The long tail is probably a little too low for me (there were some really great talks - and posters - this year), but it's been interesting to notice how much choosier I am now about what I go to see.
I regret to say it was true for me, partly because I spent the start of the meeting wondering if one could actually die from jet lag, and the end of the meeting suffering an embarrassing digestive complaint. But my role at such meetings, as an editor at Your Favourite Weekly Professional Science Magazine Beginning With N, is not so much to attend talks - many or most things have been published by the time they reach the podium - nor to write things up as news - as to hang around waiting for people to come up to me and pitch papers. So I return from Vegas loaded with the most amazing secrets, things tha migh end up as published papers, one day.
Multiple parallel sessions are a significant causative factor methinks... Entirely single session conferences like Hennig in Brazil this year, make non-attendance all too conspicuous.
Not that SVP could actually be done in single non-parallel sessions - I'm amazed how big it was! Seemed to dwarf even IPC3 which is odd considering that's only held every 4 years!!!
oh so true for me this time: if it had been my first or second SVP I would have been able to attend many talks. But by now it was far more important for me talk to all the many people - and so I missed out on many cool talks.
Hahaha, very true! (Probably especially true in Vegas.)
ReplyDeleteI need to plot this for myself. There certainly are some similarities, with the occasional blip in the long right tail.
ReplyDelete(Okay, not really true... I do try to get to as many talks as possible.)
ReplyDeleteThe long tail is probably a little too low for me (there were some really great talks - and posters - this year), but it's been interesting to notice how much choosier I am now about what I go to see.
ReplyDelete(and before anyone gets too upset or thinks me too lazy at SVP, this post is largely satirical).
ReplyDeleteI regret to say it was true for me, partly because I spent the start of the meeting wondering if one could actually die from jet lag, and the end of the meeting suffering an embarrassing digestive complaint. But my role at such meetings, as an editor at Your Favourite Weekly Professional Science Magazine Beginning With N, is not so much to attend talks - many or most things have been published by the time they reach the podium - nor to write things up as news - as to hang around waiting for people to come up to me and pitch papers. So I return from Vegas loaded with the most amazing secrets, things tha migh end up as published papers, one day.
ReplyDeleteThe number of talks attended is inversely proportional to the amount of Ruffles and ranch dressing consumed.
ReplyDeletemmmmmm... ruffles and Laramidia
ReplyDeleteMultiple parallel sessions are a significant causative factor methinks... Entirely single session conferences like Hennig in Brazil this year, make non-attendance all too conspicuous.
ReplyDeleteNot that SVP could actually be done in single non-parallel sessions - I'm amazed how big it was! Seemed to dwarf even IPC3 which is odd considering that's only held every 4 years!!!
oh so true for me this time: if it had been my first or second SVP I would have been able to attend many talks. But by now it was far more important for me talk to all the many people - and so I missed out on many cool talks.
ReplyDelete