A few years ago, I decided to give a try at the MLDM 2016 conference, which I had never attended. It was not a bad conference, although quite small and the registration is quite expensive for a conference (about 650 euros). I submitted a paper to MLDM because at that time, it was still published by Springer (update: in 2019, it was not published by Springer anymore) and the timing was good.
The conference itself was not bad, but as several other attendees, I have been disappointed by the MLDM conference location, which was supposed to be New York, but was instead in Newark, New Jersey!
Why is this a problem? The problem is that Newark is about 45 minutes by train from New York. Moreover, the location of the MLDM conference was one of the worst among all conferences that I have attended. The Ramada Hotel was located in the middle of highways, and there was basically nowhere to walk around. To go to New York we had to take a shuttle back to the Newark airport to then take a 40 minute train to New York.
Because of the misleading information about the conference being held in New York on the MLDM website, some attendees even booked airplanes to the JFK airport or Laguardia airport, which are in New York, and had to travel about 1 hour by train to get out of New York to arrive in Newark for the MLDM conference. Some of those persons were quite frustrated by the location.
The real location of MLDM 2019 is in Newark
A few years later, one could expect that things have changed. I did not submit papers but I decided to check. On the 28th February, I had a look at the webpage of MLDM 2019.
The deadline for submitting papers had passed. But the conference is again advertised as being in New York City. There are even some picture of New York on the website.
On March 14th 2019, I checked again. I clicked on the location section of the MLDM conference website, and it still advertised as being held in New York city (see below). And the exact conference location is *** not available ***.
On April 19 2019, I checked again. The deadline for submitting papers has passed since a long time now. The website has been updated, and if we look carefully, it is said that the MLDM conference will be held in Newark, New Jersey rather than New York. Thus again, the conference will not be in New York! It will be held in the same Ramada Hotel as in 2016, in Newark.
It is important to note that it is written only at one place on the website that the MLDM conference will be in Newark, while “New York City” is written everywhere else on the website, and there are many pictures of New York. Thus if someone does not read carefully, it is very easy to be mislead and think that the conference is in New York. Besides, since it is announced to be inNewark after the deadline for submitting papers, authors are already somewhat committed to attending the conference, and they expect it to still be in New York.
It should be announced **before the deadline* that the conference is in Newark.
This pattern of announcing that the conference is in New York before moving it to Newark seems to be repeating itself every year since 2016. I could not find the website of MLDM 2017 and MLDM 2018 because it is offline, but the proceedings of MLDM 2017 and MLDM 2018 claim that it was in New York. However, it was probably also in Newark, just like MLDM 2016.
Conclusion
Although I do not submit papers to MLDM since 2016, I have written this blog post because I think that it should be clearly announced that the MLDM conference is in Newark rather than New York. This will avoid disappointment of attendees who have submitted a paper and expected the conference to be held in New York.
Update 2020-1: Another misleading information about MLDM 2019 was that it was supposed to be published by Springer in the LNAI series (this is written for example on the CFP posed on WikiCFP). But at the conference, some authors found that the proceedings were **not** published by Springer but by a small publisher called Ibai (see some author commenting about this in the comment section below). In case that it gets removed, here is screenshot of the call for papers:
Well, it appears that things are worst than you thought …
There are several testimonies saying that the 2019 conference never took place. And my PhD student which was supposed to attend the 2023 edition of MLDM found herself and a group of other scientists in front of an hotel in Newark where the conference was supposedely cancelled without warning anyone.
We lost 3300€ and possibly our paper.
I believe this conference to have become an elaborate scam (which is why I am leaving this answer on a 2019 post, so that other don’t fall in the same trap), which mostly profit the organizer which uses the former reputation of the conference to attract papers, get the money and publish with her own editing house without spending a dime on the conference (since the event does not exist).
Thanks for writing on the blog to report about your experience with MDLM. This can be a warning for people who intend to submit to that conference.
I myself had the bad experience in 2016… (as described in the blog post), and I am sorry to hear that you also had a bad experience in 2023. But I am also not surprised.