SIGIR 2007 — Amsterdam, July 2007

Heathrow

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The "Entertainment" district just out the back of the conference hotel

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... seems mainly to provide window shopping

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... for tourists

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Yes, some houses are crooked

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... to the point of being bent

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Sunday morning market, flowers, but no tulips

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... just tulip bulbs

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... and wooden flowers for tourists to take home

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No, I didn't buy any

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Canals everywhere you turn

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And some very old houses. Where were you in 1696 when this one was being built?

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Ok, so I have a soft spot for houses that lean on each other

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... or get held up by each other

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... or attempt to push each other over

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Yes Justin, Amsterdam is a port

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And has all the facilities of Hong Kong

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More nursery-rhyme crookedness

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No buildings in Australia — at all! — 401 years ago

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Keith van Rijsbergen

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Gord Cormack, Edie Rasmussen, Justin Zobel

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... on the way to the Past Chairs dinner

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Charlie Clarke, Keith, Mark Sanderson, Mun-Kew Leong

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Tat-Seng Chua, Efthi Efthimiadis, Wessel Kraaij (Co-Chair)

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Bruce Croft, Alistair Moffat

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Past Chairs dinner, Indonesion delicacies

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... that generate volcanic internal heat (Arjen de Vries, Co-Chair)

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Wessel Kraaij also sweats it out

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Gord solves the heat problem by holding (as always) two wine glasses

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... and Ricardo Baeza-Yates needs three to stay cool

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Out the hotel room window, early in the morning

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The Melbourne (and RMIT) gang: Laurence Park, William Webber, Yohannes Tsegay, Milad Shokouhi, Vo Ngoc Anh

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... and Alistair's turn to join in

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William Webber and Vo Ngoc Anh; yet another canal scene

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Ok, so no canal in shot, but there will be one not far away, for sure

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Conference banquet: Laurence Park, Yuye Zhang, William Webber, Vo Ngoc Anh

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Conference banquet

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Dave Hawking still likes his SIGIR'98 bag

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Efthi (Chair, SIGIR'06), and the "SIGIR Trophy", Jamie Thom in behind

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Justin Zobel and Alistair, and the SIGIR trophy that didn't exist in 1998

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The musical and performance theme was of tango

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... and Efthi got in to the spirit (well, kind of reluctantly)

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Arjen speaks

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... and speaks

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Liz Liddy, SIGIR President

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Efthi hands over the trophy

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Djoerd Hiemstra relates some SIGIR facts and figures

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... in a tag-team act with Franciska de Jong

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The conference hotel

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... on Dam Square

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... with its many attractions

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.. and nearby bridges (how else do you cross canals?)

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De Waag, the famous public weighing house, constructed from 1488, details

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Look at the upper windows in the central house, where is the roof?

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The Melbourne/RMIT people, minus Justin

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... enjoy a post-conference beer (Anh Ngoc Vo and William Webber)

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... that pours cleanly (William)

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... and pours sweetly (Jamie Thom)

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... and tastes really really good

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Departure from Schipol on the way back to London and home

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Pictures taken (mostly) by Alistair Moffat, ammoffat / unimelb.edu.au, using a Canon S2iS.
Email if you would like a full-resolution version of any of these (5 MP).
Page created: Mon Aug 27 11:18:34 EST 2007