Feedback from SSMS 2006, held in Kallithea, Greece

In 2006, the first Summer School on Multimedia Semantics was organised by the Informatics & Telematics Institute, Greece. It turned out to be a great success. Find here some feedback given by participants and lecturers, published in the Second Newsletter of K-Space.

Participants' Feedback

"For me this event was great opportunity to meet people from all over the Europe who are researchers in similar field under very friendly and unofficial conditions." - Jan Nemrava, Czech Republic

"The SSMS '06 was a great experience and I would strongly recommend this type of summer school." - Mari Partio, Finland

"The summer school filled in this lack of knowledge and gave me a look inside the kitchen of people working on both sides of the gap." - Michiel Hildebrand, The Netherlands

The first of Summer Schools on Multimedia Semantics - Analysis, Annotation, Retrieval and Applications 2006 (SSMS 2006) series took place on a beautiful place near village Kallithea on Chalkidiki peninsula in Greece from 4th to 9th of September 2006. It was organized by the Multimedia Knowledge Group of the Informatics and Telematics Institute and was technically and financially supported by the aceMedia and K-Space projects.
Over 80 participants most of them PhD and MSc students, coming from more than 20 different countries and 11 lecturers spent wonderful week in Palini Beach Hotel to meet each other and exchange their experiences. The daily program started mostly at 9 and ended around 6 or 7 PM and it was divided into two blocks of 3 hours long lectures. One in the morning and one after the lunch break. The topics covered most issues in Multimedia Semantics like multimedia processing and analysis techniques and systems, ontologies and reasoning for multimedia, information retrieval and user interfaces. The first two days provided very thorough introduction into the research fields which are connected with Multimedia Semantics. There were a poster sessions at the end of a lecture program during the first three days,which allowed students to present their current work and receive useful feedback from their colleagues from the same field as well as the from the lecturers who were always around available to answer any question. Beside the educational part of this stay there were also three social events with the aim to make friends within participants not only for potential future cooperation. We experienced an excursion to a traditional Greek village, dinner by the sea and Greek night, with traditional food, traditional music and dancing show.
During our stay in Greece it was announced that next Summer School will be organized by Glasgow University and it will be held Glasgow. I am already looking forward to the call for participation because I would be very happy to attend this event next year as well.
For me this event was great opportunity to meet people from all over the Europe who are researchers in similar field under very friendly and unofficial conditions.The organization was perfect; ITI did a really great work.
Jan Nemrava, UEP, Czech Republic

The summer school provided us with a good overview of the whole field, presenting various topics, projects, and techniques. Thanks to the poster presentations the participants also came across the work of other students in the field. The event turned out to be an excellent starting point for newbie and it would be useful to complement this school with another one focused more technically allowing a hands-on experience.
Vaclav Novak, MFF UK, Czech Republic

Most important thing at the SSMS'06 was the possibility to meet new people with similar or related background. Lectures were also interesting and useful, although some overlap between the lecture topics could have been removed. A poster session for the students was a good idea, it provided a chance to discuss research problems together and get some feedback. Some more space for the posters would have been good to have, now the sessions were bit too crowded. Venue itself and organized free time activities provided a good possibility to get to know participants better.
The SSMS'06 was a great experience and I would strongly recommend this type of summer school.
Mari Partio, Tampere University, Finland

Although I am working on a project with semantics and multimedia and heard about the semantic gap my understanding of it remained superficial. The summer school filled in this lack of knowledge and gave me a look inside the kitchen of people working on both sides of the gap.
The poster sessions were very useful to get acquainted with other peoples work. I guess more live demos would increase this. I would also like to see related demos and frameworks available all over the place. I am very much in favor of not forcing students to work on a project or exercise. However, it would be great if the environment inspired the students to start working on things themselves. I think if there would be software available (not only from participants) students could create their own mash-ups and get hands-on experience with multimedia semantics.
Michiel Hildebrand, CWI, The Netherlands

Lecturers' Feedback

I arrived at the summer school expecting to see a bunch of very exhausted students. I had planned a not too intensive session on my topic, with appropriate breaks. As it turned out, I was addressing an audience of highly motivated, extremely well informed students who had been listening to stories from "both sides of the fence" all week, and had absorbed enough to not only assimilate what I was telling them, but also come up with extremely good questions which had me thinking hard on my feet.
I found it a great audience to teach and there was plenty of "buzz" in the room. The future of multimedia semantics is safe in their hands ...
Lynda Hardman, CWI, The Netherlands

Contrary to most other summer schools it is an event that builds bridges between very different domains - domains that are needed in order to solve the problem of the semantic gap the school was also about defining the subject.
The titles of the talks looked/sounded all the same - but indeed covered very different topics. The posters contributed by the students showed advanced ideas for tackling issues around the semantic gap.
Steffen Staab, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany