I am … unhindered by talent

Regular readers here will likely remember various past posts extolling the virtues of Dagstuhl, this really wonderful computing research facility in Germany. I’ve been lucky enough to attend several seminars on the Theory of Evolutionary Algorithms in the past, and have taken (and posted) quite a few photos from those trips.

A few months ago I had the (totally) unexpected pleasure of being contacted by Christian Lindig, a member of Dagstuhl’s scientific staff, and asked if I would be willing to return to Dagstuhl for the specific purpose of taking photographs for them. They’re apparently in the process of re-doing all their brochures and such, and liked what they’d seen on Flickr.

As a result I’ve spent a very pleasant few days back at Dagstuhl in some gorgeous spring weather (I’ve only every been here in the winter before), enjoying the company of a fine group studying the Design and Analysis of Randomized and Approximation Algorithms. (They’ve been very patient with an intruder who always seemed to be waving a camera about, and for this I am grateful.)

I’ve taken something over 1,000 photos, with a few more planned for tomorrow morning before I leave. Some of the participants have asked if the photos will be made available. I have uploaded everything I’ve taken this week to my “events” account on Flickr, all under a Creative Commons license, which means that participants are welcome to download and use any that they wish, as long as they provide attribution. (Note that I am not, and can not, provide any sort of permissions from individuals photographed - that’s their right and prerogative. If you want to use someone here in a beer ad, you need to get their permission first.)

Where are they all?

• Everything I’ve taken this week is on my “events” account.
• I also have a Dagstuhl set on my “real” Flickr account that has some of my favorites (with cleaning, cropping, etc.) from my various visits to Dagstuhl. At the moment this set is heavy on shots from previous trips, but I hope to add more from this visit as time allows.
• Earlier this year I posted everything (without cleaning or editing) from the Jan/Feb seminar on Evolutionary Algorithms to my “events” account.

It’s not yet clear what all Dagstuhl may do with these, but they will contact anyone who is recognizable in a photograph for permission before using your image in any of their materials. If anyone objects to being included in these vast oceans of photos, please let me know and I’d be happy to remove the photo in question.

Thanks again to Christian for inviting me out to Dagstuhl, and to the Randomized and Approximate Algorithms group for being patient “hosts”. Enjoy the photos!

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Almost had an alliteration in the title, but then lost it at the end. Sigh.

I’ve finishing dumping all my Dagstuhl photos (uncleaned and unedited) to my event account on Flickr, so those with more time than sense can rush over and gaze upon them all. Over the next week or two I’ll work on cleaning some of my favorites and posting them to my “real” Flickr account, but who knows how long that will take.

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All good things must come to an end, and our week at Dagstuhl ends tomorrow after lunch. Above is yesterday’s group picture (I’m in yellow near the front) just before the traditional Wednesday hike (below), which was wet and misty but still an enjoyable few hours out in the world.

I gave a talk this morning which (I think) went well, especially since I didn’t know I was going to be giving a talk until Tuesday afternoon! There was certainly a lot of good discussion and people came up with tons of suggestions and ideas, which is what I really love about presenting at Dagstuhl. I started with something quite fun, which I’ll post here later. Most of the talks have used computer slides (PowerPoint or some more sensible alternative like LaTeX/Beamer), but Jon Rowe did a great blackboard talk on Tuesday (pictured below).

I was greatly inspired and did almost all of mine on the boards as well. I had four slides at the beginning that really needed to be slides, and then I did the bulk on the boards, and came back to a fifth slide at the end.

Tomorrow there are talks before lunch, including a talk/discussion thing that Riccardo is doing that I’m sure I’ll be roped into in some mysterious way. Then we eat, and it’s a taxi out to the Frankfurt Hahn airport for our flight back to the UK!

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