Reflections upon Deep Learning for Medical and Industrial Imaging – an online networking event

Deep Learning for Medical and Industrial Imaging networking event was organized online this spring. Originally, we (KUBIAC personnel and guys from the Department of Applied Physics – special thanks goes to Timo Lähivaara)  planned to organize this event as a normal face-to-face event but a virus messed up that plan.  So we decided to go online.

This proved out to be a very successful move. We had an audience of 102 persons, something that would not have been possible in a face to face meeting. From the 121 persons who registered to the event, the majority was from UEF, but there were many registrants from Kuopio University Hospital (24 registrants ), local companies, Savonia and other universities in Finland. The feedback from the professionals working in the Kuopio University Hospital indicated that they would not have been able to participate in a face to face seminar.

Few technical problems aside, the presentations and also the discussion flowed surprisingly well. Of course, the discussion between 100 persons online is not the same as it would be in a face to face meeting, but we actually managed to have a pretty solid discussion session that the undersigned enjoyed much but had to break the discussion at the half-hour mark because of the start of another event.

We collected written feedback – online of course.  Based on the feedback, participants liked the online event and were hungry for some more.  A summary of the feedback is as follows (5 stars is the maximum):

I found the webinar useful:  4.38 stars on average

I learned something new: 4.13 stars on average

The topic of the webinar was interesting: 4.71 stars on average

The presentations were easy to follow:  4.13 stars on average

The concept of online webinar worked well: 4.54 stars on average

We also got many good ideas based on the feedback provided. Thanks!