Beware of geeks
Back in the misty days of yore when I was a PhD student I went to the annual SIGGRAPH conference in the US of A. SIGGRAPH is the biggest (and most academically prestigious) conference in the computer graphics world - think 45,000 geeks in attendance, a full research conference agenda, a trade show, evening events, cinema screenings, Holywood effects houses, and... free bars.

It's easy to get invites to the best parties if you're a girl and have the right contacts. Tick! And Tick! And so I found myself at many of these swish booze-ups over the week: publishing houses, alumni groups, SFX studios - you name it, they had a party for it, and usually a matching (XXL) t-shirt too.

I discovered frozen daiquiris. I found they went well with margaritas. I forgot to eat. Who needs actual food when you can have icy strawberry-flavoured sustenance? I did what I do best - I got well and truly langered.

Thing is, it being such a prestigious conference, the gods of the graphics world are there in force. I spied mine: a man whose work I had been studying in depth for the past 2.5 years, a man who knew more about displays that anyone else, a man whose brain I needed if I was to finish my cutting-edge research, a man who reduced me to awe-stricken wonder. I had a mission! I had a target!

And so I approached him, veering drunkenly across the room under cocktail-influenced navigation in exactly the way that an F-14 Tomcat wouldn't. I may have gabbled something like "your work is amazing and I am trying my very best to emulate and continue it" but what actually came out, drunken and slurred, was "I thought you'd be older. With a beard."

His wife laughed. He smiled benignly. I left to be violently ill and lost my nose stud while vomiting down the toilet several hours later.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Mon 20 Apr 2009, 15:06, 8 replies)

always annoyned me at conferences
No-one ever seemed to want to get anywhere near as drunk as I did.

Mind you computer graphics is a considerably more rock and roll research area than combinatorial search. We had some proper mathematical/theoretical compsci/space cadets at our conferences.

I have no such problem these days working in financial services :D
( djtrialprice, Mon 20 Apr 2009, 15:53, closed)

aye,
theory conferences scare the bejeebus out of me. Computer graphics is borderline fluffy therefore there are girls AND people who can make eye contact.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Mon 20 Apr 2009, 15:55, closed)

That reminds me...
...of a lecturer my brother had to put up with at University - he spent his entire time with his back to the audience during his lecture. Won an award for it, too - most boring lecturer. He got it 2 years in a row as well, by repeating the lecture the following year.

Bloody physicists.
(BombayMick Dogs are better than cats, Mon 20 Apr 2009, 16:02, closed)

Conferences are ace.
You get to tell famous people that they're wrong.


I was at a psychiatrists' conference a couple of years ago and had a great time in the Q&A telling the president of the WPA that his keynote address was incoherent. He avoided me for the rest of the event.

Result.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 20 Apr 2009, 19:24, closed)

That was very rude of you.
Why were you such a cunt to him?
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Mon 20 Apr 2009, 20:00, closed)

I wanna go to a conference.
Do they have them for ex art student admin/bookeepers who have no idea what they're doing?

I could give a talk on how to get your hired bookeeper who knows what she's doing to eventually do all the hard stuff herself because even if you use a calculator you need to add up the columns 4 times before you get it right.
( girlinthehole, Mon 20 Apr 2009, 20:33, closed)

See now that's how it should be
I went to a conference the other week and there was no free wine to be seen the whole time! It's just not right!
(xanthine, Tue 21 Apr 2009, 6:17, closed)

I was lucky...
I recently went to one in Brazil where everyone sampled the delights of Caprihini's (biofuel in a glass). I think that my field of research positively discriminates towards those who enjoy a drink or twenty..........sadly I don't drink, doh!!!
(Studentken is looking for motivation on, Tue 21 Apr 2009, 10:22, closed)