EMNLP 2024 Reflection

EMNLP’24 was the first conference I ever attended in-person, and it was honestly such a great experience and also a stark contrast to attending conferences virtually. I found it interesting that this was my first in-person conference attendance, given that I was presenting an industry track paper and also had previously published at both the EMNLP’23 and NAACL’24 main conferences. The free stuff they gave out at registration certainly didn’t hurt either, and served as a nice little memento of my attendance.

For such a large attendee list, it was quite remarkably well run. The venue (Hyatt Regency Miami) was also really nice - apart from the wifi at least (seemed like it was the worst-kept secret of the conference). The keynote speakers were on-point and interesting to listen to, and the conference schedule mostly ran without any hitches.

Personally, I only went to the poster sessions, and it seemed like most people preferred those over the oral sessions. Makes sense to me - during the poster sessions, you have a chance to peruse lots of interesting papers, and aren’t required to stay at any one poster for a set amount of time. Additionally, since it’s more like a discussion, you have the opportunity to really dive deep and take in all the material presented, whereas for the orals, once the presenter moves onto the next slide, that stuff’s gone.

A decent number of people actually showed up to my poster, and it was great to have a chance to interact with them. Thankfully I didn’t encounter any reviewer 2-type people, and it seemed everyone was there to discuss in good-faith.

Honestly, after such an experience, I have to say that attending in-person is 100% worth it over attending virtually, and I truly appreciated being able to just discuss ideas and ask questions of the NLP community and fellow researchers. I also learned a lot as well, which should prepare me well for future (hopefully) conferences:

• Put a QR code on your poster, it’ll really help attendees who want to read the paper in real-time!
• Either plan out which posters you want to visit the night before, or at least meticulously ensure you visit every poster in the room. Some are hidden away in awkward angles and can be easy to miss if you’re just aimlessly wandering by!
• Don’t be afraid to talk to people and discuss ideas - really engage with your audience/presenter!
• Make sure to line up early for the snack breaks before the good stuff’s gone :)