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International Conference on
Machine Learning and Data Mining MLDM´2007


Report about MLDM´2007

Victor´s Residenz Hotel Leipzig/Germany
July 18-20, 2007

Mehmed Kantardzic, Professor at the Computer Engineering and Computer Science Department, Speed School of Engineering, University of Louisville, USA

Poster MLDM´2005

The International Conference on Machine Learning and Data Mining was held this year in Leipzig, Germany, from July 18 to 20. It was organized by the Institute of Computer Vision and Applied Computer Sciences, IBaI Leipzig, and it is becoming traditional event with Leipzig as a host city. As the author and participant at the conference, I would like to give you my impressions about the conference and the time spent in Leipzig.

I arrived in Leipzig on Tuesday, July 17, in the late afternoon hours. After a long and boring trip it was refreshing to meet kind and smiling people at the hotel reception and especially at the conference desk. Short registration, and the proceedings (Springer, LNAI # 4751) is ready; it is a part of conference materials. I recalled the discussion with one of my colleagues back at home. He organized several conferences and always complained that one of the most difficult tasks is to prepare the proceedings on time and in the decent, professional and technically correct form. The organizers, with Dr. Petra Perner as the chair, made an excellent job for MLDM´07 selecting about 26% of submitted papers (66 out of 256) and preparing the proceedings with the highest quality. Of course, the authors of published papers made their contributions to the final success. If you are in the field of data mining, I am sure you will find something interesting in the proceedings: from trends in theory to recent applications, from support vector machines and new techniques for feature extraction to spam mining and intrusion detection systems. Additional poster proceeding shows how seriously the conference is organized. My first impression was that it will be a pleasant ambient for all participants and good content of professional topics.

But, the ambient is not only Victor´s hotel and proceedings. Leipzig offers much more. This first day I went out to walk around the downtown. When you are first time in the city the question is where to go? Yes, there are some nice coffee shops and restaurants, but we researchers are spoiled and we want more. In front of me is the old St. Thomas church where Johan Sebastian Bach has worked for more than 20 years. What luck! That night it was organized a concert in the church, Bach´s Mass in h-Moll. Bach´s city, Bach´s church, and Bach´s music, that was really a beautiful introduction for tomorrow´s conference.

new city hall

MLDM is a relatively small conference with a single track oral sessions. In my opinion that is an advantage especially when you have rigorous selection of high quality papers. I recall many good and large conferences where after the session you are lost and alone. The participants at MLDM are most of the time together: during the sessions, during coffee and lunch breaks, during social events in the evening. It is valuable to hear what our colleagues are presenting, but I believe it is much more important to exchange the ideas and establish professional contacts during these less formal events. That is what we will remember about the conference; usually not specific paper at specific session but new ideas and new friendships. Wait a minute; I am not against formal sessions. This time during MLDM´07 I will remember our challenging discussions with Dr. Haralick about principles of data mining and validation of data mining results. Discussion time during the session was not enough, so we continued during the coffee break and later.

I enjoyed the MLDM´07 conference, and I wish even better MLDM´09. See you in Leipzig in 2009.

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