Today was a big change of pace from the weekend. We left the hotel at 8 to go to UNIC where we had lectures all day. 

The first lecture was with two representatives from Fleet Management Limited (FML). They are an international shipping company. Essentially, they manage ships and shipments for the owners of the shipping vessels. FML does not actually own any of the ships that they run. One of the things that I thought was interesting was that, when selecting the crew for a ship, they try to not mix more than 3 different nationalities. Since crew is on the water for months at a time, having limited different nationalities hopefully reduces the risk of having issues related to country rivalries. They also talked about general shipping statistics. For example, the largest, most active port in the world is in Shanghai, China and 8000 shoes boxes can fit in one 40ft shipping container. 

After this presentation was over, we got lunch at the UNIC dining hall which was, just like last time, very good. Once we finished lunch, we went to one of the coffee shops on campus because we had some extra time. It was very cute and had plants and a lot of study space. I got a mocha (naturally) and it was exactly what I was looking for. By the time we finished our coffees, it was time for the next presentation.

The next presentation we watched centered on cryptocurrency. The CEO of UNIC is the one who gave the lecture because he helped found the cryptocurrency and blockchain programs at UNIC. I found his lecture extremely interesting because I think crypto is a very strange concept and I didn’t really understand the point of it at first. As I understood it, two of the important parts of crypto are that the transactions cannot be reversed and that, as the world becomes more digitized, it can be used for machine to machine transactions. He also talked about the metaverse and how its creation and popularity is essentially imminent. He said that within the next ten years we would all have some kind of glasses that can seamlessly transition between VR, AR, and actually reality. Because of this, many things would start to just be digital and not in person. Honestly, this future seems kind of depressing to me but we will see what happens. 

The next speaker was one of UNIC’s top professors. He specialty is data forecasting. He created a competition over 30 years ago to find out the best why to data forecast. Essentially, the participates can use any way they see fit to try to predict the data the best and, depending how well they do, they can get prizes. Currently, the sixth competition is live. Over the years, the biggest takeaways have been that 1) the simpler ways tend to be better than then complex prediction systems and 2) machine learning predictions are more accurate than using statistical methods. One of things he stressed was important to try to predict was economic recessions. However, it is difficult because they are different every time. 

Then, we went back to hotel and we had sometime to chill before dinner time. I think we are just going to go somewhere in the Old City and have a long dinner. The restaurant environments are so nice here so its the perfect place to just eat and talk for hours. Tomorrow, meeting time is at 7:45 so I might try to go to bed early tonight. 

Also, this afternoon we got the regular bus back but the ride is so short there was no time sleep. Fingers crossed that we will get it again tomorrow for nap time 🙂 

Apologizes for the fact that there is no picture; there were no blog worthy pictures taken today.