Month: March 2013

Phew. There’s only one day to go before the call for abstracts closes, but with a burst of posts in the last couple of days, I finally managed to complete the list of 9 reasons to visit NetSci this year. This post summarizes and lists all 9 reasons (although it’d be great if you could read them all) – hoping to convince you that you absolutely need to head on over and submit a 1-page abstract on your most recent fun result … so you can join in on the fun. The very best reason to go, is all the interesting, intelligent, and creative people you will meet in Copenhagen.

• Reason 1. The venue. Check out the post – the pictures speak for themselves.
• Reason 2. The NetSci school. Amazing speakers (headlined by A-L Barabasi) and great tutorials on NetworkX, Gephi, and Mathematica.
• Reason 3. Brand new types of talks. In addition to the good old fashioned talks, we’re also doing plenary Ignite Sessions and Young Investigator talks.
• Reason 4. Publisher session. We’ll have a session where publishers from NPG and APS (among others) will tell you how to write the papers they want to see.
• Reason 5. The superb list of satellite workshops. Speaks for itself.
• Reason 6. The NetSci Dinner will be delicious and feature fine wines.
• Reason 7. The snarky/silly reason. My (partially failing) attempt to be funny with movie references. (Help from Mason Porter improved this post.)
• Reason 8. The updated NetSci look is beautiful and due to Chair of Design, Isabel Meirelles (and Petter).
• Reason 9. Great group of invited speakers. Who will entertain you and make you smarter while they’re at it.

And check out the brand new poster for more info + don’t forget to retweet, +1, put on mailing lists, and so on.

The 9th and final reason is an obvious one (but after all, probably still the best reason for attending the conference). And don’t forget that the call for abstracts closes tomorrow! So head over and submit an abstract (if you haven’t done so already).

Reason 9: Great list of invited speakers

This year we’ve managed to convince an amazing group of keynotes and invited speakers to participate. I can’t wait to see all of them – and hear what they’ve been up to since last year! Here’s the list (in the official NetSci design).

And that’s it folks, this concludes the series – and don’t forget to check out the other reasons to visit NetSci 2013 if you haven’t seen them yet.

• Reason 1. The venue
• Reason 2. The NetSci school
• Reason 3. Brand new types of talks
• Reason 4. Publisher session
• Reason 5. The superb list of satellite workshops
• Reason 6. The NetSci Dinner
• Reason 7. The snarky/silly reason
• Reason 8. Updated NetSci look

We’re nearing the end of the list of reasons to go to NetSci (and the call for abstracts ends this friday, so go and submit something!). This 8th reason is not so much a specific reason to go to Copenhagen. Rather, it is an example of how we’ve tried to rethink & rework every aspect of the conference, how we’ve done our best to make it the best conference we possibly could.

Reason 8: Re-designed graphics & logo

While I love the classic NetSci design pictured below, Petter and I agreed that it might be time to update the NetSci look.

Along with chair of design, Isabel Meirelles, we set out to update the look. The first draft was a bit simpler than what we ended up with, but amazing all the same. Take a look:

The motivation came from Isabel, based on a visual idea from Sebastian Ahnert’s talk at the NetSci 2012, she noted

This is the version we went with – and if you look closely, you’ll see that the colors in this year’s logo represent the colors seen in the scandinavian flags. The logo itself also went through many iterations of input from Petter and Isabel, here are some of the intermediate versions

Isabel’s rationale on the final design is worth reproducing in full:

When I started the “Nine reasons” series of posts, I had planned a single Letterman top-ten style “silly” reason. I’d forgotten, however, that the general NetSci audience is a clever bunch, so I was a little bit disappointed (but also impressed) when I posted “Reason 1”, and Mason Porter saw that one coming a mile away. In a comment, he noted

No Letterman-style ‘Top Ten’ list in the traditional reverse order? And one or two of the reasons should be snarky, of course. E.g. ‘Reason number 5: “Three words: Zachary Karate Club” ‘

Beating me to the punch (and with a better joke).

My original silly reason was

Petter and I paid for everything using my mom’s credit card, so we
need your registration money or I’ll be grounded for NetSci 2014.

But I kind of revealed that one in my answer to Mason, so I’ve had to come up with new material.

Reason 7: Ok, the snarky/silly reasons.

Here’s what I have so far – the jokes are pretty weak, so please forgive me.

Rules of NetSci:

• First rule of NetSci. Submit an abstract to NetSci.
• Second rule of NetSci. SUBMIT an abstract to NetSci.
• Third rule of NetSci: If someone says “stop” or goes limp, taps out the talk is over.
• Fourth rule of NetSci: Only approximately one person to a talk.
• Fifth rule of NetSci: One talk at a time (unless it’s a parallel session).
• Sixth rule of NetSci: Wear a shirts, and shoes.
• Seventh rule of NetSci: Talk will stay strictly within time limits.
• Eighth rule of NetSci: If this is your first NetSci, you HAVE to talk.

Another good reason to go is that on the first day of a NetSci conference, Laszlo can’t deny any request. (But some day, and that day may never come, he may call upon you to do a service for him. But until that day, consider his justice a gift on the first day of NetSci).

Stay tuned for the remaining two (serious) reasons – and don’t forget to check out the other reasons to visit NetSci 2013.

• Reason 1. The venue
• Reason 2. The NetSci school
• Reason 3. Brand new types of talks
• Reason 4. Publisher session
• Reason 5. The superb list of satellite workshops
• Reason 6. The NetSci Dinner

In today’s list of reasons that you should head over to the NetSci website and submit an abstract right away (the deadline is this friday people!), we change focus away from the academic reasons and turn our attention to the culinary reasons.

Reason 6: The NetSci dinner

Copenhagen is know for food. The world’s best restaurant, Noma, is located in Copenhagen, and we even have Thai restaurants here with Michelin stars. This year, the NetSci dinner reflects that fact. We’re having the dinner in University of Copenhagen’s (not too shabby) Banquet Hall, pictured below,

and the dinner will feature uncompromising French cuisine created by the renowned Chef Francis Cardenau, from the Le Sommelier. We’re even in negotiation to have fine wines included in the dinner price.

And don’t forget to check out the other reasons to visit NetSci 2013.

• Reason 1. The venue
• Reason 2. The NetSci school
• Reason 3. Brand new types of talks
• Reason 4. Publisher session
• Reason 5. The superb list of satellite workshops

Stay tuned for more good reasons.

Now that the weekend is over, it’s back to the reasons I think you should head straight over to the NetSci 2013 website and submit an abstract. The call ends on Friday, so there’s no time to waste.

Reason 5: Amazing list of satellite workshops

This year, the number of satellite workshops has increased significantly, and I sincerely think we’re in for a treat. With many angles on temporal & dynamic networks, plus many other exciting topics, this is the place to be, if you’re interested in where the field of network science is headed. And the satellites are right next to the NetSci school, so you can switch back and forth, if you want to attend a satellite workshop, but you just can’t miss that tutorial on NetworkX.

You can find full info on the satellites here, but I’ve also reproduced the (impressive) list below.

Monday (June 3, 2013)

• Networks over Time
  Organizers: Rickard Coster, Niloy Ganguly, Balaraman Ravindran, Subramanian Shivashankar, Samarth Swarup
• Networks of Networks: Systemic Risk and Infrastructural Interdependencies
  Organizers: Antonio Scala, Gregorio D’Agostino, Guido Caldarelli, Stefano Battiston
• Human Behaviour and Network Science
  Organizers: Janos Kertesz, Rosario N. Mantegna
• Language and Network Science
  Organizers: Gareth Baxter, Alexander Mehler
• Network Science in Education
  Organizers: Stephen Uzzo, Hiroki Sayama, Catherine Cramer, Peter Pollner, H. Eugene Stanley, Paul Trunfio
• Network Medicine: Future of Disease Genomics and Healthcare
  Organizers: Amitabh Sharma, Yang-Yu Liu, David Gomez-Cabrero
• Temporal and Dynamic Networks: From Data to Models – Day 1
  Organizers: Vittoria Colizza, Chiara Poletto, Alain Barrat, Bruno Gonçalves, Luis Rocha, Renaud Lambiotte, Jari Saramaki, Esteban Moro
• State-Topology Coevolution in Adaptive Networks
  Organizers: Hiroki Sayama, Thilo Gross
• Multiple Network Modeling, Analysis and Mining
  Organizers: Guido Caldarelli, Michele Coscia, Przemysław Kazienko, Matteo Magnani, Dino Pedreschi, Luca Rossi
• Dynamic Networks: Theory and Applications in Information and Communication Networks
  Organizers: Maarten van Steen, Yamir Moreno, Frank Schweitzer

Tuesday (June 4, 2013)

• Networks of Networks: Systemic Risk and Infrastructural Interdependencies (continued)
  Organizers: Antonio Scala, Gregorio D’Agostino, Guido Caldarelli, Stefano Battiston
• Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks
  Organizers: Maximilian Schich, Isabel Meirelles, Roger Malina
• Network Models in Cellular Regulation
  Organizer: Erzsébet Ravasz Regan
• Complex Networks meets Machine Learning
  Organizers: Morten Mørup, Mikkel N. Schmidt, Tue Herlau, Lars Kai Hansen
• Temporal and Dynamic Networks: From Data to Models – Day 2
  Organizers: Vittoria Colizza, Chiara Poletto, Alain Barrat, Bruno Gonçalves, Luis Rocha, Renaud Lambiotte, Jari Saramaki, Esteban Moro
• Social Dynamics
  Organizers: Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, Coco Krumme, Chaoming Song, Dashun Wang

And don’t forget to check out the other reasons to visit NetSci 2013.

• Reason 1. The venue
• Reason 2. The NetSci school
• Reason 3. Brand new types of talks
• Reason 4. Publisher session

Stay tuned for more reasons!

With only one week left for submissions, the list of reasons to visit NetSci continues. This time announcing an exciting event that’s not even on the conference site yet.

Reason 4: Publisher Session

On Thursday night we’re having a special publisher session. The idea is to give editors a chance to speak to authors about their journals – what they’re looking for in terms content & scientific writing.

Wow. With all those superlatives in use for reason 1 and reason 2, I’m beginning to worry that the excitement of those posts might have the whole set of “Reasons to go to NetSci” posts peaking too soon. But we have so many good reasons to go – and only a few days left before the call for papers closes (last day is March 15th), so there’s no turning back now. (If you think Jony Ive was laying it on think in all those apple ads wait till you’ve read all of these nine reasons.)

Reason 3: Brand new types of contributed talks

Ignite Session: While the traditional parallel sessions are great, sometimes you just want a bigger audience … to be heard by the entire NetSci audience. Well, this year we’ve added a new element, a session of Ignite talks, which will allow many more of you to reach everyone at NetSci.

The basic idea of the Ignite format is that presenters focus on the central idea/result driving their research using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of just five minutes. Getting through 20 slides in 15 minutes requires practice and creative thinking, but also results in quick, enlightening talks designed to draw out the essence of a topic. Finally, the Ignite event will be open to the public, so we expect a large audience with lots of visitors for Friday afternoon.

Young researchers session: In addition to the Erdös-Renyi Prize (read more about that here), NetSci also has a prize to the best young (postdoc or graduate student) speaker. This year we’ll pre-select six candidates for that prize who will present their work to the full NetSci audience in the main room, in a special 10 min format. We hope that this will allow the work of these promising young researchers to be seen by as many people as possible – and inspire the young researchers to give great talks.

Dont forget to check out the other posts in this series

• Reason 1
• Reason 2

And stay tuned for more good reasons.

Following up on past promises, here’s reason two that I think NetSci 2013 is going to excellent.

Reason 2: The NetSci School

This year, the NetSci school is going to be something special. So even if you’re not yet a bona fide network science insider who’s wise to inside jokes about Zachary’s Karate Club, NetSci 2013 is going to be a great conference to visit – a great place to learn about networks and network analysis.

Great school lecturers: First of all, the big man – godfather of netsci – László Barabási himself will teach at the school, taking his amazing (and free) new textbook about network science on the road. Also teaching at the school: monsieur Renaud Lambiotte and sensei Naoki Masuda who’ll be address the sizzling hot topics of multiplexity and dynamics in complex networks

Update your programming skills: Secondly, we’ve included tutorials on some of the programming languages and visualization tools most important to network science. So even if you’re a seasoned researcher, the school will have something for you. And to put it humbly, I think we’ve managed to get the best of the best:

• Aric Hagberg will talk about NetworkX. NetworkX is a Python language software package for the creation, manipulation, and study of the structure, dynamics, and functions of complex networks. Besides being Deputy Director for the theoretical division of the Center for Nonlinear Studies at LANL, Aric is the primary developer of NetworkX, so we’re in for a treat.
• Sébastien Heymann will lead the tutorial on Gephi, an open source interactive visualization and exploration software for complex networks. Sébastien is a leader of the Gephi project and the administrator of the Gephi Consortium. He will include coverage of the newest version’s ability to analyze and visualize evolving networks, so that one shouldn’t be missed.
• Finally, Charles Pooh will address the new Network Science tools in Wolfram Research‘s Mathematica. Charles is is a senior kernel developer at Wolfram and in charge of the graph theory package (among other things) in Mathematica. Mathematica’s tools for networks have received a major upgrade in the past few years, so Charles’ tutorial is sure to blow a mind or two.

I’m a huge fan of everything above, so I couldn’t be more excited for everyone to experience the school.

Reason 2.1: The school venue

We’ll have the school at DTU, the Technical University of Denmark. in the Oticon Hall, see below.

As you might be able to make out, that’s another great venue – and has the added benefit of being right next to the satellite workshops. The fact that everything is in one place means that you’ll be able to move back and forth between the school and satellites – and we hope that this will make the first two days of the conference will feel like a truly integrated part of the conference (with everyone being able to grab lunch in the same area, etc). So don’t wait – go and register right now.

And don’t forget to check out part one of this series.

Ok, so this June we’re having the NetSci conference right here in Copenhagen. Registration is now open and the call for paper closes on March 15th. So in these last few days leading up to that deadline, I’m going to list some of what I think are the main reasons that you should dust off your danish phrase books, submit your most exciting work, and head right over to your favorite online travel agent to book a ticket to go to NetSci this year!

Reason 1: The venue

This year’s venue is simply spectacular. It’s the kind of place that makes you feel like a better person just for showing up. The architecture of the Danish Royal Library (where we’re having the conference) is breathtaking, and you’ll be surrounded by (to mention a couple of random examples) original handwritten Kierkegaard manuscripts and Bohr’s notes and journals.

To provide you all with a sense of how amazing this space is going to be, I’ve included a few photos:

And the interior is spectacular as well:

And the venue is, of course, just the beginning – we have many more pleasant surprises planned. Stay tuned for Reason 2.

IMAGE CREDITS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE):

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/snorri/158763944/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/heilemann/6506528/
• http://www.photosight.org/photo.php?photoid=92235
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/16nine/2679547688/
• http://www.photosight.org/photo.php?photoid=81798
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/janlykke/3973906292/