From Admiration, Celebration, and Guessing to Innovation [From the Editor]

At the time of this writing (February 2010), I, just like many other colleagues, am finalizing my travel arrangements to attend the 35th International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP) in Dallas, Texas, 14–19 March 2010. Of course, you are reading this editorial in May 2010, a few weeks or more after ICASSP. This sequence of events will hopefully (the best one can aim for!) make this editorial resonate. Over the past few days, I have been going through the various Web pages on the ICASSP Web site and the activities planned during that week in March; it is all exciting, very exciting. Of course, those who have papers at ICASSP will attend to share their findings and results with other colleagues, and will conduct oral presentations or posters. But besides this main activity of presenting papers, I am looking forward to meeting colleagues and friends, discussing and exchanging ideas, listening to a well-planned series of plenary talks, attending several technical and special sessions that are most related to my own research, learning about the new trends and ideas, attending the IEEE Thematic Meetings on Signal Processing (THEMES), meeting new people, touring the show and tell event, and of course participating in various social activities, including the reception and the banquet. I feel ICASSP is our Society's annual celebration, perhaps the digital signal processing (DSP) Davos?