Confessions of a researchaholic

See here for the related post about how to do a rebuttal.

Again, this is mostly for SIGGRAPH, but likely applicable for other publication venues.

My answer is absolutely yes, for a very simple reason: the amount of time and efforts you spend on rebuttal will be a small percentage of what you have spent in submitting the paper (4 days versus months if not years). Thus, you have everything to gain, and little to lose.

More reasons:

. Review is a highly stochastic and unpredictable process, and nobody knows what is going to happen. I have seen papers with strong rating (e.g. > 4) rejected, and weak rating (e.g. < 2.8) accepted. (And yes, both are mine. And I was told the latter is a SIGGRAPH record.) . Not submitting a rebuttal is usually perceived by reviewers as a (negative) sign that authors agree with their (negative) comments. . Rebuttal is a good practice for both research method and emotion control, especially for students, junior researchers, and myself. . Show you get balls. As a reviewer I admire authors who can manage to come up with strong rebuttal even for a paper with low ratings.

As someone spending the first decade of career in the industry and the second in the academia, I am naturally very positive towards students taking internships. I can see several main benefits:

. Learning; especially for practical stuff that is very hard or impossible to obtain in school. One of the key lessons I got from NVIDIA is that “ideas that work in the academia usually do not work in practice”.

. Networking; you can know more people, many of who may turn out to be good mentors, friends, or referrals/references for your future career development.

. Experience; I particularly encourage internships in another country, culture, or continent. People with broader life experiences tend to be smarter, happier, more tolerant, and more creative. Or simply put, better.

However, not every internship is beneficial. I usually only recommend opportunities that (1) are with top companies/groups/individuals in our disciplines, such as MSR, NVIDIA, Adobe, Autodesk, and Disney for graphics or HCI, (2) provide projects that fit your research direction, and (3) allow my participation and (better) can be continued after the end of the internship (these will benefit everyone involved). So, I will not recommend internships with non-top hosts, coding/implementation projects involving little research, or secret topics that cannot lead to publications.

The main point of internship is for your learning, not for making money, which is the purpose of work, which you will have plenty opportunities to practice after you graduate. The distinction between work and internship is very important, and I will not allow part time jobs during your study.

About qualification: because I only work with top people, I can recommend only students whom I consider qualified; otherwise the student will either not get the internship, or (worse) not perform up to the expectation, which benefits nobody. So, just like my general principle of being the best, make sure you perform well with me, and having some SIGGRAPH/CHI papers definitely cannot hurt.
🙂

I am explaining this in the context of research/academic job hunting, but similar principles can be applied to other situations.

The effectiveness E of a particular individual as your reference can be expressed by the following equation:
E = wcQ
, where w is the weight of the individual, c the strength of the connection, and Q the quality of the recommendation.

In particular:

. w is the weight of that individual in the particular field you are applying your job for. A nobody has a weight with absolute value close to 0, while a bigwig has weight with absolutely value close to 1. Note the mention of absolute value; the weight can be positive as well as negative. (Think about having Charles Darwin as reference for a scientific versus theological post.)

. c is the strength of connection between you and that individual, a real number between 0 (e.g. you do not really know each other) and 1 (e.g. the two of you fought in the same foxhole during WWII).

. Q is the quality of recommendation, a real number between -1 (e.g. you did not realize you actually pissed off that guy) and 1 (e.g. you wrote a 1000+ citation paper with your PhD adviser).

Your job is to identify individuals who can give you sufficiently large E values. Thus, do not ask people who are not very successful (near 0 w) or (worse) are archenemies with the institution you are applying for (negative w), who barely know you (weak c), or who are too busy (near 0 Q) or too pissed (negative Q) to write good recommendation.

You want a reasonable number of large positive E values.
The definition of *reasonable number* is application dependent (pun intended), but I would say 5 is about right for a research/academic job, 3 will be a bit too weak, and you probably do not need more than 7 unless you are applying for a senior position.
Also, make sure your E values are all sufficiently large and positive; having a bunch of weak E will not help, and can give the impression that you have difficulty finding good references.

Last but not least, ask and obtain consensus from people before listing them as your references. It can be very impolite, and downright dangerous, if you do not do so.

If you feel these are all common senses, you will be surprised by how many people commit the very basic mistakes.

A more comprehensive post can be found here.

Main point

Spend most (if not all) the time networking. Reason: meeting with people is the main feature of a conference, and the only thing that is hard to manage otherwise.

Every other conference activity should facilitate networking.
For example, I listen in technical paper sessions not because I have to (it is more efficient for me to read the papers at home); rather, I just want to compliment and chat with the speakers after their presentations.
I also like to see stuff far away from what I usually do, like animations and artistic sessions. I have met some very interesting people there, and got some useful inspirations for my work.

Below are more detailed points.

What (and what not) to say

A simple rule of thumb is to say only positive things. It can hardly go wrong. Humans like to be complimented, and I have never failed to hook up conversations with authors by saying how much I like their work. If you want to engage the conversation further, ask open-end high-level questions, like potential future works. Questions about details tend to make authors retreating inwards for answers rather than outwards towards you.

Demography

It is part of human nature for older people to like to talk to younger people, males to like to talk to females, and mortals to like to talk to nice-looking or charismatic folks. So, if you are a minority relative to the aggregate conference demography, e.g. nice-looking young female attending a computer science conference (which tends to be attended by people who are not very nice-looking, not very young, and not exactly female), you will naturally get more attention. Use this to your advantage. See that 70 year old Turing award winner standing in the buffet line who seems quite intimidating? Walk to him and ask about advices, and you will be surprised by how nice and talkative he turns out to be.

Conference size

If the conference is small, like no more than a few hundred people, try to talk to everyone. Most conferences belong to this category. Personally, I like these small venues because they feel kind of cozy.

If the conference is large, like SIGGRAPH, then it depends on your demography (see above). I usually try catching up with everyone I know first, and if time permits, knowing new folks that I find interesting.
Below is a rough sketch of my algorithm:

function UponBumpingInto(Guy guy)

if(I am already done talking to guy)
  do everything to avoid another long talk without being impolite;
else if(I already know guy or guy is important)
  chat with him/her;
else if(guy seems funky and I am not in a rush)
  chat with him/her;
else
  appear to be rushing to a session or occupied by an important phone message;
endif

There are two-by-two main factors to consider here: what [you, your competitors] x [want to do (interest and passion), can do (knowledge and capability)]. The goal is to find a combination that can best satisfy your happiness and productivity. There is no right answer, as it is highly individual dependent, e.g. how smart you are and how fast you can learn.

Personally, I just stick to the interests of my collaborators and myself, and let our knowledge serve as natural constraints.

If possible, try to work on subjects that you are really interested in. You will be happier and more productive, and I will be motivated to learn new things. I would prefer you to tell me what you are interested in, and I will try to come up with projects that can fit our interests and backgrounds. I can pull this off (as demonstrated in my publications), and I know it is very uncommon as most other mentors would prefer you to work on their stuff.

There are other factors to consider, like importance or fashion. But importance is often obvious only in hindsight and many ground breaking discoveries are incidental. While fashion can change, and often very fast, especially in a science/technology field. If you simply pick a hot topic that you are not really interested in, you will lose everything if it becomes not so hot later. By sticking to your passion, you will at least have fun at the end of the day.

To best answer this question, it helps to understand the goal.

The main goal for obtaining a research degree is to help you land the best possible next position, either a job or degree, as well as your long term career development.
Both depend primarily upon your research ability as reflected on your publication record, and, to a lesser degree, the connection of your adviser.

Thus, you need to find an adviser who can best help you publish top papers and connect to top people in your fields.
For the former, look at your potential adviser’s publications. Are they of high quality and high impact? Never follow an adviser who does not have a very strong publication record, even in a top school. You will be much better off with a prestigious publication record from a less prestigious school than the other way around.
For the latter, look at your potential adviser’s collaborators, e.g. paper co-authors. Are they reputable researchers with diverse backgrounds (e.g. some working in academia while others in industry, and located in different geographies)?

For multiple advisers with similar qualifications, look at how strong their overall groups are. For example, if you want to do graphics, look at the graphics group of the potential adviser. Pick one that is stronger overall, e.g. with more and stronger faculties or publications.

Talk to the former and current students of the professors to understand their styles and personalities. If you cannot get along with your adviser, you are unlikely to be happy or productive. Judge the validity of the feedback though; for example, a weak student might unfairly complain that the adviser is too demanding.

Then, look at the geographic location of the school. You want to be close to the industry (job/internship opportunities) and have a good life while grinding away at your study.

The ranking or reputation of the department or school should be the last criterion, or when you do not have any idea what you want to do. In this case, go to Stanford if you can.

I operate in a continuous and asynchronous fashion through mechanisms such as svn paper drafts and Google sites, due to how my brain works and the fact that I travel all the time and my collaborators are all over the world.

I do not like discrete and synchronous meetings as practiced by almost everyone else. My brain works on all projects all the time, so discrete sync points actually reduce my productivity. (It is analogous to have the entire Royal Navy fleet converge onto the tiny island of Gibraltar.) I also do not find face-to-face meetings very effective, as people tend to think with their mouths rather than their brains.

(My personal experience is that relying on face-to-face meetings is a clear sign of the brain not being able to cope with the tasks, either due to an inferior former or an overwhelming latter.)

Consequently, you can work anytime anywhere you like.
What matters is your output productivity, not your input efforts.
I am an expert on remote collaboration (and some even think I can read minds). Most of my co-authors are located in different continents and time-zones from me. In at least one case, I did not even meet the first author until after the paper was accepted. This also eliminates the facility and environment issues; if you do not like the office, you can work elsewhere.
You should never need to complain to me about work environment issues.