Uncertain Principles

I thought about tacking this onto the end of the previous post, but decided it deserved a space of its own. So, how was the meeting on the whole?

All in all, I thought it was a very good meeting. There wasn't anything stunning and new in the talks that I saw-- there were some very impressive results, and some excellent talks, but most of it was stuff that's clearly in line with research that's been going for a while. There was a lot of really interesting physics presented at the meeting, though, and I'm sure I missed a lot of good stuff, too, because of the highly parallel nature of the sessions.

In terms of the organization, the meeting rooms in the Nittany Lion Inn seemed to be a little cramped for a lot of the talks. The big ballroom in particular felt like it wasn't really big enough. On the other hand, though, the poster sessions were the best in recent memory-- the space was actually large enough to move around relatively freely, and it was maintained at a reasonable temperature. The beer was good, too, and the zealousness of the ID checking was amusing.

DAMOP in general is in sort of a weird position. The meeting has gotten a lot bigger in recent years (it's been growing since cooling and trapping exploded in the early 90's), and this one probably topped 1,000 attendees (I'm not sure the exact number, but it's been right around that for a few years, and this meeting felt bigger than the last few). It's sort of straining the capacity of the university facilities that they like to use for these meetings (to keep costs down), but not quite big enough for really big conference centers.

I'm not sure what the future will hold. Next year is in Charlottesville, VA, another university site, and I think the year after may be at Rice in Houston. I don't see the meeting getting a whole lot bigger than it already is-- I'd be a little surprised if we break 2,000, and shocked if we broke 5K. They may need to fiddle with the organization a little to accommodate the numbers, though.

I didn't make it to the business meetings on Friday, though, so I don't know what if anything was decided. Anybody with actual knowledge is encouraged to share it in the comments, otherwise, I'll just wait to be surprised...