CLEO 2022 Soseito Sugawara

The Conference of Laser and Electro Optics (CLEO): 2022 was held in California, USA from May 15 to 20. In recent years, due to the coronavirus, all conferences have been held only online, but this year, as the pandemic has settled down, the conference was held in a hybrid format of on-site and online. The following are the advantages and disadvantages of participating in a hybrid conference. The first advantage is, of course, that online participation is possible. During the period of the conference, for example, it was impossible to come to China to participate in the conference due to the thorough lockdown. However, Chinese researchers presented their research results through online participation, and we were able to attend the conference. We felt that this was a great advantage, as the response to the corona is changing in many countries. On the other hand, one of the drawbacks is the difficulty of operating two methods, on-site and online, at the same time. Although I did not actually participate in the management of the sessions, there were some problems that occurred during my participation in the sessions, such as the inability to see the screen online that could be shared on-site, and conversely, the inability of online participants to share their screens, which the management side had to deal with. In addition, the chairperson was basically on-site for the question-and-answer session, so the priority of online questions was inevitably lowered. However, these problems are likely to improve as the number of sessions increases, and I felt that the hybrid format is basically advantageous.
San Jose, where the conference was held, is the center of the so-called Silicon Valley, where huge tech companies that provide services worldwide have their headquarters. Walking around the venue for a short while, you can see the headquarters of companies such as zoom, Adobe, and nvidia, which made me realize that the U.S. is the world's top economic powerhouse. I don't know if this is the reason, but the cost of living is also very high. For example, a hamburger costs about $16 (2100 yen), which definitely put pressure on the author's wallet.