**The Real Cost of Conference Travel: More Than Just Five Days**
If you work in machine learning (ML) research, the end of the month often means it’s time to review the month’s progress. This time, however, 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 ML research, here is the story, slightly abridged.
### The Conference Landscape
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 Interesting but unpublished work does not count for much, so it is often “publish or perish.”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, you first need a fitting outlet. In ML, the main outlets are three premier conferences: ICML, NeurIPS, and ICLR.
* **ICML (International Conference on Machine Learning):** First held in 1980, it started as a workshop and continued as a full conference after its first decade.
* **NeurIPS (Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems):** The first conference was held in 1987 in Denver, USA.
* **ICLR (International Conference on Learning Representations):** A more recent addition, founded in 2013.
To publish a paper at one of these conferences, you must go through a rigorous peer-review process. You submit an anonymized version of your paper, which is then reviewed by knowledgeable peers. You receive feedback, get an opportunity to clarify or improve the paper, and then wait for another month or two. Based on the quality of the submission and how well you addressed the reviewers’ concerns, your paper will either be accepted or rejected. Acceptance rates are low, usually only between 20% and 30%, making it a highly 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 us back to the topic of this article.
### Getting to the Conference
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 traveling. 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. Last month—and this explains the delay in writing this monthly review—I attended ICML in South Korea. The conference itself was nice, but the getting there took quite some time.
### The Hidden Overhead of Conference Travel
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 for 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:
* Getting to the airport takes time.
* Waiting at the airport takes more time.
* The flight itself can take more than ten hours.
* Finally, traveling 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.
On the way back, the same thing happens in reverse. You spend another day traveling 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.
### The Backlog Waits at Home
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.
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. 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*, as they say (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, and finally put faces to names you may have known only from papers. Still, that value comes at a considerable cost in time and energy.
This month’s lesson was therefore rather simple: when planning conference travel, do not count only the days written in the conference program. Count the preparation, the journey, the recovery, and the work that will be waiting when you return.
Otherwise, a five-day conference can quietly consume two full weeks *without taking into account the opportunity costs.*
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## FAQ
**Q1: Why do ML researchers need to publish at top conferences?**
In the field of machine learning, publishing at premier conferences (ICML, NeurIPS, and ICLR) is a primary way to establish credibility and showcase new ideas. Unlike journals, conferences offer a faster publication cycle, which is crucial in a rapidly evolving field. Unpublished work often does not carry much weight, creating a “publish or perish” environment for researchers.
**Q2: What are the main steps in the conference paper review process?**
The process typically involves submitting an anonymized paper, which is then sent for peer review. Reviewers provide feedback, and authors usually have a chance to submit a revised version addressing the concerns. Finally, the organizers accept or reject the paper based on its quality and how well it addressed the reviewer comments.
**Q3: Why was there a delay in publishing the monthly review?**
The delay was caused by the author’s travel to attend the ICML conference in South Korea. Conference travel requires significant preparation time for flights and accommodation, which contributed to the one-week delay.
**Q4: How much time does conference travel actually take?**
Conference travel can consume around ten days in total. This includes approximately two to three days for organizing the trip and journey (booking, flying, jet lag), three to seven days for the conference itself, and additional time for recovery and backlog upon returning home.
**Q5: What is the “hidden overhead” of attending conferences?**
The hidden overhead includes the time spent booking travel and accommodation, the physical and mental toll of long-haul flights and jet lag, and the significant backlog of work that accumulates at home. This disruption to one’s normal work rhythm can stall progress on new research projects for weeks.
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## Conclusion
Attending major machine learning conferences is an essential part of a researcher’s life, offering invaluable opportunities for networking, discussion, and exposure to cutting-edge work. However, as this month’s experience illustrates, the true time cost extends far beyond the scheduled conference days. The combined effects of preparation, arduous travel, time zone changes, and the subsequent backlog create a significant hidden time sink. For researchers aiming to maintain deep, uninterrupted focus, the “conference tax” can be substantial. When planning to attend a conference, it is crucial to factor in this full lifecycle cost to ensure the value truly outweighs the considerable personal and professional time investment.
