International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR)

A couple of months ago I heard about ISMAR '09, the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, to be held October 19-23 in Orlando, Florida. Knowing that I wanted to focus my PhD research on augmented reality somehow, and seeing that the conference was going to be technical and artistic, I got really, really excited. I expect there will be lots of exciting presentations about games, new ways of interacting with augmented reality, improvements to tracking techniques, and so much more.

Then I saw the call for student volunteers.

ISMAR is happening two weeks after Grace Hopper. I wasn't sure how smart it would be to miss so much of my first semester in the new degree, so I asked my supervisor about it. He was very encouraging, saying that he likes to see students attend conferences in their areas of interest early on in order to start getting ideas (and to get excited about the desired topics!). I think this makes a lot of sense, and is something I wish I had thought of for my Masters. Since being a student volunteer gets you free registration and hotel, my supervisor figured he could pay the rest of my expenses out of his budget, so I applied right away.

Today I found out that I was selected. I will get free registration and (at this point) three nights at the hotel in exchange for twenty hours of work. Now, if Grace Hopper is any indication, this volunteer time will be the most valuable part of attending the conference. It tends to lead to meeting some very interesting and potentially important people, and I bet I'll come home with a boatload of new ideas for research topics. If you ever get a chance to be a student volunteer for a conference, you should apply right away!

Here are some links about ISMAR that you might enjoy:

• Check out the official ISMAR '09 conference page.
• Join the ISMAR '09 group on LinkedIn.
• Also join the LinkedIn group for Augmented Reality Professionals.
  
• Get an idea of what's going to happen at the conference with this Games Alfresco post, mostly about the call for participation (now over).
  
• Look at an archive of all the Games Alfresco posts about the 2008 version of the conference.
• Follow ISMAR2009 on Twitter.