2010 Biophysical Society

This was a great conference for all of us from Haverford, for a number of reasons, so here is my personal take (with grades!) on some of the more important aspects to me.  Here were the best parts for me:

• Networking.  saw many people who have been very helpful and informative to me at the beginning of my professorial career, including Gina MacDonald, Sean Decatur, Matt Kubasik and Myriam Cotten.
• Collaboration. had a productive conversation with Sonia Longhi, who I will see again soon.
• Students.  was able to watch my excellent three seniors do a great job with their poster presentations.  They really made Haverford proud.
• Science.  Made myself quite a long list of ideas to tap in both teaching and research as things move forward; will do my best to fight through my long list of possibilities to explore within the next week.

Now on to the grades:

• The meeting content: A-.  A good and very well-attended year, with science to reflect the broad range of attendees.
• San Francisco: A.  What  a city!
• The food: A. and there is plenty that I missed; good thing I am going back in a month for the always-disastrous national ACS meeting!
• The site: D.  Moscone is unfortunately not a good fit for this conference.  The only redeeming parts are that there is plenty of food within walking distance and the hotels are close.
• The Society: B+.  The Society staff did a good job dealing with onsite issues as they popped up, but some of the crowding and other issues might have been avoided given better estimates of attendence.  Kudos to Ellen Weiss and Erica Retrosi, among others, for managing many of the public-face aspects of the meeting (including the bloggers).

Thanks for reading; we will be sending this blog to archive in a few days, so it will be available for posterity’s sake.  If this sort of activity resumes again (and I believe it will, sooner rather than later seeing as how I have two trips coming up in the next three weeks), check my webpage for new links.