Conference Report: RE Conference (JeJu Island, South Korea)

Since this is my first blog article, I would like to take the opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Jannik Fischbach and I started my PhD in the middle of May this year. I am dealing with test automation in agile software environments and how to keep requirements and tests in line despite the high dynamics of change. However, this blog article is not intended to be about my PhD topic, but rather about my first experience at a conference. More specifically, the RE Conference in South Korea (Jeju Island) last week. But first, let’s jump back a few months.

To get a glimpse of writing a paper, I converted my master’s thesis into a paper at the beginning of my PhD (of course strongly shortened 😉). While searching for a suitable venue, I came across the AIRE Workshop. This workshop deals with the application of Artifical Intelligence to Requirements Engineering and as my master thesis deals with a similar topic, I thought it might fit quite well. One month later I got the feedback that I was accepted (you can find the paper here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.08810). Last week (more exactly on 24.09.) I presented my paper in South Korea. While the journey to Jeju was rather sluggish due to a typhoon, the presentation at the workshop went well and overall I liked the workshop and the other presented papers very much. Nevertheless, I was not only for the one day in South Korea, I wanted to experience how a scientific conference works. Since I had never attended a conference before, I didn’t know exactly what to expect. Looking back, however, I can say that my expectations were fulfilled and that I liked the whole conference very much. Everybody at the conference (no matter if doctoral student, student volunteer or professor) was always open and willing to help. There was always the opportunity to get in touch and talk about your research project. I also enjoyed being able to attend various events at the conference: from panel discussions to tutorials to regular paper presentations. There was something for everyone due to the wealth of different topics.

All in all, the conference was a complete success and I would like to thank the organizers once again. I hope to be able to participate again next year. I already have an idea for a new paper. 😊

See you next time,

Jannik