The following are the thoughts of Tan Hanzhang, who is about to be the editor-in-chief of the 2.0 version of [Strategy OR Curtain], after waking up from a dream one day.
1. My original intention
Unknowingly, it has been five years since I spent five years with me. In the past five years, I have changed from a new doctoral student to a more mature and sophisticated doctor. In the past five years, Strategizing OR has also changed from a loose popular science community that originated in Zhihu to a community that connects ORers that has begun to take shape.
Five years is very short for our world and universe. But for a person, five years is really not a short time. Five years is enough time for an OR Ph.D. to graduate from entry to graduation; five years is enough time for society to go from having no one infected with covid to everyone around him being infected with covid; enough time for OpenAI's GPT model to iterate for 4 generations and completely change us The way everyone interacts with computers.
I also found that [Strategies OR Strategies] carried the youth of many ORers besides me. In the past few years, I have watched many juniors learn and grow in the community. Many of them were still master and doctoral students when they joined Strategist OR, and now many of them have entered government agencies and private enterprises and become the backbone of business in various fields, and many have become assistants in universities in Asia, Europe and the United States professor.
In my spare time, I often chat with some predestined friends. Sometimes we talk about work, love, and many big and small things in life, and they occasionally sigh: "I don't know what I'm sticking to now." But I always believe that life is alive, and the original intention is for us. Whether the really important things in life can be done is very important.
At the beginning of 2018, I started to serve as the editor-in-chief of the [Supply Chain] section of Strategies and Strategies. My original intention for this community was to better spread Operations Research in the Chinese community , so that more people with lofty ideals can learn about this fascinating interdisciplinary subject . At the same time, I also hope that the community can act as a bridge between OR academia and industry , so that the achievements of academia and industrial applications in the industry can promote each other.
My first article published in [Strategies OR Strategies]: [Academics] Supply Chain Management: An Overview of Theory, Models, and Applications
Today, my identity has changed from editor-in-chief of the supply chain section to editor-in-chief of the optimization section, and later co-founder, deputy editor-in-chief of the platform, and I will become the editor-in-chief of the platform soon. It is said that the greater the position, the greater the responsibility. But I want to say: One thing I am very proud of is that I, the other two founders of the platform, and all the editors of the platform have always carried out our original intention of coming to Strategizing OR, and we will continue to Carry out this original intention.
2. Development and growth
In the five years of planning OR strategy, I think the most valuable wealth I have gained is to meet a group of enthusiastic and ideal young people. They all have the same optimistic vision for the development of operations research as I do. They are also like me when I first joined the platform, fearless and thoughtful, and created excellent original content with great enthusiasm.
The first article I read in [Strategies OR Strategies]: Optimization∣Analysis of the principle of sparse reconstruction algorithm behind black hole imaging
2019 should be the pinnacle of my personal creation on the platform, and I have written about a dozen popular science articles related to optimization theory and stochastic models. At the same time, as the editor-in-chief of the optimization section, I also began to host a number of optimization e-book projects, including linear programming e-books, robust optimization e-books, stochastic programming e-books, and so on.
[Strategies OR Strategies] The first completed e-book: Original recommendation: entry-level linear programming e-book! It is not difficult to start from scratch~
Since 2020, my perspective has gradually changed from a simple science popularization author to the person in charge of the platform. I began to pay more attention to how the community can meet the needs of the increasing number of followers, provide more high-quality original content, and online and offline industry and academic exchange activities.
In January 2020, [Operational Research and Strategy], as the sponsor, organized the first "Frontier Application of Operational Research and Artificial Intelligence in the Industry" seminar with Zhejiang University School of Management. Unfortunately, due to the impact of the epidemic, the seminar was canceled. With the gradual liberalization of the country this year, we plan to resume these offline activities.
As the co-founder of [Operational OR Strategies], I am also fortunate to have met many entrepreneurs and scientists who are conducting operational research practice and cutting-edge scientific research in the industry and academia. The platform also used resources in this area to conduct many exclusive interviews and live sharing, providing a lot of first-hand cutting-edge information and scientific knowledge of operations research.
The interview with He Bingsheng, a well-known optimization scholar in China, can basically be regarded as a biography of Mr. He’s life and a historical biography of 40 years of optimization research: 【Interview】Professor He Bingsheng, Department of Mathematics, South University of Science and Technology of China - Searching for 40 years
[Strategies OR Curves] has 20,000+ fans on the Bilibili account, and has released 160+ academic talks, industry talks, workplace meeting rooms, solver tutorials and other videos. I believe that there will be more high-quality video content for our followers to watch in the future.
3. Version upgrade
This year is already the fifth year since the establishment of the official account of [Strategy OR Strategies] (if it starts from the founding of Zhihu, it will be the seventh year). I also noticed that with the continuous growth of the creative team of the platform, the content released on the platform is all-encompassing. In addition to the academic content that has lasted until now, there are also various news information, commercial promotion, reposted content, technology sharing and activities. Broadcast and so on.
Therefore, for this version 2.0 upgrade, our main goal is to make the content of the official account of [Operational OR Strategies] more vertical , focus on cultivating cutting-edge academic content in operational research and management science, and provide higher-quality original articles and videos.
We will introduce new sections, including Top Issue Guide, Optimization Theory, Demonstration, Supply Chain, Transportation/Logistics, and Service Operations , in order to better meet the academic needs of readers in different fields. At the same time, we will continue to assume its responsibilities as the world's largest Chinese community for operations research, and organize interviews, academic live broadcasts, and job search for operations research .
Information and job-seeking content will be mainly migrated to the job-hunting sub-account of [Operation OR Weiji]: Operation Offer. Welcome to continue to pay attention. We hope to use this issue to strengthen the function of [Strategy OR Strategies] as a bridge between the OR academic community and the industry.
All in all, we hope to continue our original intention of operating [Strategies OR Strategies], and continue to devote ourselves to providing readers with better academic content, including the latest research results, research methods and practical cases. We will also continue to invite some of the most authoritative scholars and industry leaders to write original articles and participate in video discussions, so as to let readers understand the most cutting-edge OR academic and business trends.
To this end, we have recently launched a wave of large-scale recruitment, hoping to admit more people with lofty ideals who are passionate about operations research. If you are interested in joining our community and want to help us run the community better, please refer to this article to submit an application to us : Welcome like-minded you! "Strategies OR Strategies" is recruiting new students. The application deadline is about two weeks away. Please hurry up~
4. Final Words
Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the readers and authors of [Strategy OR Strategies] and all the students who participated in the operation. It is because of your support and contributions that we can continue to develop and grow. In the days to come, we will continue to work hard to bring you more valuable content and services. If you have any suggestions for us, please leave a message in the comment area or contact us directly.
For those who can see here, I will also make a five-year agreement with you: I believe that after five years, we will see a better [strategy OR strategy] than now. I also hope that at that time, you will still be watching the content produced by [Strategies OR Strategies] ~
Qin Hanzhang
April 3, 2023
in New York, USA