The Summer of VLDB 2021

 

Note: An account of the lessons learned while organizing and running a hybrid conference like VLDB 2021 can be found here. This post is an account of some of my personal experiences being the general co-chair of that conference.

 

In 2018, when I agreed to be part of the organizing team of VLDB 2021, I knew it would be a lot of work, even without the pandemic none of us knew about yet. It is not considered wise to take on such a responsibility when someone is at the academic age I was at back then. But I wanted to learn how conference organization works. Even though this post focuses on the challenges I have been through as the general co-chair of VLDB 2021, I want to emphasize that I don’t regret my decision, and I am proud of what we achieved with the whole organizing team. VLDB 2021 was the first hybrid conference in the database community and was the first to bring people together in person after a series of online conferences due to COVID-19.

 

Being the general chair of VLDB 2021 made me …

… eat my first (and last) non-vegetarian burger since I became a vegetarian in 2017.

… stop using a computer mouse.

… disable all the email notifications on my phone.

… get more familiar with ladybugs.

 

Putting aside all the hard work that came before, from July 14, 2021, till the end of VLDB 2021 (August 20, 2021), I worked almost full-time on VLDB.

During this period, I remember some days being like I am in my own Barbieland. Those were the days when I struck a routine of going to the beach to swim and read in the mornings and started working around noon on VLDB, which continued till late evening. But there were also days that felt miserable, when I felt all my batteries were empty. The empty batteries were not just due to VLDB but also a result of the COVID days.

As previous post also mentioned, after each COVID shot, I had fever and nausea for a day and lack of energy for a few days. In general, getting ill from time to time is part of life. The solution is to take some time off and get some rest to recover. The problem in this case was that I still had to work on VLDB 2021 full time and had no luxury to take the break that I desperately needed.

The day after my first COVID shot, we had to meet the folks at Tivoli Hotel, the venue for VLDB 2021. I had to be physically present in the meeting despite still feeling the after-effects of the vaccine. The meeting went OK, but our communication with the Audio-Visual (AV) team of the venue was sub-optimal from my perspective. They were suggesting a setup that I thought was unnecessarily complicated. I was upset with myself for not talking with more bravado (even though I hate the word bravado) while raising my concerns. But I also thought that this is their area of expertise, and I should respect it. Plus, I had my post-covid-shot lack of energy. Furthermore, they requested to be informed about the exact schedule by the end of the week if we didn't want to be overcharged for the AV equipment and staff (this meeting was taking place on a Thursday). Considering the many unknowns due to the hybrid nature of the conference, COVID restrictions, and our overall budget, this was something that panicked me. We were set for the conference days, but the workshop programs were still unknown. I had to somehow contact all the workshop organizers and receive the expected start and end times for each workshop in a few days. Keep in mind that (1) due to unstable COVID travel restrictions in those days, we allowed workshop organizers to be flexible with their hours and format, and (2) as all this was happening in the middle of the summer, not all workshop organizers could be responsive to emails.

On the bus 5C (for people familiar with Istanbul buses, 5C is like the 500T of Copenhagen) returning home after this meeting, in my head building a TODO list for that day’s VLDB emails, shortly before my stop, I noticed that my house keys weren’t on me.

My TODO list now forming fireworks in my head, and my body drained and starving, I stood at the entrance of the street I lived in looking at my apartment building that I cannot enter. The first thought I had was “I need an IV-drip.” What followed was a question: “What is the food that is closest to an IV-drip.” My head slowly turned to, now closed down, Café Vivaldi on the same street and answered, “a burger?” I can’t claim that my logic from that moment checks out, and my stomach was not happy a few hours later, but at that time, this made sense to me.

I entered Café Vivaldi, headed to the bar, ordered a non-vegetarian burger, as a vegetarian person, and non-iced water, despite the waiter insisting “it will be too warm”, and asked for the wifi password. I then sat down at one of the tables.

A year after I moved to Denmark, I gave my extra keys to Sister in Movies, so I texted her. I knew she was in Denmark just back from holidays a few days ago. Then, I reached my backpack to get my laptop out to start with the emails. There was a ladybug on my backpack. There were ladybugs on a lot of my things that summer.  

 

Before I moved to Denmark, I rarely saw ladybugs. I know in many places they are associated with luck; their Turkish name is “luck beetle.” When you occasionally come across them, it is therefore natural to have positive feelings upon seeing them. But when an army of them starts kamikazeing into your body on a Danish beach or when you stop counting how many are on your bedroom window after the 7^th, you associate them less with luck and more with bugs. Or you question whether this why Denmark is such a privileged country compared to your homeland, where you rarely saw ladybugs. You also realize that not all ladybugs come with bright red color; some look a shade of pink giving the impression that they have been through many washers and dryers in their lifetime. The summer of VLDB 2021, stopping to observe ladybugs was my main procrastination.

 

Seeing the ladybug on my backpack turned my VLDB TODO list from fireworks into an ordered list in my head, and I started going over the list calmly and kept at it while eating. After I finished my burger, I had a reply from Sister in Movies. She was at work but said she was ok to go home early, so that I could fetch my extra keys. When I got back home with my extra keys, I found the lost keys in the door lock.

When I met Sister in Movies for dinner the week after, after greetings, she said, “You look better today.”

 

Due to my overall bad posture and lack of interest in sports since high school, my right shoulder often acted up in my early 30s. The summer of VLDB 2021, the combination of long-stretches of sitting while answering emails and the shoulder movements one does when using a computer mouse while dealing with various excel sheets for the conference program, budget, etc. amplified the pain in my right shoulder. I could no longer sleep on my right side some weeks before VLDB. Ironically, these days I have harder time sleeping on my left side instead but due to a completely different matter.

The immediate step I took to fix my right shoulder was to go to an osteopath so that they put me back together. The long-term steps were ordering a keyboard with a touchpad so that I eliminate computer mice from my life and going to the gym regularly for yoga and strength-building (“stram op” in Danish) courses. The latter step took longer to establish, since the will to do sports doesn’t come to me naturally. This is also ironic, since there was a time when I was a kid, I wanted to become a basketball player.

 

The summer of VLDB 2021 was also the summer of 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which was postponed to summer 2021 due to the pandemic. The theme of Olympics was all around me as I was dealing with the barrage of VLDB emails. One day, I wrote to Philippe Bonnet (my VLDB 2021 general co-chair), “i feel like i am in olympics in the category of ‘writing emails’.” Shortly after, I disabled all the email notifications on my phone, and I have kept them disabled since. This doesn’t mean that I stopped checking emails on my phone. I still do this check unnecessarily often and am trying to reduce this behavior but can’t claim success so far.

 

Finally, let’s get to VLDB 2021 itself.

 

During the, not-Barbieland, miserable days of that summer, several loved ones told me “It will all be over once the conference starts." The day before the first day of the conference, when I saw Peter Boncz, he told me “It is now starting.” That was the moment I realized everyone, except for Peter, was lying to me to make me feel better.

The first day of the conference was mayhem. First, the complicated AV setup that I wasn’t a big fan of failed during the first sessions of the workshops. Philippe and I took the decision to switch to the simpler setup that I was proposing in that meeting with the AV folk. Then, I remember sending emails and messages almost non-stop throughout the day.

By the time it was dinner time, I wished someone would take care of dinner for me. We had a reception on the second day and conference banquet on the third day but nothing for the first day, and I had to eat. I wish I wished for something else, because shortly after my wish, Philippe and I received an email from Divesh Srivastava inviting us to dinner at one of the conference hotel restaurants. During this dinner, he also simply ordered everything for me, sparing me from extra decisions. While, under normal circumstances, I want a lot more agency on what I eat and drink, that day this was exactly what I needed. I had no brain power left to think about food, and I still had to monitor the late-evening online sessions after dinner. Bless Divesh!!

After that first day, things got gradually better. When Peter asked me how I was doing the last day of the conference, I could reply “better than yesterday.”

 

Because of the hybrid nature of the conference and wanting to have a program for all the regions of the world, our schedule stretched from 7am to 11pm Copenhagen time. The early morning and late evening sessions were online-only, but someone still had to overlook them, which was a task Philippe and I shared. Thus, we both stayed at the conference hotel to more easily cover these hours. I remember feeling very hungry during those early and late sessions and snacking the Swiss chocolate Academic Sister brought with her to the conference for me. Bless her as well!

 

Overall, I cannot say that I experienced much of the actual conference content that year, as I could only attend the plenary sessions and Greek Bro’s talk in one of the parallel sessions. On the other hand, the attendees in Copenhagen seemed happy with the in-person experience after so many online events and being stuck at home for too long. I am glad that we pushed for the hybrid event instead of online-only despite all the unknowns of the pandemic and changing rules and regulations. It was a welcome challenge for me, and I learned a lot in the process.

Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to VLDB 2021!