Last Month’s Machine Learning Lessons Learned: The Downside of Conference Travel

上个月机器学习的经验教训：参加学术会议的弊端

Pascal Janetzky | Aug 6, 2026

Normally, I write my monthly reviews at, well, the end of the month. This time, there was a short delay of about a week. The reason was conference travel. To put things into perspective for readers unfamiliar with the conference game in machine learning (ML) research, here is the story, slightly abridged.

通常情况下，我会在月底撰写月度回顾。但这一次，我推迟了大约一周。原因就是参加学术会议的行程。为了让不熟悉机器学习（ML）研究领域会议机制的读者了解情况，我在这里简要讲述一下背后的故事。

If you do ML research, you usually want to publish your work as a paper at a conference. Interesting but unpublished work does not count for much, so it is often publish or perish. To publish a paper, however, you first need a fitting outlet. In ML, the main outlets are three premier conferences: ICML, NeurIPS, and ICLR.

如果你从事机器学习研究，通常会希望将成果以论文形式在会议上发表。有趣但未发表的研究成果价值有限，因此往往面临“不发表就出局”（publish or perish）的压力。然而，要发表论文，首先需要一个合适的平台。在机器学习领域，主要的平台是三大顶级会议：ICML、NeurIPS 和 ICLR。

The International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) was first held in 1980. For its first decade, it was organized as a workshop; afterwards, it continued as a full conference. In 1987, the first Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) was held in Denver, USA. ICLR joined the ranks more recently. In 2013, researchers founded the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR).

国际机器学习会议（ICML）始于 1980 年。最初十年，它以研讨会形式举办；此后，它发展成为正式的学术会议。1987 年，首届神经信息处理系统大会（NeurIPS）在美国丹佛举行。ICLR 加入这一行列的时间较晚，研究人员于 2013 年创办了国际学习表征会议（ICLR）。

To publish a paper at one of these conferences, you have to go through the sometimes annoying process of peer review. First, you submit an anonymized version of your paper, meaning that you remove names, affiliations, and other identifying information. This version is then anonymously reviewed by — hopefully — more knowledgeable peers from your research field. You receive their feedback, get some opportunity to clarify or improve the paper, and then wait for another month or two.

要在这些会议上发表论文，必须经历有时令人烦恼的同行评审过程。首先，你需要提交一份匿名版本的论文，即删除姓名、所属机构和其他身份信息。随后，该版本会由研究领域内——希望是——更资深的同行进行匿名评审。你会收到反馈，获得澄清或改进论文的机会，然后等待一两个月。

Based on the quality of the initial submission and how well you addressed the reviewers’ concerns, your paper will either be accepted or rejected. This is the important part: acceptance rates are low. Usually, only somewhere between 20% and 30% of submitted papers are accepted. It is a competitive game. Thus, if you manage to publish a paper at one of these conferences, you can consider yourself lucky. You can then visit the conference itself, which brings me back to the topic of this article.

根据初稿质量以及你对评审意见的回复情况，论文会被录用或拒稿。关键点在于：录用率很低。通常只有 20% 到 30% 的投稿会被录用。这是一场竞争激烈的游戏。因此，如果你能成功在这些会议上发表论文，可以算得上是幸运。随后，你便可以参加会议，这也回到了本文的主题。

Getting to the conference

前往会议现场

The conferences are held annually at different locations across the world. Depending on where you live, you might have quite some distance to cover. If you are based in China and the conference takes place in South Korea, you can get there relatively quickly. If you are coming from Europe or the United States, however, you will probably spend most of a day travelling. The same applies in reverse when a conference is held in the States. My last visit to such a large conference was ICLR 2024, which was hosted in Vienna. For me, that was quite comfortable to reach.

这些会议每年在世界各地不同的地点举行。根据你居住的地方，可能需要长途跋涉。如果你在中国，而会议在韩国举行，你可以相对较快地到达。但如果你来自欧洲或美国，则可能需要花费大半天的时间在路上。当会议在美国举行时，情况也是如此。我上一次参加此类大型会议是 2024 年在维也纳举办的 ICLR，对我来说，前往那里相当方便。

Last month — and this explains the delay in writing this monthly review — I attended ICML in South Korea. The conference itself was nice, it was the getting there took quite some time. And it is not only the travelling that matters. There is also the organizational overhead and, perhaps more importantly, the opportunity cost. Let me explain.

上个月——这也解释了我为何推迟撰写这篇月度回顾——我参加了在韩国举办的 ICML。会议本身很棒，但路途确实耗费了不少时间。而且，不仅仅是交通问题，还有组织上的琐事，以及更重要的机会成本。让我来解释一下。

The hidden overhead of conference travel

会议行程背后的隐形成本

First, you need to book the flights and the hotel. Usually, you also need to stay within certain per-diem limits, meaning that you have a daily budget of a certain amount to spend on accommodation. You therefore survey the hotels close to the conference venue, check whether they fit the budget, get one approved, and finally book it. The same applies to the flights. Altogether, this can easily take half a day — sometimes a full one. Then the actual travel begins…

首先，你需要预订机票和酒店。通常，你还需要遵守一定的差旅补贴限额，这意味着你每天的住宿预算是固定的。因此，你需要考察会议地点附近的酒店，确认是否符合预算，获得批准，最后预订。机票也是如此。总而言之，这很容易耗费半天，有时甚至是一整天。然后，真正的旅程才刚刚开始……

Getting to the airport takes time. Waiting at the airport takes more time. The flight itself can take more than ten hours. Finally, travelling from the destination airport to the hotel adds another hour or two. After roughly 24 hours, you have reached your destination. Great. But then there is the jet lag. The conference takes place in another time zone, so your body needs time to adjust — ideally while you are already supposed to attend talks, meet people, and present your work.

去机场需要时间，在机场等待需要更多时间。飞行本身可能超过十个小时。最后，从目的地机场前往酒店又需要一两个小时。大约 24 小时后，你终于到达了目的地。很好。但接下来是时差问题。会议在另一个时区举行，你的身体需要时间调整——而理想情况下，你此时本应已经在参加讲座、会见同行并展示你的研究成果了。

On the way back, the same thing happens in reverse. You spend another day travelling home, followed by another round of jet lag. All in all, you have now spent two or three days organizing and completing the journey. On top of that come the actual conference days, which might add another three to seven days. In total, the conference can occupy around ten days. That would be fine if the rest of life simply paused during that time. Unfortunately, it does not.

返程时，同样的过程再次上演。你又花了一天时间回家，紧接着又是新一轮的时差反应。总而言之，你已经花费了两到三天的时间来组织和完成这段旅程。再加上实际的会议天数，可能又增加了三到七天。总计，参加一次会议可能会占用大约十天的时间。如果生活的其他部分在那段时间能暂停，那倒还好。遗憾的是，生活并不会暂停。

The backlog waits at home

家中堆积的工作

When you return, your regular work is still there. Emails have accumulated. Tasks have been waiting. Projects have continued without you — or, perhaps worse, have not continued at all. Which is what happened to me. After returning, I first had to work through my personal backlog. There were things to tend to, tasks to redo, and several loose ends to pick up again. On top of that, I had to prepare a journal revision and a conference rebuttal.

当你回来时，日常工作依然在那里。邮件堆积如山，任务在等待处理。项目在你缺席的情况下继续进行——或者更糟糕的是，根本没有进展。这正是我所经历的情况。回来后，我首先必须处理积压的个人工作。有些事情需要处理，有些任务需要重做，还有几个未完成的环节需要重新拾起。除此之外，我还得准备期刊修订稿和会议申诉。

The conference itself had ended, but the disruption around it had not. And that, to me, is the real downside of conference travel. It is not merely the long flight or the jet lag. It is this interruption of your normal rhythm: the preparation beforehand, the travel itself, the time spent at the event, and the backlog waiting afterwards. All this easily kills a week or two of progress on a new research project.

会议本身结束了，但它带来的干扰并没有结束。对我而言，这才是参加学术会议真正的弊端。这不仅仅是长途飞行或时差问题，而是对你正常节奏的打断：前期的准备、旅途本身、在会议上花费的时间，以及随后等待处理的积压工作。所有这些很容易让你在一个新研究项目上损失一两周的进度。

And, a week or two more on a paper can make quite a large difference. It could be another proof, it could be coding a difficult experiment, writing a complete draft. For all these things, you need extended, uninterrupted time, ideally for several days in a row. Deep work, it is (a favorite topic of mine, see also my recent review of my last 8.5 years in machine learning). This is not to say that conferences are unnecessary. No, conferences are valuable. You meet other researchers, discuss ideas, see new work.

对于一篇论文来说，多出一两周的时间可能会产生巨大的差异。这可能意味着多完成一个证明、编写一个复杂的实验代码，或者写出一份完整的草稿。对于所有这些工作，你需要一段延长的、不被打断的时间，最好是连续几天。这就是“深度工作”（这是我最喜欢的话题，也请参阅我最近关于过去 8.5 年机器学习生涯的回顾）。这并不是说会议是不必要的。不，会议很有价值。你可以结识其他研究人员，讨论想法，了解新的研究成果。