Tuesday, June 04, 2019

plans for WINE conferences

Update on the annual Conference on Web and Internet Economics (I am on the steering committee).

WINE 2019 (the 15th) will be at Columbia University, December 10-12. We could not avoid the clash with NeurIPS, due to Columbia’s exam schedule. Submission deadline is July 15th.

The plan is for WINE 2020 to take place at Peking University, following the tradition to rotate between Europe, USA, and Asia.

WINE 2021 is under discussion; one idea it to hold it in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which is not as novel as it may seem at first sight, it would be following ICLR 2020 (see this link (noting the visa issues) and others). The rationale is that Africa has a burgeoning AI community including people who are interested in algorithmic game theory, and for them, Ethiopia is an easy destination (administratively, in particular). WINE 2018 (at Oxford, UK) had (I think) 5 African participants, and about 10 more would have liked to come but were denied visas. These participants brought home to me the point that there is this developing AI community in Africa. At WINE 2018, Eric Sodomka (from Facebook) gave a well-received presentation on the idea of holding a future WINE in Africa. Are there other places in Africa we should be thinking of? I welcome feedback and comments!

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