Every semester our lab attends the KSC and KCC domestic computing conferences. This winter it was KSC — the Korea Software Congress (한국소프트웨어종합학술대회) — held 19–21 December 2018 at Phoenix Park in PyeongChang, Gangwon Province. Yes, the same PyeongChang that hosted the Winter Olympics back in February.
About KSC 2018#
KSC is organised by the Korea Information Science Society (한국정보과학회, KIISE), which runs two of these general conferences a year: KCC, the Korea Computer Congress (한국컴퓨터종합학술대회), in summer, and KSC in winter. Between them they’re the big annual gatherings for computer science researchers in Korea. Papers and keynotes are the official reason to go; catching up with people from other labs is the unofficial one.
This year’s run was three days and two nights at Phoenix Park. The conference chair was Han Jeong-hyeon (Korea University), with Kim Hyeong-seok (Konkuk University) as program chair and Han Moon-seok (Gangneung-Wonju National University) as organising chair. Sponsors included Samsung Electronics, the Gangwon Convention Bureau, LINE Plus, Kakao, Kookmin University’s College of Software Convergence, NAVER, Manycore Soft, and Signtel.
What was on#
The program had paper presentations across the usual CS domains, keynotes and invited lectures, tutorials, and workshops and special sessions — some introducing large-scale national research projects. There was also a LINE X KIISE blockchain competition, an SW implementation/demo competition where undergrads and grad students show off what they’ve built, and exhibition and recruitment booths for anyone job hunting. Accepted papers are published in the conference proceedings (논문집), and the top 10% of accepted papers and presentations get recommended for journal publication, which is a decent carrot.
For a grad student, the real value is seeing what every other lab in the country is working on, all in one place. And snowy PyeongChang is not a bad spot to do it.
The official KSC 2018 website is here.