ECCV 2020 Daily - Thursday

2 General co-Chair 1 Robert Fisher is the Professor of Computer Vision in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, where he has been on staff for almost 40 years. This year, he is aGeneral co-Chair at ECCV 2020, alongside Vittorio Ferrari, Cordelia Schmid and Emanuele Trucco. Bob, thank you for speaking to us. As one of the General Chairs for this year’s event, can you tell us a bit about the process that has got us here? Yes, it has been keeping me awake days and nights for much of the last year! It was about four and a half years ago that we started the process of bidding for the conference. Originally it was intended to be in Edinburgh. At that time, ECCV typically had about 1,000– 1,400 delegates, and the Edinburgh Conference Centre could take 1,800 delegates. Then it grew a little bit. Then there was that overflow room that we could use with a video connection and that could get us up to about 3,000. Since then, the field of computer vision has really exploded. Particularly because of the success of deep net technology and the many ways one could apply it. Observing what happened at first AmsterdamandthenMunich,wedecided to move the conference to Glasgow, which has an Exhibition Centre that can take up to 6,000 delegates. We were all set for that then coronavirus came along, and the Scottish Government turned the Exhibition Centre into an emergency hospital. Ultimately, we are still in the middle of the pandemic, so delegates would not have been able to travel anyway. How many participants do we have this year? Currently registrations are at 4,600. Do you have a message for participants who are attending their very first conference, but are missing out on the in-person experience we all treasure? That is an interesting question. We do have a couple of innovations that they would not have experienced had it been a traditional live conference, so there are some benefits. One of the important things about these conferences is meeting people andmaking connections. For junior researchers, it is a chance to meet with some of the more senior DAILY T h u r s d a y