NIPS outcome and MLOSS Workshop

Well, the NIPS results are out. If you don't know it, it is one of the largest (maybe the largest) conferences in machine learning held each year in early December, and they have just sent around which papers are accepted and which are not on Saturday.

Unfortunately, none of my papers made, although one got quite close. On the other hand, I'm very glad to announce that our workshop on machine learning open source software has been accepted. This we be the second (actually third) installment: In 2005, the workshop was not included into the program, but many people found the issue important enough to come to Vancouver a day earlier and take part in a "Satellite Workshop".

In 2006 we were accepted and actually had a very nice day in Whistler. When I noticed that I was personally enjoying the workshop, I knew that we had managed to put together a nice program. Maybe the highlight was the final discussion session with Fernando Pereira stating that there is little incentive for researchers to work on software because there is no measurable merit in doing so. Eventually, this discussion lead to a position paper and finally to a special track on machine learning software at the Journal of Machine Learning Research.

I'm looking forward to this years workshop, and hope that it will be equally interesting and productive!