In a couple of weeks I will be attending the Vis/InfoVis/VAST co-hosted conferences in Sacramento.

This is always the best opportunity to know about the cutting edge and latest developments in the field and, most important, to meet old friends and new people.

This year the conference is full of events. I skimmed through the program and I can already find a lot of interesting presentations I would like to attend. The program is a bit of a mess since some sessions will be overlapping from time to time, but this is a price to pay for the success of the whole field. I will have to find the right path among the events and jump from one room to another without bothering anyone, I hope ;-)

I'm really eager to attend the InfoVis Capstone talk by Stephen Few. Stephen has a long experience of using visualization in the business environment (down the trenches I would say! :-)) and I am sure he will have something interesting to say to a very much research oriented audience. The title is already quite promising "InfoVis as Seen by the World Out There: 2007 in Review".

The Art Exhibit is also something I am looking forward to see. The artistic side of visualization is really exciting for its ability to create pleasurable presentations that make you think and can always be a source for ideas to apply out of the artistic context. The list of presented works looks already quite promising.

This is for me the first time I attend VAST and I really want to see how different it is from InfoVis. I am particularly in favor of an applied approach to visualization and VAST seems to be the right place to present and see this type of works.

I will also try to attend the most interactive events like the BOF and the Interactive Demonstrations Lab. I like them because there is more space to interact, to talk freely, and to put your hands on the real systems.

I will be attending the whole conference from Oct 28 to Nov 1. I will attend the VizSec Workshop (on Oct, 29) and present a paper at VAST ("SpiralView: Towards Security Policies Assessment through Visual Correlation of Network Resources with Evolution of Alarms") early in the morning (08:30-10:10) on Thursday Nov 1.

If you will be at the conference please drop me a line! I am really curious to see you face to face and to discuss about visualization, blogs ... or something else.

You want some tips on how to survive on a one week long conference? He is my favorite resource: "How to get the most out of conferences" from Scott Berkun. Enjoy it!