Post
Conference day 1: clean shaved faces. Nice open hair. Hugging people you haven't seen for a year. Asking your overseas colleagues how the jetlag is doing. Slowly starting up discussions, with mostly senior folks involved.
Conference day 4: stubble. (Unwashed) Hair in braids. Rings under the eyes. Quietly nodding to each other over the 3rd cup coffee before the start of the first session. Heated but friendly back and forth in every discussion session between everyone.
@vicgrinberg @vicgrinberg Sounds strangely familiar. Feels like I'm in the room.
What fraction of people are sporting a (new) horrific cough, but if asked about it say "oh, I'm sure it's nothing"?
@hattom so far I'm the only one with a mean cough (and mine is really a leftover from the cold I had one and a half weeks ago; it always takes ages for me until it goes away...)
@vicgrinberg glad to hear; sorry to hear about the cough.
@vicgrinberg Conferences are for me like a roll call of a regiment that comes back from the front trench. You look and count who is still there.
In the commercial sector, the attrition is currently very high. I hope the academic sector does better...
@masek it really isn't - oit of the 50 ppl in the room, only 13 have something like a permanent position. And some of these positions are only quasi-permanent (only as long as a mission is going or as long as someone manages to bring in enough grants to cover one's own salary...).
@vicgrinberg Sorry, to hear that.
Two weeks I was on a conference I am visiting for 26 years. Turned out, this time I was the last man standing from the first one 😢 in 2000.
