Back from Halifax

After driving through the night, we got home from Halifax this morning. The SMBE meeting was excellent as usual, and I agree with Dan Hartl that it's the best meeting for evolutionary genetics. With excellent talks and posters on topics ranging from population genetics to comparative genomics (and many people discussing both and everything in between in a single 15 minute talk), it's hard to find a better meeting.

I also had the opportunity to meet Rosie Redfield, John Logsdon, Jason Stajich, Reed Cartwright, and Jacob Tennessen. We got together for dinner, along with Professor Steve Steve, to discuss blogging and open science. It turns out that I also have an academic connection with a bunch of these bloggers -- Jason and I graduated from the same college in the same year, Reed's PhD advisor was my advisor's advisor, and Rosie did her post-doc in the same lab as my advisor. And I was surprised that I hadn't met Jason before, given that we share overlapping interests (he was a co-author on the human-chimp copy-number divergence paper from Matt Hahn's lab).

Finally, it was announced that John's school, the University of Iowa, will be hosting the meeting in 2009. Next year's meeting will be in Barcelona -- the combination of cost and the timing of the meeting will probably keep me from going -- but I'll most likely be in Iowa City the following year.

More like this

This year's meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution will take place at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia (conference webpage). I'm going, and so are Reed Cartwright and Jason Stajich. Additionally, Rosie Redfield and John Logsdon have each been invited to give a talk…
I think I'm cursed. Or I have bad luck. Or conference organizers think I'm a morning person. Alright, so maybe I really am a morning person. But that's besides the point. Because it sucks to give a talk on a Saturday morning. Saturday mornings should be reserved for things like Belgian waffles,…
The University of Iowa is hosting next year's meeting of the Society of Molecular Biology and Evolution, SMBE 2009. I usually go to the annual SMBE conference, and I was probably going to attend SMBE 2009. Now I'm definitely going. Why? Because John Logsdon just announced that they'll be hosting a…
I'm fucking sick of blog memes. Not only do I find online surveys totally lame, I also never get tagged. Boohoo, nobody likes me. Now, John Logsdon orders me to tell you eight things about me. I'm only doing this 'cause we had dinner together last week. Here are the rules: We have to post these…

Finally, it was announced that John's school, the University of Iowa, will be hosting the meeting in 2009.

Yay! How in the heck did we end up getting it in the Year of Darwin, though...?