Discounted lodging is now available for the 2009 MRS Fall Meeting.
And for those of you who are REALLY thinking ahead, here's the Spring 2010 Call For Papers. Abstract submission begins on October 2 and concludes on November 2.
Abstract submission for the 2009 MRS Fall Meeting is now open. Submission deadline is June 23, 2009.
Bye, everyone, it's been fun! Thanks for reading the blog! I think maybe I got more out of this conference because I knew I had to write something interesting down... made me pay more attention, be more thoughtful about what I saw. Try it sometime!
Hope you enjoy your remaining time in SF! If you want to do something super touristy, go to Ghiradelli Square and get free chocolate when you walk into the store. And then walk out and walk in again. And again. And again...
This terms conference went well! Its finally over. I am sure you all have gotten enough hand shakes and network contacts and new thoughts and perspectives on how to approach your own work! I know I have, and I hope to see everyone again in a year, or sooner. I think highlights for me were:
Poster Session talks about science
Meeting people in between the sessions over coffee to discuss the most provocative talk of the last session
Symposium X.
Mostly I liked everything about the conference that forced me to think about or approach a problem from a new and different angle. Conferences rock! and Spring MRS is a golden standard in my book.
Thanks for checking out the blog! Peace!
I've got a backlog of photos here, might as well post them on this quiet Friday @ MRS...
Berkeley folks at the Kohn promoting his Power of the Sun video session!
Nearly empty Moscone Center, lunchtime on Friday....
Famous faces!
Today is the last day of Spring MRS. While the population of the conference has started to dwindle, there are still many who are trying to fuflill their fix of talks for the next quarter (before the next conference!). Some symposium have been combined, so if you don't quite see the talks you want in your "goto" symposium, look at some of the others that may have some overlap. You will find yourself pleasantly surprised. But in any case, Friday is a good day for exploration! Go see symposia you know nothing about! Also go explore the city!
For those of you that made it to the Symposium X talks on Wednesday by Richard Le Sar and Scott Lacy, you may be interested in seeing this New York Times article on the environmental consequences of conventional stoves in developing countries.
I've got an idea about how we could improve the MRS conferences: Day passes. There are a lot of attendees that are local and only want to go for one section of a symposium (half a day) or one or two talks. I think people right now resort to sneaking in to the MRS in order to see one research group that really pertains to what they're doing. Which is why we had to have that poor guard standing in the lobby all the time checking badges.
I think in order to address this problem, MRS should issue day passes-- charge maybe a little bit more than 1/5 of the full week price, so that if you wanted to go for 3 days you might as well get the season pass-- and maybe then people wouldn't have to sneak around in order to learn. I realize that the logistics of this might be a little difficult to figure out-- you've got to balance fairness to people from out of town, and keep the community feel of the meeting. But hey, just throwing it out there. So that students whose advisers won't pay for them to go to the full meeting can come, too!
Thought of this because my labmate N. Adelstein was reading the story from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! about going to a gravity conference a day late and describing to the cab driver what the scientists would have looked like (guys wandering around not paying attention to much and saying things like G-mu-nu! G-mu-nu!). How would you blend in at an MRS conference...? Look uncomfortable dressed in nice clothes, and get excited about anything with the word nano...?
