During the 23-25th of October I was the youngest member of the team that represented KTH at the ITS conference in Florence. Being a freshly graduated Master student, ITS was my first conference to attend. And this was a major stress factor. Now, when it’s ended, all I can say is that it wasn’t that scary as I expected but rather a very enjoyable experience.
It started on Sunday afternoon in the lobby of a beautiful hotel in Florence with the welcome reception. This was the perfect moment to enter in the conference atmosphere by chatting with different other participants. An unexpected surprise came from the organizers’ side when we found out that the conference’s schedule was changed. But I was lucky, and my presentation was still scheduled for the second conference day, so enough time to attend different other presentations in order to get used with the conference.
On Monday morning, in a beautiful old building built on the hills surrounding Florence, the conference was officially declared opened by Erik Bohlin, ITS Chairman. During the following three days different parallel sessions were hold on topics like Spectrum, Digital Services, Mobile Services or Regulation Issues.
My presentation about Wi-Fi and smallcells and their complementing capacities for the macrocell deficits was scheduled in the Mobile parallel session. In the beginning of my presentation I was a little stressed but after the first minutes all emotions vanished. In the end I was happy to find out that other participants are involved also in the mobile data offloading area, my presentation leading to an interesting discussion among the participants.
All in all I can say that this was a very interesting experience and I would encourage all Master students to attend at least one conference in their life.
Below you can find a picture with the whole KTH team during the last dinner in Florence.
