Life in Denver for CVPR26

Going to Denver

My trip to Denver for the 2026 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR26) was planned quickly and in question even until the day before I left, June 1, 2026. The afternoon of June 1, however, all the pieces fell into place, and I had a 5-night stay at The Curtis Hotel and two non-stop flights to the famous Denver International Airport (DEN) by way of Orlando's MCO scheduled for the evening of June 2.

I went straight to bed the night I arrived in Denver, and reported for CVPR's first workshop day the morning of June 3.

Meeting Dr. Dean Hougen, Lloyd and Joyce Austin Presidential Professor, University of Oklahoma

The first whole day of my trip to Denver was June 3. I woke up in the morning and made the short jaunt to the Colorado Convention Center, which was the conference venue, site of CVPR for the next 5 days. I stood nearby and snapped pictures, got used to downtown Denver's slow crosswalk signals, and ambled into the conference for registration and breakfast.

I spent the day attending workshops until lunch and then met with a Dr. Grant's former colleague: Dr. Dean Hougen. He and I immediately hit it off. We introduced ourselves and spoke about our work and my research areas over the sandwich lunches that CVPR provided. We spoke for an hour at that lunch and left the table only to see a poster that one of his students was presenting in the session afterward. Later on, we scheduled to meet again at the conference's reception dinner Saturday evening.

Sam's No. 3

I will spare the reader all the details, but I was on the street near the Convention Center at 9PM the night of Friday, June 5, and still had not eaten any dinner Desperately hungry and running out of options, I knew there was one place I could turn to, until 10PM at least. I speak of Sam's No. 3, which sits on the corner of 15th and Curtis Streets. I could see it from my hotel's front door each day and night of the coference, and I was particularly attracted to it by the prominent reproduction of the logo of Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives that dressed one of the tall windows on the face of the restaurant looking out on the corner.

My mother is a big fan of the show and its host, Guy Fieri, and she had prompted me several times to try eating at restaurants the show features during my conference trips. For the first time, I was posed with the opportunity along with the motive to try one. I stepped into the restaurant from the door on the corner after having taken in the composition of its sillhouette and the buildings behind it against the brightly lit Daniels and Fisher clocktower some distance to the north.

A waitress greeted me as I entered, and she told me to pick a seat. I grabbed a stool from which I could look up at a mounted television showing Game 2 of the NBA Finals, which were on-going and concurrent with the NHL's Stanley Cup Finals the week of the conference, appearing on the televisions of every bar and restaurant in the evenings. The game was in its dying minutes, and I watched as the Knicks sank freethrows to take the lead on the way to a one-point win and, ultimately, their 5-game finals victory.

I sat on the stool of a low, square countertop with two rounded corners and an open end facing the kitchen. Two or three stools from me, another man a bit older than myself received his burger and fries. He and I started speaking, first about the game and then about what the CVPR lanyard around my neck was for.

Eventually, the waitress placed my plate on the countertop with a side of toast, and I hastened to eat them, knowing that Sam's No. 3 would close at 10PM from the hours listed on the door. I ordered the Trailblazer. I had expected a modest plate of thinly cut hashbrowns, with fried onions and melted cheese mixed in and two sunny-side-up eggs on the side. Instead, a mountain of shredded potatoes with silvery gray veins of sauteed onion and golden cheese topped with twin peaks of sunny yellow yolk graced my view of the dish. The image below immortalizes the impressive meal for the sake of the reader.

Later that night, I sent her this picture and she shared her adoration and how happy she was that I visted the restaurant, having remembered its appearance on Diners Drive-Ins and Dives.

Dinner with Dr. Dean Hougen

Saturday June 6, 2026 was the final night I would be in Denver for CVPR. I had met a number of people, but I had built rapor with very few in the same way as Dr. Hougen. After our first conversation over lunch on the opening day of the conference, we had resolved to meet again at the reception dinner held on Saturday.

I walked the poster session that afternoon, purusing the available papers and taking advantage of my last opportunity to survey my research areas at CVPR. More on what I found in the upcoming academic blogpost. I checked out the art exhibits in the demos and exhibition hall next to the posters and spoke at length with Yamin Xu about his piece, a robotic arm mounted on the wall with cameras and microphones at the end, called No. 5. As the CVPR artwork site puts it, No. 5 was a kinetic sculpture. It would look around and appeared to stare at me. Eventually, Xu showed me that it was powered by a multimodal model and could take verbal requests.

I left Xu and his piece to join Dr. Hougen near where the Convention Center's employees would be serving dinner. The dinner we ate featured BBQ pork and chicken, potato salad, mac and cheese, and brussel sprouts. Over it, we spoke about his long, illustrious career and his views on varying academic subjects, including conference organization.

From the table, we left for a concert happening in the Blue Bird Ballroom on the uppermost terrace floor of the convention center. On the way, as we spoke about a certain stair next to the escalator engraved with the words "ONE MILE ABOVE SEA LEVEL," he mused why the Mile High Ballroom was not the one on the terrace floor but located in the lowest floor of the convention center. I guessed that the convention center was originally built without the upper terrace floor and with the Mile High room already in the basement then rennovated later to add the terrace and additional ballroom, which could not be named Mile High since it was already taken. I saw this as the only reasonable explanation in the moment, and Dr. Hougen confirmed my conclusion with a quick online search.

We then stood in the ballroom-turned-concert-hall for a short time, listening to acts play covers of rock n' roll songs, and on the terrace proper, the conversation became more personal. Dr. Hougen told me about his family in the area, and I spoke with him at length about my academic history, aspirations, and short-term goals as well as the blogposts I would be writing about my trip. There, we sighted many other CVPR attendees snapping pictures of the sunset and surrounding Denver skyline. We took the opportunity to take such a picture ourselves with Dr. Hougen's iPhone. The image below is the result, courtesy of him.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to the Computer Vision Foundation for organizing and hosting the CVPR conference. Special thanks to the staff of the Colorado Convention Center for managing the logistics of the operation. And special thanks to the city of Denver for hosting the attendees throughout the week of June 3, 2026 to June 7.

For more information about our research, return to our homepage: ufdatastudio.com.