If you have ever had a chance to discuss software performance with your engineering colleagues, you’ve probably noticed that a lot of us like to throw around this infamous “Big O” to explain why something is running slow (or fast).

With 11 conferences, 15 sessions and 1 keynote address, 2017 was more than a successful year. I traveled a lot and visited many new places, met new people and made a few new friends. And I learned a lot!

Humans are very quick to detect and recognize faces, and the entire process executes in a matter of fractions of a second. Doing the same with a computer proves to be much more challenging. Face recognition is one of the hot topics today in general pattern recognition science and artificial intelligence.