Saumya Rawat

A jumble of nerves, for the first time truly alone in a foreign country with no known faces around, as I reached the conference I found myself thinking “Am I really doing this? Can I do it?” But merely 4 days later I didn’t want to say goodbye. MMM 2018 in Bangkok was a life changing experience and I cannot thank ACM-W and my institute’s lab, CVIT, enough for giving me this opportunity. Being one of the few people travelling alone from their respective centres was a daunting experience, but it helped me open up and interact with the brilliant set of minds of a field I am fast becoming fascinated with. On the first day itself, witnessing the exciting Video Browser Showdown, a fast paced competition of who’s got the best video browser, got me engaged in the exchange of ideas from around the world. And by the end of that night, I had found myself friends with people divided by boundaries but united by a love of research, multimedia and to my surprise Arch Linux! The next few days were a whirlwind, from going up on stage to present our paper, to exploring the streets and markets of Bangkok to finally bidding a sad goodbye, I will never forget my first ever conference experience in hopefully more to come. Sometimes, we learn in just a few days what we cannot learn in a lifetime.