I jumped from Jakarta to Denpasar last Sunday. I saw the valley in the vicinity of Mount Ijen, Bali Strait, 10 minutes southwest coast of sunny, clear, sloping, sandy white, soft, and wavy beaches, and then finally the Ngurah Rai airport. Apparently ASEAN Summit still left some activities, so we had to revolve around Bali’s southeast coast for 40 minutes before landing. Then travel overland to Sanur Beach: Inna Bali Beach Hotel.

Unlike 2009, this year I can not seem up to enjoy the magnificent nature and culture of Bali. Representing IEEE Comsoc Indonesia Chapter, I had to prepare a tutorial session, then assist the event organising. Even today!

The tutorial was held on Monday, November 21 at 10:00 sharp. Prof Dadang Gunawan opened the session; then I took over to deliver a lecture on Digital TV and IPTV. My presentation focused on the network architecture, standards, how-it-works, services and content, and to the issues of convergence. Quite a lot, considering the time the tutorial was quite long. The next tutorial session was then filled by Mr Satrio Dharmanto Ms Agnes Irwanti, with emphasis on migration into DigitalTV.

The conference was officially commenced on 22 November. As the organising chair, Dr. Wahidin Wahab open the conference with his typical fun and exciting speech. The plenary session was then filled by four keynote speakers, with two moderated by Mr. Arnold Djiwatampu (himself the general chair of the event), and two by me.

The theme of the keynote speakers were very interesting. Prof. Nurul Sarkar discussed a breakthrough in engineering education strategies. Prof. Ke Wu explored IC Substrate (SICS) that are applied for future electronics and photonics in GHz and THz scale. Prof. Rinaldy Damini detailed energy scenarios taken by various countries after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. And Prof. Jong-Hwan Kim explained and demonstrated the robot-that-thinks (RTT). More than that implied by the titles, each presentation provided interesting inspirations. Prof. Ke Wu, for example, explained by pictures the history of waveguides: metals, coax, intrachip waveguide, etc. Meanwhile, Prof. Kim, who is also called the Father of Robot Football, explained the philosophical level of how the minds are recomposed by contextual info, fuzzy logic, and social intelligence.

After the photo session, the conference was splitted into seven rooms, each with its specific focus. I chose Room 5, which is focusing on the architecture, traffic, and other aspects of the wireline and wireless networks. In Room 5, dozens of papers are presented in several sessions from Tuesday to Thursday (today). Each presentation sets out in 20 minutes, followed by questions and answers. The theme is no longer a matter of philosophy or research direction, but instead the details of research results. The presenters are researchers, engineers, geeks, etc, so you can imagine how their presentations are. Just totally like me

There was a dinner session, for networking while observing a small part of Balinese culture. There were a couple minutes (only) to walk to the Sanur beach not far from the hotel. But the rest are continuous controlling on the event.

Hopefully IEEE Tencon will result well, improving the good reputation for Indonesia that is capable to organise an international academic event almost with no sponsor, improving the interests for the Indonesian academics and engineers to consistently do the researches, and transforming Indonesia to be a respected technology innovation and development country.

The next Tencon will be carried out in Cebu and Mactan islands in the central part of the Philippines. See you next year in Lapu-Lapu city!

I got the most affordable airline. It took me from Jakarta to Tokyo via Kualalumpur, and landed at Haneda Airport around midnight. I took the first Shinkanzen super-express train from Shinagawa to Kyoto. I reached Kyoto on June 8th at 9 o’clock. After reporting my attendance to the organiser, I took a couple hours to explore Kyoto.

ICC and the other meetings were held at KICC, a quite vast resort in north-east end of Kyoto. Apparently this place is well prepared to carried out international scale conferences and summits. I did not attend any ICC sessions more than some workshop sessions. But the AP-RCCC I attended was held in the same place.

Last March we had conducted the IEEE Region 10 Meeting in Yogyakarta, which was the highest annual organizational meeting of the IEEE in the Asia Pacific region. IEEE Comsoc AP-RCCC is the annual organizational conference of the IEEE Communications Society in the region. Focusing on the issues in Asia Pacific region, the meeting was attended by President of the IEEE Communications Society, the VPs and directors, a representative of both North America and South America, and the chairmen or other representatives of the Asia-Pacific Comsoc chapters.

Comsoc President, Byeong Gi Lee, keynoted by describing the current challenges in the field of communications field. The convergence has been passing some stages in the digital information, and now we are in the middle of the convergence of digital services and management. The convergence is not just among the fields of communications and computing, but extends also to consumer electronics, media, and other areas. Comsoc has anticipated this with various approaches: educational approach and content, industrial approach, and the standardization approach. This is also trailed by restructuring the organization of IEEE Comsoc. Various aspects relating to further convergence has sparked fairly interesting discussions.

Then, some VPs and directors presented some reports and guidances. And each chapters presented their reports, plan activities, and other things. The first chapter to deliver the report is Indonesia. From Indonesia, I delivered a report, exploring the chapter’s activities that are still focused on technical and organizational campaigns, including our supports in the formation of the first four IEEE student branches in Indonesia, serial roadshows, and other approaches. Our plan ahead includes the preparation of a larger conference (more than the current form of thematic seminars or lecturing). However, it would require assistance and support from the Region 10 and neighbouring chapters. Also presented are the preparation of TENCON in Bali in November 2011, and our request for distinguished lecturer & distinguished speakers on recent progress in the field of infocomm. Some officers expressed their support for IEEE Comsoc activities in Indonesia.

After the conference, I returned to the Kyoto centre by the MRT with Prof. Hsiao-Hwa Chen of IEEE Comsoc Tainan Chapter. I know this gentlemen even before the conference. Last year we made some correspondence to arrange a seminar in Singapore. But in MRT, he showed his other side: an avid culture observer. After talking about chapter management and infocom platform management, we spent the time to talk about the history of Japan, Kyoto, etc. He suggested me to spend more days to explore Japanese cities and cultural centres.

So the next day I spent my time to pay a visit to historic areas: Nara (the first capital of Japan as an emerging imperial), Kyoto (the capital of Japanese Imperial for 1000 years), before finally returned to Tokyo (the capital of Japan since the Meiji Restoration). In Kyoto, I got the opportunity to visit the Imperial Palace for about 1 hour. An excellent palace, I must admit. Also I visited Tokugawa shogunate palace.

I know I should now spend more time to report my cultural journeys. Indeed I have written them in my travelling blog, koen.cc, but only in Indonesian. I guess I will someday translate them and put them here.

The seminar is still going on now. It is amazing to see the participants who attend the seminar today. From Mrs. Kusmarihati of Mastel (previously, she was Telkom’s Director of Development, CEO of Telkomsel, and Chairperson of BRTI), some Heads of Department and officials from Universities (Universitas Hasanuddin, Universitas Ahmad Yani, Maranatha University, ITENAS, IT Telkom), the representatives of the operators & providers (Telkom, XL Axiata, DAAITV, Nasio), and several other professionals. Heavy enough:).

The materials in this seminar:

• Muhammad Ary Murti, IEEE as a Professional Organization
• Arief Hamdani Gunawan, Digital TV & IPTV Network
• Kuncoro Wastuwibowo, Video Coding, Compression, & Formats
• Prasetya Irwan Gunawan, Quality of Service & Quality of Experience
• Satrio Dharmanto, IPTV Implementation in Several Countries

I guess it is because of the weather of Bandung, with a combination of warm sunshine over chilly air, the discussion took place very warm. Or hot. We were not only arguing about business implementations and engineering decisions, but also the decision to select some mathematical formula. Why do we use DCT instead DFFT? Haha. Funnily I had an answer for that one .

This seminar is also supported by Multikom as a sponsor. Next Digital TV discussion will be delivered in the form of lecturing at Bina Nusantara University next weekend.