VTC 2011 Spring – General Comments

The Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC) 2011 Spring was held in Budapest, Hungary. Some comments about the technical presentations given in VTC, I would say that once again I confirmed that a bad presentation can really decrease the general impression of a paper. Generally, presentation skills are not strong in most of the PhD students. It is very common that presenters just talk to themselves or give unnecessary details which make it difficult to follow. In the sessions I attended, 8 out of 20 papers were presented by another colleague who literally read a script. Personally, I think even if you are not the author, you can still make a good presentation with some preparation. In my opinion, we (PhD students) should constantly improve the way we present our work and make our best for international conferences so our research can be better appreciated.
I would also like to comment on the good things of VTC 2011, the plenary talks included not only academic views but also industry’s views about the current reality and future of wireless systems. The conference started last Monday with two plenary talks given by Ericsson and Huawei, they both talk about important research challenges. Energy efficiency and High data rates networks were outlined for both speakers as key research areas. More details about the plenary talks can be found in previous post. I had the impression that, particularly, energy efficiency is becoming more and more important for the telecommunication industry. However, the research status in this hot topic is still immature. This is a very good opportunity for all researchers and PhD students in this area; I wouldn’t be surprised if very soon we will have conferences only on Energy Efficient like DySPAN for Dynamic Spectrum Access.
Another good thing was the organization of the event, we got the opportunity to visit traditional Hungarian places, to taste some traditional Hungarian food, to listen very good music and to view a very impressive Hungarian horse show.