Back from IEEE Africon Conference

I am back from Windhoek, Namibia where I presented a paper and co-chaired one of the technical sessions. I arrived in Windhoek at about 10:00hrs on 27 September, 2007 after a few hassles with traveling arrangements and connections.I managed to co-chair a session in the afternoon of the same day. The Chair was Mr Vinaye Armoogum from University of Technology Mauritius. He has become a great buddy already. I was, however, late for my presentation which I was supposed to have done a day earlier. I had to see the Program chair who asked me to present my paper in one of the remaining sessions on the closing day of the conference. Coincidentally, the session chair for the session was Professor Fambirai Takawira, my former head of School at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Vinaye, the guy with whom I chaired a session was also presenting in the same session. Being the last day of the conference, the attendance for this session was not good. My presentation was alright but not much better than the SATNAC 2006 one. Maybe, I am saying this because in my SATNAC 2006 presentation, I had a bigger audience and better feedback. In Windhoek, most people were just listening! After the conference, I spent a few days in South Africa and then came back to Malawi two days ago.

One great thing about the Africon conference is that, unlike SATNAC, it attracted a good number of participants from other continents.In my few days at the conference, I had seen a Mexico based professor, who presented his paper in the same session with me. I had also interacted and forged potential friendships with some guys from Slovenia, Europe. It was also great for me to chat with Dr John Ryan from Mzuzu University. We had lunch together.This gave me an opportunity to learn more about the MSc program in Information Theory, that he is coordinating at Mzuzu University. I will review this program on this blog in the coming weeks.

In conclusion, let me congratulate the IEEE Africon organizing committee for staging such an eventful conference. I hope the guys organizing the IEEE Africon 2009 conference, which will take place in Kenya, will make it even better. Let me also call upon all those African electrical, electronics and computer engineers, who have not yet joined IEEE , to join this institute and actively take part in its events. Africa misses out a great deal by your lack of participation in IEEE activities.

Poland trip hits a snag, Namibia trip is on

Some months ago, I announced that two of my papers were accepted for presentation and publication at IEEE Eurocon and IEEE African conferences. IEEE Eurocon will take place in Warsaw, Poland from Sunday, September 9 to Wednesday September 12 while the IEEE Africon will take place in Windhoek, Namibia from September 26-28.

I am not happy to report that I have failed to travel to Warsaw to take part in IEEE EUROCON. I was scheduled to present my paper in the Telecommunications and Multimedia Systems poster session on the final day of the conference. My failure to attend this conference stems from the Polish bank's failure to process my conference registration fees in good time.There were fears that my paper could be withdrawn because of non-payment. However, after exchanging emails with the EUROCON registration chair for a period of more than one month, the Polish bank processed the fees and as a result, my paper was included in the list of papers to be published. Although this was good news, it did not go down well with the organization which would have sponsored my trip because registration wrangle did not leave them with enough time to process my travel grant application. If my travel grant application went in earlier, I would have been crossing the Mediterranean Sea by now on my way to Warsaw. I will surely miss this exciting conference. I will also miss senZations 2007, a summer school on applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) which runs from September 10 -14. You see, I would have killed two birds with one stone in Warsaw. But the most important thing is that all things whether bad or good work together for our own good.

Now forget about my EUROCON problems because I will wind up this post on high note. The Meraka Institute in Pretoria has paid my conference registration fees , travel costs and accommodation for my participation in the IEEE Africon conference in Windhoek. I would like to thank them for helping me in this way. The AFRICON organizing team has also asked me to co-chair one of the sessions at the conference. This is the first time for me to take up such a responsibility at a conference :)

Papers accepted for IEEE Conferences

Today, I thank God because the two papers that I submitted to IEEE Eurocon and IEEE Africon conferences have both been accepted. IEEE Eurocon will take place in Warsaw, Poland from September 9-12 while IEEE Africon will take place in Windhoek, Namibia from September 26-28. So far, I have managed to pay the registration fees (280 EUROs) for the Poland conference. I am yet to pay for the Namibia one. I also have to look for funds so that I can travel to these two countries to present these papers. If you want to contribute to this cause, you are more than welcome. You can contact me privately. I will acknowledge your assistance right here. If all the financial details are sorted out in good time, the month of September will be a month of travelling and interaction with other professionals in my field.

Upcoming Conferences in IEEE Region 8

Septmeber 2007 will be an eventful month for IEEE members in Region 8.During this month, two major IEEE conferences will take place in the region.The first one will be the IEEE Region 8 EUROCON 2007 which will take place in Warsaw, Poland from September 9 to September 12. The submission deadline for this conference has been changed several times.The original deadline was 31 Januray 2007. Then it was shifted to 15 February, then 28 February and yesterday as I was preparing to upload my manuscript, I discovered that the deadline has been shifted to 10 March.Personally, I like submitting my manuscripts right on the deadline (don't ask me why). With this development, I will not upload my paper until the final day (10 March).Who knows, maybe the submission deadline will be extended again.Deadline extensions aside, I am quite excited about EUROCON 2007 because of two reasons. The first one is because all accepted papers will be included in the IEEE Xplore and the EI Compendex, the most comprehensive interdisciplinary engineering databases in the world. The second one is because the best papers will be recommended for publication in the IEEE Transactions, Electrotechnical Review, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, Electronics and Telecommunications Quarterly and in the Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

While Poland will be hosting EUROCON, Namibia's capital Windhoek will host the IEEE AFRICON 2007 from 26 to 28 September. All conference proceedings will appear in IEEE Explore.Although the official submission deadline is 3rd March, the organisers have assured us that they will accept papers until Monday, 5 March.Therefore, they should expect my manuscript on that final day.