Well, the conference is over, and I'm beat. I'll be in transit most of the day, and I'll be typing up summaries of the more interesting talks that I attended here. Overall I was disappointed in the conference. There didn't seem to be near as many talks that were related to my interests (which is partly a function of who submits stuff for a given year). But the conference was also not extremely well-organized. They did a better job of ending things by dinner time, but the actual blocks of talks were not organized in a very coherent manner. I was told that they tried using an AI to organize the blocks, which might explain it.
On the other hand, it was nice to see Jill, and we had a good trip to the zoo, but didn't have a chance to see much else here.
Anyway, I'll see you all when I'm on the ground again in Lafayette.
By the way, here are a few of my pet peeves for the trip:
1) Speakers that move their head away from the mic intermittently, so you can only hear half of what they're saying
2) Airports that don't have free wi-fi access
3) Big hotels that have elevators that basically hold 5 people at a time
4) Speakers who only present their data numerically, instead of making a nice, clear graph
5) Speakers who use microfonts on their slides, rendering them unreadable, and hence, completely frackin' useless
6) Speakers who go over their allotted time and don't leave time for questions, and cause the last speaker to go over
Sunday, July 27, 2008
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3 comments:
1) Speakers that move their head away from the mic intermittently, so you can only hear half of what they're saying
What about Chocolate Rain?
What about Chocolate Rain?
Thanks a bunch. Every time I manage get that freakin song out of my head...someone has to go and bring it up again. =^P
Anyway, there were a ton of technical problems at the conference. Mics working only sporadically and fuzzy screens that would be fixed only to become blurry again a few minutes later. And the ballrooms where the talks were held were consistently freezing cold.
I would consider these things (and the ones you mentioned) to be more than idiosyncratic pet peeves...they're more like stupidities that cause aggravations for everyone.
On the other hand, I think D.C.'s efficient (and clean!) subway system was the most impressive thing about the trip.
Sorry your conference was plagued with technical (and other) difficulties, but was glad it brought you and your entourage to DC and really enjoyed our dinner out!
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