Werewolves, Free Beer and more

The last week I spent at the IK2011 in Günne for the second time. I already wrote many things about the spring school in the field of cognitive sciences and artificial intelligence in my article about the last year's IK. But even if I do not repeat all this, there are some points to mention.

This year's focus theme was "autonomy, decisions & free will" and besides John-Dylan Haynes and Michael Pauen from Berlin my AI professor Ipke Wachsmuth had a chair. He also had his birthday during the week which resulted in free beer for that evening.

Among the mostly very interesting courses you also got a lot of social activity. For example there was a large group playing "The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow" on several evenings, a group playing regularly water polo at the nighttime, several nightly walks to the dam of the Lake Möhne and much more. You also had many possibilities to do some sports. Due to the mostly great weather we could play multiple times (Ultimate) Frisbee after lunch, on evening you could try out the interesting discipline Jugger and two participants brought Slacklines on which you could try to balance.

Many of the participants brought also musical instruments. Therefore you listen to people making music every now and then. A special highlight occured after the very tasty surprise dinner. Then played a band mainly consisting out of lecturers: Thomas Goschke at the electric guitar, Manfred Spitzer with a really small acoustic guitar, Michael Pauen at the electric bass and last but not least a person of which I do not know the name with the Korg padKontrol drum synthesizer. This band played a variety of rock classics (by the Dire Straits, Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, Santana, ...) and filled up the room with dancing people in a great mood.

The only thing you could criticize that the beer and wine were empty much too early at the last evening. However, probably all have drunken enough during the week and Michael Wooldrige started his course with mentioning his hangover.

To sum it up it was another great IK, during that I learned much, during that I met many interesting people and during that I gained new inspirations which kind of career to pursue. Probably I will participate again in the next year. The focus theme then will be "emotions & aesthetics".