Place and Date

Beginning: Monday, September 1, at 10.00 am. (Free breakfast at 9.00 am if you want.)

End: Tuesday, September 2, at around 5 pm.

Where: The workshop will take place at the custom writing paper, please be there on time (10.00 am at the latest, 9.00 am for breakfast) on Monday morning. The Google building is on the "Hürlimann Areal". When entering the Areal from Brandschenkestraße you will see a parking lot and behind that to the right a building of Ernst & Young Consulting. The Google building is right behind that one.

Detailed Program: See below.

Accomodation and Travel

Accomodation and travel will be reimbursed by the DFG to all those who have received a formal invitation from the DFG. If you plan to get these costs reimbursed and did not yet receive such an invitation send an email to bast@mpi-inf.mpg.de.

For finding a hotel, I can't give any better advice than just going to Google Maps and searching Hotels in Zürich. There are lots of hotels ranging from not too expensive (70 CHF / night) to arbitrarily expensive. (Nothing in Zürich is really cheap). Participants should feel free to add interesting hotel tips here if they have any, it's a Wiki!

You can get to Zürich easily by car, train, or plane. Once in Zürich, buy a 24-hour ticket for public transport within Zürich (Zone 10). It's only 7.80 CHF and cheaper than two single-trip tickets. There is a ticket machine at almost any tram / bus station. To get the 24-hour ticket, press the button for a single ticket (3.90 CHF) and then press the button with the back-and-forth arrows (suggesting a return ticket, but it's actually the 24-hour ticket which you get then). Prepare to have change ready, since the machines do not take bills!

Hotels

Neufeld Hotel 1 km away from Google, 125 CHF / night + breakfast -- Sven Reinck

St. Georges hotel 0.5 km away from Google, 129 CHF (79.6 Euros) / night + breakfast -- Marjan Celikik

Food

Google provides all the on-site facilities and all the good food In particular, you are invited to come to breakfast on Monday and / or Tuesday morning, any time after 9 am and before the daily program starts at 10 am. Both breakfast and lunch at Google are really, really good. Note that in many hotels, breakfast is not included in the regular price. You are also invited to a workshop dinner on Monday evening, which will take place at the beautiful Restaurant Zürichberg. We will go there by tram and walk the last bit, enjoying the fantastic view up there.

Talks

The main goal of the talks is that (a) researchers learn about problems which are immediately relevant for a company like Google, and (b) Googlers learn about the state of the art in various areas of research relevant to their daily work.

The format for the talks is 10 minutes talk + 10 minutes discussion. What should become very clear in the ten minutes talk:

* The kind of problem(s) you are working on should become very clear. (Up to you whether you pick one or two specific problems, or more a whole area.)

* The kind of result you are looking for should become very clear. (Theorems? On what? The fastest code for X? A user study? Etc. etc.)

* The motivation should become very clear. (Why is it interesting?)

* It should become very clear why the probem is difficult. (What are naive solutions? Why do they fail? Etc.)

The rationale of these custom writing guidelines is that (a) half of the audience are Googlers who want to learn what is the state of the art in area X, and (b) the other half are fellow researchers who are working on a completely different topic and who want to learn what is the state of the art in area X.

Program

Monday, September 1

Tuesday, September 2

Registration

To register for the Workshop, please append a line with your name + link to your home page, your affiliation, on which days you will be here (default: Monday + Tuesday), and a tentative title of your talk. Concerning formatting, follow the example of the lines already there:

Here is the old list of people interested in attending the Workshop.

-- HolgerBast - 04 Jul 2008