumulatively 2 hours, til this moment, I don’t remember anything :D Yet attending a conference is not much about learning. It’s about socializing! I met my mentor Tianqing and was luckily PR-ed by him to many of his friends. I made 10+ new friends from his connection. I recognized that even though I am ready to approach people, doing so with strangers is still kind of weird. Mutual friends are still the best channel to make new friends!

Oh maybe I will not write in temporal order any more. It’s a bit boring and repetitive.

Another way to make new friends is to come to posters and booths. I learned that it’s better to have a context to start and maintain a conversation intellectually, or in general, come to where people are (ready or obligated) to talk with strangers. I had chances to talk with authors of many interesting papers (including the inspiring “Language Models with Rationality” from AI2), meeting a lot of my idols, Vietnamese fellows, and even some prospective Ph.D. supervisors.

Now I will talk about how to engage some supervisors. Yet I felt awkward when approaching two professors (I will not elicit the names though). The first is one Professor that I contacted the earliest among many professors for my Ph.D. application. I was so eager to meet him. Once I had a chance, I approached him immediately (with my mentor :D). We just said hi and I talked two sentences about my research and … he said some polite words, then switched back to his conversation. My mentor and I just stood next to them, listened, and contributed nothing to the conversation, as we didn’t know about that topic (yet. They talked about area chair duty in a conference, definitely I did not know anything). Although I learned a lot from these conversations, I also felt too shy to continue standing there, as I was just an audience, and the professor didn’t try to include me in the conversation (DEI problem :D). I met/saw him again the day after, but didn’t want to approach him again, as the same context happens - no guarantee of his willingness/obligation to talk with me. Also, I felt like exposing my wish to be his PhD student too early made me like a “simp lord” when trying to approach him again :)) (Yep, similar to the case that I exposed my love to someone too early that I felt trapped in the relationship while the girl was also hesitant when being approached by me. Indeed the feeling on my side is not important). I made the mistake again when I tried to approach one professor from VirginiaTech during the welcoming buffet night. After that, I promised myself that I would be more patient. Later in the conference, I approached one professor from UMass Amherst and followed the new strategy. I felt much more confident in front of him, as I wasn’t pressured to show something to him. In case I felt fine about myself, I would expose my willingness to become his PhD student, otherwise, I just said thank you and left him there. (I learned the same thing in love relationship as well :D)

Friends and Professors. Next, I will write about how to maintain a sufficient/high level of energy to attend the conference in several days. Nothing but “first having fun, then learning”, or “work hard play harder” :D. I learned that when I pressured myself to reach out to as many people as possible, I would be soon exhausted and discouraged to continue. It’s really about building a habit: if there is no reward for attending the conference, there is no point to continue being there. Reversely, if we always have fun/excitement at the conference, we will stick to the conference until the end. Knowing that, I didn’t pressure myself but rather just enjoy the conference: tired -> come to oral session and .. take a rest. Don’t need to focus on their talks! Boring -> go eating in coffee break :)). don’t want to talk -> just go around looking at people. Don’t need to talk! By doing so, I felt the conference home. I could virtually do whatever I wanted without being judged (by myself). In fact, I could sustain my energy level for a long time ~ the whole day, pretty surprising for me. At that moment, I knew that I no longer needed to worry about my energy source. I am full of energy! With that energy, I went around the poster hall, and had a chat with someone like Sophie Hao? (Prof, NYU), Samni (PhD UChicago), Vinh Q. Tran (Google), etc. Ah, I also learned skills to scan through a poster in a short time (not so sure how short it is :D probably 5 minutes, too slow huhu) - identify keywords in the title, and try to scan through the poster and determine which part will represent the keywords, along with searching for the task info and dataset. Maybe it will help me to scan through an 8-page long paper better!

I think that’s enough about skills. Now I should talk about other aspects - my impression of some people :) and relationship with lab mates. On the first day of the conference, I saw her as a volunteer. She has a mixture of beauties - including East Asia, Middle East, and Western. Of course, I will rank her the most beautiful girl at the conference. On the last day of the conference, she also served as a volunteer. As I wanted to be back in a working mood, I didn’t approach her but still walked around her twice to learn her name and university. Unluckily, I could only see her university (Colorado Boulder), while her name was printed in small font, so I couldn’t see it. I tried to find her through NLP labs in Colorado Boulder but failed @@ Such an experience! (Note to my future girlfriend/wife: It’s just something for me to gain energy :D I acknowledge her beauty, but I never fall in love with her or even think about it).

About my relationship with my labmates, this time, I am even closer to them. With a high level of energy, we talked a lot and played a lot, especially on the social event night when we explored Universal Studio together. Such an amazing night with a lot of roller-coaster-like games (I yelled a lot that I got a sore throat + flu in the next 4 days:/)

During this conference, I had a chance to meet and talk with my idol Chris Manning (Stanford), Thang Luong from Google DeepMind, etc. I met other Vietnamese fellows such as Professors from the US, Nanjing, and Singapore, or peers from Singapore and FPT Software. One sister asked me why I always look “vui vẻ” - happy, I said to her that if I didn’t feel happy, I would not be at the conference! Also, I made a joke (and somehow a truth) that EMNLP for me is like a Black Pink concert for my friends. I “đi đu idols” ~ come to meet idols!

The last day of the conference came. There is not much left, I just came to the conference to say goodbye to some friends (if any I met). But no one except one from HKUST but a different lab. Then I went back to the hotel and worked on my PhD application and other stuff. I also resumed my tradition of traveling - and went running. I ran to the cable car station on Imbiah mountain, then to the beach, and along the beach to Shangri-la Hotel (omg) and Fort Siloso. I went up to Sky Walker Bridge to reach the canon and viewed the whole port area of Singapore! Such a rich cultural experience.

We flew back to HK on Monday this week. My Korean lab mate made an analogy of an under-construction 12-storey building with BERT 12 layers, which truly reflected that we just came back from an NLP conference! For me, having the same aggression as the first day in Singapore, I decided to take the Duolingo English Test (as the conference trained my English decently). Before that, I only went through 3 practice tests, yep my confidence went high as I knew that my English cap. was at a peak :)) Luckily, I got the expected result (140/160 DET ~ 110 TOEFL iBT ~ 7.75 IELTS), and successfully apply to CMU :) Such a great trip and great for me!