The International Symposium on Consumer Technologies 2018 [Conference Reports]

10 IEEE ConsumEr ElECtronICs magazInE ^ january 2019 T he International Symposium on Consumer Technologies (ISCT) 2018 took place in St. Petersburg, Russia, on 11–12 May 2018. This gathering is the established forum for innovative research in all CE technology areas. It is the second-oldest conference in the history of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society (CE Society), originating as the IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE) in 1997 in Singapore. Since 1997, ISCE has been held in many countries around the world, its tenth-year celebration taking place in St. Petersburg in 2006. This year, the conference returned to St. Petersburg with a new name that expands its scope. The symposium was opened by ISCT 2018 General Chair Dmitry Vavilov. Then the keynote on “Multimedia Innovation and the Role of the Consumer” was delivered by Martin Salter. The conference’s main program included eight sessions with various topics concerning consumer technologies and an additional two-day track on digital information technologies, with student papers organized by the St. Petersburg State University of Film and Television. At the end of the first day, Pablo Angueira of the University of the Basque Country delivered the lecture “The Future of Broadcast Television.” This was followed by the ISCT 2018 welcome reception on a boat cruise along the River Neva and its numerous channels through St. Petersburg. The second day of the symposium ended with a roundtable devoted to education in the consumer technologies area, which was chaired by Vyacheslav Nesterov. It also included the closing ceremony, where the best students who had taken part in the student paper contest received awards, provided by the sponsors, of free trips to the International Broadcasting Convention 2018 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Several special events were held in conjunction with ISCT 2018 at the St. Petersburg State University of Film and Television, including a workshop, “Actual Technologies: TV and Theater,” and a seminar, “FaceReader: Reading Emotions on the Image of a Person’s Face.” Konstantin Glasman and his team prepared videos of key ISCT 2018 events, The International Symposium on Consumer Technologies 2018