As a part of the IEEE Indonesia Excom & Adcom coordinative meeting in Bali, we also visit Udayana University, to see the Advanced Research Laboratories, and also to carry out some sharing session to the academician and students.
Surely, first we had to meet the famous Prof Linawati, Dean of the Faculty of Technology, Udayana University. With Prof Lina, we established the IEEE Udayana University Student Branch 10 years ago, in my serving time as the Chairman of the IEEE Indonesia Section at that time, after a discussion at Fortech in Bandung.
This is a weekend lecture, so I just briefly discussed about the development of digital platforms as the core in current technology and business ecosystems.
And surely I spent a couple minutes to — again — make an introduction to the Complexity Theory. It’s always fun to tell people about this attractive thing. You can read more about this at the other part of this blog: [URL]
Alhamdulillah, we have finished APCC 2013. Just like TALE 2013 was somehow related to CYBERNETICSCOM 2012; then APCC 2013 was like a continuation of COMNETSAT 2012, when Prof. Byeong Gi Lee suggested the IEEE Comsoc Indonesia Chapter to host the APCC. This suggestion brought us to attend APCC 2012 in Jeju Island, where we won the bid to host the 2013 APCC. It was followed by a series of activities, including event organising and paper management. The IEEE Comsoc Indonesia Chapter appointed Dr. Wiseto Agung, an avid scientist an researcher from Telkom Indonesia, as the General Chair of the conference. Another strategic step taken is to arrange a partnership with ITTelkom (now the University of Telkom) as a co-organiser on both the technical issue and event organising. Originally, the number of submitted papers raised very-very slowly. A bit stressed, indeed. But a few days before the deadline, hundreds of paper came through the EDAS. From all over the world, those most educated human beings still chose to wait until the final second before submitting their papers. We collected a total of 309 papers. The Technical Program Committee was chaired by Dr Arifin Nugroho, with some vice chairs. The most active TPC vice chair was Dr. Rina Puji Astuti. Meanwhile I held the position of Chair at IEEE Indonesia Section, so I must share my resources (time etc) with many other IEEE activities. The Comsoc Chapter Chair (Satriyo Dharmanto) and the Past Chairs (Muhammad Ary Murti, Arief Hamdani) continued the struggle to succeed APCC 2013. With strict selection process, APCC 2013 passed only 163 papers (53 % of total incoming paper).
APCC, Asia – Pacific Conference on Communications, is a very prestigious regional conference in Asia Pacific, which is the region with the highest growth in the world of ICT technology. APCC is supported by the IEEE Communications Society, the KICS in Korea, the IEICE Communications Society in Japan, and the CIC in China. The names of the APCC Steering Committee members are also thrilling: the great figures who pioneered the world of ICT. APCC was first held in 1993 in Taejon, Korea. This year, the 19th APCC was held at the Bali Dynasty Resort in Kuta Beach, 29 to 31 August 2013. I had been in Bali since August 26 to attend TALE 2013. The other APCC organisers, from the IEEE Comsoc Indonesia Chapter, University of Telkom, and University of Udayana, has started preparing the event on 28 August.
Thursday, 29 August, the APCC 2013 was opened. With a lot of technical sponsors, some representatives had to deliver short speeches at that opening ceremony. But each one took only about 5 minutes. Opening speeches were delivered by Dr. Wiseto Agung (GC APCC 2013), Satriyo Dharmanto (Chair , IEEE Indonesia Comsoc Chapter), Dr. Ali Muayyadi (Telkom University representative), Prof. Zhen Yang (Chair of APCC Steering Committee; Chair of the CIC), Dr. Yoshihiro Ishikawa (Chair, IEICE Communications Society), Prof. You- Ze Cho (Vice Chair , KICS), and yours truly (Chair, IEEE Indonesia Section). IEEE Indonesia Section itself represented the IEEE as the technical activity endorser.
My speech just simply mentioned that Asia Pacific has great significance in the development of ICT. Besides the fact that this area is the center of the most competitive ICT industry, the residents are also among the most adaptive in embracing digital lifestyle in the new culture. Our cultural richness has supported the development of communication technologies, with the ability to understand and support the highly contextual interaction and communications. But the social problems in the region is also alarming. We open access to information technology, but we encourage consumerism. We facilitate the preservation of nature, but we also increase pollution. We help creating new jobs, but we also accelerate urbanisation. The engineers need to design and develop technologies that will address the various issues of humanity and the life of human being. And it was in this social context, that we chose this theme for APCC 2013: Smart Communications to Enhance the Quality of Life .
Keynote speeches were delivered successively by Prof. Byeong Gi Lee (Past President, IEEE Communications Society; Past President, KICS), Prof. Adnan Al-Anbuky (Director of Sensor Network and Smart Environment (SENSE) Research Lab, School of Engineering Auckland University of Technology, Auckland New Zealand), Mr. Indra Utoyo (CISP, Telkom Indonesia; Chairman, MIKTI), and Mr. Ichiro Inoue (Network Systems Planning & Innovation Project, NTT).
The next activities were typical for any international technical conference. Special speech sessions, tutorial sessions, parallel presentation sessions, poster sessions, etc. In the tutorial session, I chose to avoid mainstream discussions of mobile network etc, and chose instead the sensor network as one of the elements for the Internet of Things (IoT). The tutors happened to be a pair of professors from Coventry University. This is a modern university (compared to classical universities) that gained a lot of appreciation and awards everywhere this year. Another regular event was the Gala Dinner, with its semi-formal atmosphere, but also with its permission for a laugh-out-loud sessions. Here the Paper Awards were also presented by the APCC Steering Committee .
The last day, I spent my time to visit the poster sessions. Out of curiosity, I seriously talked to all presenters about the posters presented. It was a way to learn new things while expanding networks. Conversations in the poster session could be deeper and more interesting than the presentation session where time is very limited.
I recognised that it was a hard work for the organisers. In the review session on Saturday afternoon, I said that even though the organisers in any events always feel that there are a lot of unforgivable shortcomings, but the APCC Steering Committee and the participants, had personally conveyed their appreciations and positive feedbacks. Good job! The IEEE, Unitel, Udayana University, and all. Great job! This year there will be many other events of the IEEE Indonesia Section. Hopefully all will provide supports as it was for the APCC 🙂 . Thanks, all.
The 19th Asia-Pacific Conference on Communications (APCC 2013) will be held at Bali Dynasty Resort in Bali island, Indonesia, during August 29-31, 2013. Since 1993, APCC has been a technical forum for researchers and engineers to interact and disseminate information on the latest developments in advanced communication and information technologies. Prospective authors are invited to submit original technical papers for presentation at the conference and publication in the conference proceedings.
APCC – http://apcc.pro
Smart Communications to Enhance the Quality of Life
August 29-31, 2013
BALI Island, INDONESIA
Organised by: IEEE Indonesia Communications Society Chapter
IMPORTANT DATES
Paper Submission Deadline: April 26, 2013
Notification of Acceptance: June 21, 2013
Camera Ready Submission: July 19, 2013
Tutorial Proposals: June 30, 2012
Potential topics are solicited in, but not limited to the following topics:
Paper length should be six pages at maximum including figures, tables, references, and appendices. Please use the standard IEEE conference proceedings templates for Microsoft Word or LaTeX format on A4 size pages founded at http://fk.vc/template. Accepted papers will be published in the APCC 2013 Conference Proceedings and in IEEE Xplore, for which at least one author is required to register for the conference at the full rate.
It was only on the early days of August, we could at last complete the report on the accomplishment of the IEEE CYBERNETICSCOM and the IEEE COMNETSAT, and sent it to the IEEE.
On the same month last year, we began to plan these conferences. However, the preparation and execution of the IEEE TENCON 2011 has inevitably delayed the preparation of these twin conferences. So at the beginning of this year, we started distributing information on COMNETSAT and CYBERNETICSCOM. The papers started to come, but we received the majority of papers in injury time just before April. Luckily we’ve got strong supports from the organisations and from our colleagues. IEEE sent its Letters of Acquisition to each conference rather quickly. They seemed impressed by the success of the IEEE TENCON 2011 we carried out last year. The former president of the IEEE and the IEEE Communication Society gave their willingness to present as Keynote Speakers. We then organised the Technical Programme Committee, and began inviting the Track Chairs from universities and institutions. The track chairs, as the guardians of the conference quality, then did their first tasks to select the paper reviewers. Those reviewers went on duty to review the papers and to submit the results. At the end of May, the paper authors have received the results of their submissions. Only about 50% of the papers are passed in this stage. Then the authors had only a short time to fix the paper according to reviewers’ feedback. Meanwhile, the conference organisers started to prepare the event conferences. With the adrenaline triggered the pursuit of quality and time, we finally left for Denpasar. The show must go on.
IEEE CYBERNETICSCOM and IEEE COMNETSAT are officially launched on Thursday, July 12, 2012. The conferences were located at Inna Grand Bali Hotel, Sanur Beach. COMNETSAT is the IEEE Conference on Communication, Network, and Satellite; while CYBERNETICSCOM is the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Cybernetics. Jumped out from my role as TPC member and Organiser, I served at the opening ceremony as the clumsy MC. The General Chair, Dr. Ford Lumban Gaol, formally opened the conferences. M Ary Murti, the IEEE Indonesia Section Chairman, delivered a welcome speech, including a brief about the IEEE and the Indonesia Section.
The first keynote speaker, Prof. Michael Lightner, the IEEE President in 2006, delivered a keynote speech for CYBERNETICSCOM, titled Machine Learning for Assistive Technology. Lightner began with a concern that a very large number of humanity experience disabilities at various levels. Researches in the field of assistive technology lead to some improvements to the value of human life by various measures. Initially we applied some tools for the improvement; but then also we use some agents implanted into the human body. One material that was presented but-not-shared related to a research to bypass the brain to overcome the problems caused by short-term memory impairment.
Prof. Byeong Gi Lee, the Past President of the IEEE Communications Society (Comsoc), then delivered a keynote speech for COMNETSAT, themed Convergence of Communications Toward Smart Era. BG Lee described how the revolutions in communications and digital information had affect each other in the cultural and social life of human being; how the context processing becomes increasingly important for the development of intelligent systems that will better understand and enhance the human life.
After the opening session, the conferences were spread into paper presentation sessions in several rooms. As a member of the Technical Program Committee of COMNETSAT, I was active in COMNETSAT. I occasionally served as a session chair, or to appoint session chairs from the conference participants at each session, or just as an observer. Between there were networking, gaining new friends, gossiping the future of cognitive radio and various variants of 4G, and sharing some technology updates. Between sessions, I also saw Prof. Lightner and Prof BG Lee being active in the sessions, put sparks in the discussions. In some ways, these conferences were more amazing than TENCON :).
On the last day, Saturday, July 14th, we held a Plenary Speech of Prof. Pramod K Varshney. In his speech, he explored the philosophy and implementation of Cognitive Radio Networks. An interesting topic. Indeed I myself has discussed it at an IEEE Public Lecture session carried out at ITTelkom Bandung the other month.
The Sanur Beach was still as cool as what I saw previous years. Soft and white sands help to banish fatigue and tension result from the conference. The squirrels (yes, messieurs et mesdames, squirrels) jump among the coconut trees and frangipani trees to make fun of the days. But surely there are many other cool places throughout Indonesia for the COMNETSAT, CYBERNETICSCOM and other technical meetings we will carry out the next years. For the advancement of the profession, technology, and humanity.
Last week, Indonesia hosted some regional events: SEA Games, ASEAN Blogger Conference, ASEAN Summit. These days, the IEEE Region 10 (Asia Pacific) carries out its official annual conference IEEE TENCON on Sanur Beach, Bali. This conference has been prepared since a couple years ago, starting by submitting the proposal from Indonesia to the IEEE Region 10, bidding, recording in the IEEE, and the processes that include the calls for papers, paper reviews, event planning, and event organising. The whole process has involved senior academics in various parts of the earth. The event is organised by the IEEE Indonesia Section and University of Indonesia. Two IEEE society chapters are also involved as technical sponsors: the Comsoc Chapter and the MTT / AP Joint Chapter. Since the event is held Denpasar, Udayana University sends some volunteers to support the conference. Busy days :).
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!
