I am back in Ann Arbor, and although the weather is great, the cats cute and the wondermachine apparently fixed, there are other places I’d rather be. The 5 weeks tour of Europe made me very very homesick, as was probably clear from the previous posts. Even in Prague, where I’d never been before, I immediately felt at home. I couldn’t live there, too many cars, too little bicycles and sooooooo many tourists! But somehow the organization of life, the way things work made much more sense than any NZ or US town ever could. Funny enough I was also constantly approached by Czech people for directions or other questions, I’m not sure what because I don’t speak a single word Czech, but apparently I fitted into the city as well.
The conference was HUGE. The first days I was a bit grumpy because I was missing Amsterdam and because I could not locate a single person that I knew. It must also be said that the good thing about large conferences is that everybody is looking for people and so at some point everybody gets desperate and starts talking to everybody, so I did meet some random people at lunch and snacks. But all changed on Tuesday when my own talk was scheduled and of course most people I know where in the same session. There were also a lot of unknown people who apparently work on the same stuff and we all got very excited about each other’s work. Note to self however: wear pants for your talk so you don’t have to worry about the heavy clip-on batteries for the head-set microphone pulling down your skirt…
As previously mentioned at conferences I always try to meet the people in my field that write the exciting papers, and they turn out either nice or crazy. This time I finally met the friendly reviewer of my first paper, and his former post-doc whom I found less friendly. I also decided to go and chat to a NZ geologist at her poster, just because she is working in NZ and I figured I could use a local geologist at some point, her poster was totally irrelevant to me. Turns out she was extremely nice, and had worked on things more relevant to me, and has a fabulous lab. A totally unexpected win-situation!
But of course I also failed to talk to certain people, because I was too shy at the crucial moments, or the timing was never right, or I was still intimidated by their reputation. It’s never perfect.
Most talks I went to were good enough that I didn’t fall asleep. Posters…different. I took a poster-workshop once, and never had to make one myself yet, but what I want in a poster, a quick major result/conclusion and some explanatory figures, is hard to find. Most people still write a paper and print it in poster-format. With the conclusions in small print all the way at the bottom. Luckily most people do have a 3 minute “this is on my poster” speech though, so that was good.
The social events of the conference were plenty. Sunday I went on a sightseeing tour, then at the icebreaker I chatted with complete strangers, Monday there was a classical concert in a church (Ian: “that is so European”), Tuesday a dinner in an abbey, Wednesday a band playing and Thursday the conference dinner that I didn’t go to. The abbey-dinner was a lot of fun, I had finally located Jamie from the AA lab and he is just such great company, never a dull moment. Coincidentally he once told me a funny story about a Canadian prof, and now we shared the table with this guy, which I only realized during dessert. Jamie: “are you still working on the oldest rocks in the Canadian shield?” Canadian prof: “In fact, I am now working on cheese. You wouldn’t believe how much fat there is in cheese, it keeps clogging up our machines! The whole lab smells of fried cheese”. Also I sat next to an older Japanese geologist couple and so obviously we discussed earthquakes. But also volcanoes and random things.
To get an insight in modern Czech cuisine I had ordered “boxed lunches” from the conference centre, and we ate those in front of the centre when the sun was out. The sandwiches weren’t such a highlight, but it was a good introduction to Czech chocolate fabrications. At night we went out for dinner a lot and the goulash and knödels were ok for the week. I failed to find the sweet knödels but had plenty of Prague-pancakes.
Most importantly in terms of conference-catering: there was a more or less steady supply of good, Dutch (Douwe Egberts), coffee, tea, juice and coke, and beer and wine in the afternoon during poster-sessions. I earned Jamie’s everlasting gratitude for bringing him a cold beer while he was presenting his poster in smothering conditions.
That wraps up the conference. I wasn’t too happy about how my talk went, but had a lot of feedback so it wasn’t wasted. Next month I can try again in Australia. I did enjoy the geochemistry view of life during this conference and have more or less decided that is more the direction I want to take with my work, as opposed to the biological approach (which will feature during the conference in Aussie).
Next post: Prague in approximately 500 photos.
The conference was HUGE. The first days I was a bit grumpy because I was missing Amsterdam and because I could not locate a single person that I knew. It must also be said that the good thing about large conferences is that everybody is looking for people and so at some point everybody gets desperate and starts talking to everybody, so I did meet some random people at lunch and snacks. But all changed on Tuesday when my own talk was scheduled and of course most people I know where in the same session. There were also a lot of unknown people who apparently work on the same stuff and we all got very excited about each other’s work. Note to self however: wear pants for your talk so you don’t have to worry about the heavy clip-on batteries for the head-set microphone pulling down your skirt…
As previously mentioned at conferences I always try to meet the people in my field that write the exciting papers, and they turn out either nice or crazy. This time I finally met the friendly reviewer of my first paper, and his former post-doc whom I found less friendly. I also decided to go and chat to a NZ geologist at her poster, just because she is working in NZ and I figured I could use a local geologist at some point, her poster was totally irrelevant to me. Turns out she was extremely nice, and had worked on things more relevant to me, and has a fabulous lab. A totally unexpected win-situation!
But of course I also failed to talk to certain people, because I was too shy at the crucial moments, or the timing was never right, or I was still intimidated by their reputation. It’s never perfect.
Most talks I went to were good enough that I didn’t fall asleep. Posters…different. I took a poster-workshop once, and never had to make one myself yet, but what I want in a poster, a quick major result/conclusion and some explanatory figures, is hard to find. Most people still write a paper and print it in poster-format. With the conclusions in small print all the way at the bottom. Luckily most people do have a 3 minute “this is on my poster” speech though, so that was good.
The social events of the conference were plenty. Sunday I went on a sightseeing tour, then at the icebreaker I chatted with complete strangers, Monday there was a classical concert in a church (Ian: “that is so European”), Tuesday a dinner in an abbey, Wednesday a band playing and Thursday the conference dinner that I didn’t go to. The abbey-dinner was a lot of fun, I had finally located Jamie from the AA lab and he is just such great company, never a dull moment. Coincidentally he once told me a funny story about a Canadian prof, and now we shared the table with this guy, which I only realized during dessert. Jamie: “are you still working on the oldest rocks in the Canadian shield?” Canadian prof: “In fact, I am now working on cheese. You wouldn’t believe how much fat there is in cheese, it keeps clogging up our machines! The whole lab smells of fried cheese”. Also I sat next to an older Japanese geologist couple and so obviously we discussed earthquakes. But also volcanoes and random things.
To get an insight in modern Czech cuisine I had ordered “boxed lunches” from the conference centre, and we ate those in front of the centre when the sun was out. The sandwiches weren’t such a highlight, but it was a good introduction to Czech chocolate fabrications. At night we went out for dinner a lot and the goulash and knödels were ok for the week. I failed to find the sweet knödels but had plenty of Prague-pancakes.
Most importantly in terms of conference-catering: there was a more or less steady supply of good, Dutch (Douwe Egberts), coffee, tea, juice and coke, and beer and wine in the afternoon during poster-sessions. I earned Jamie’s everlasting gratitude for bringing him a cold beer while he was presenting his poster in smothering conditions.
That wraps up the conference. I wasn’t too happy about how my talk went, but had a lot of feedback so it wasn’t wasted. Next month I can try again in Australia. I did enjoy the geochemistry view of life during this conference and have more or less decided that is more the direction I want to take with my work, as opposed to the biological approach (which will feature during the conference in Aussie).
Next post: Prague in approximately 500 photos.
