Things are getting quite busy again, as the project has come to a stage where I need to be producing some publications on early results while also doing implementation work to get more solid results, not to mention thinking seriously about where my next slice of funding is going to come from. Any one of these could consume all of my available time if I allowed it to, and it’s not always easy to motivate yourself to keep pushing when the potential returns are months away at best. What is all too easy, however, is to neglect things that are not strictly necessary – blogging, for example, but I’m determined to write at least one new post each month, even if it’s only because it makes for a welcome respite from the more “serious” work.

One thing that can help a great deal in maintaining motivation is if you have something nice in the not-too-distant future to look forward to, and as it happens, I have quite a biggie: the paper I submitted in January got accepted to the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, which will be held in Wellington, New Zealand. It’s a bit of a strange event for me to attend; while I do find the field very interesting, my professional experience of it, not counting some courses I took years ago when I was a doctoral student in need of credits, is limited to having been a reviewer for CEC once. However, there is a special session there on the theme of “Ethics and Social Implications of Computational Intelligence”, and this is something I have done actual published work on. It’s also one of the themes I wanted to address in my current project, so that’s that box ticked I guess. Besides, visiting NZ has been on my bucket list for quite a while, so I could hardly pass up the opportunity.

So, a small fraction of my time this month has been spent at the very pleasant task of making travel plans. Wellington lies pretty much literally on the opposite side of the globe from Dublin, so even in this day and age travelling there is something of an operation. It’s not cheap, obviously, but that’s not really a problem, thanks to my rather generous MSCA fellowship budget. The main issue is time: the trip takes a minimum of 27 hours one way, and the “quick” option leaves you with precious little time to stretch your legs between flights. I didn’t exactly relish this idea, so I ended up choosing an itinerary that includes a 12-hour stopover in Sydney on the outbound journey. This should give me a chance to take a shower, reset my internal clock and yes, also go have a look at that funny-looking building where they do all the opera.

It would make little sense to go all that way just for a four-day conference, so after CEC I’m going to take some personal time and spend part of my summer holiday travelling around NZ (even though it will be actually winter there). I still want to spend a couple of weeks in Finland as well, so I have to be frugal with my leave days and efficient in how I use my limited time. Therefore I’m going to be mostly confined to the North Island, although I am planning to take a ferry across Cook Strait to Picton and back – the scenery of the Marlborough Sounds is supposed to be pretty epic. On the North Island I’m going to stop in Auckland and Rotorua before coming back to Wellington; between Auckland and Rotorua, the Hobbiton movie set is a must-see for a Tolkien reader and Lord of the Rings film fan such as myself.

As for the conference, I’m very much looking forward to the plenary talk by my countryman Prof. Risto Miikkulainen on “Creative AI through Evolutionary Computation”. The idea of machines being creative is philosophically challenging, which is part of why this talk interests me, but I’m also intrigued by the practical potential. The abstract mentions techy applications such as neural network architecture design, but personally, I’m particularly interested in artistic creativity – in fact, when I was doing those evolutionary computation courses at my alma mater, I toyed with the idea of a genetic algorithm that would serve as a songwriting aid by generating novel chord progressions. Apart from the plenaries, the conference programme is still TBA, but it’s always good to have a chance to meet and exchange views with people from different cultural and professional backgrounds, and since Wellington is apparently the undisputed craft beer capital of NZ, I’m expecting some very pleasant scholarly discussions over pints of the nation’s finest brews.