Breaking radio silence: MIREX 2021

[Downie, J Stephen]

Hi ISMIR and MIREX Colleagues:

 

Sorry for the radio silence and the daunting backlog of MIREX emails to which I have not been able to respond properly (or at all).

 

As you can imagine—and as is the case pretty much everywhere—things here in the cornfields of Illinois have been most or less running on fumes thanks to COVID-19.

 

I am writing this quick note to let you know that, if we can get Task Captains to run the various tasks, we should be able to run MIREX 2021 in some form. One of my main challenges now is that the brilliant person that helped (read actually) run MIREX over the last few years, Dr. Yun Hao, has graduate (hence the Dr.) and has gone on to start her professional career. Basically, there is just me manning the fort at MIREX central.

 

I have been able to communicate with Dr. Hao today and she has graciously agreed to help me train a new iSchool PhD student in the mysteries of MIREX systems administration. The new PhD student is not part of the ISMIR family, but has solid system chops. He will be doing MIREX assistant on a very small time basis which is why we will be limiting MIREX to those tasks that can run pretty much on their own with the guidance of the Task Captains. I also see the Task Captains have more autonomy this year. Almost most certainly we will not be running, for example, the Train-Test Classification Tasks as they are bear to run and require a tonne of hand-holding. Also, the hardware upon which have been running things at MIREX command is getting super-old and increasingly fragile.

 

When I find a moment, I will send around some more specific communications.

 

I think we should find a way to move forward, but not panic about wrapping everything up by ISMIR 2021 time. I will ask the ISMIR folks if we could have some time together at ISMIR to report on those tasks that might have been completed. We can also strategize options for MIREX 2022.

 

Hope everyone is staying healthy.

 

Cheers,

Stephen

 

PS Folks that would like to with grindy general admin of MIREX are most welcome to drop me a line.

 

PPS I do hope to respond more promptly now that term has started.

 

 

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   "Research funding makes the world a better place"

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J. Stephen Downie, PhD    

Associate Dean for Research    

Professor    

School of Information Sciences   

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign   

[Vox/Voicemail] (217) 649-3839