Conference: Great idea

[steuard]

Unbeknownst to me, at some point in the last few years I leveled up my Conference Socialization skill. I'm not sure how: actually getting my PhD might have helped, or having a "real" physics job, or just having lived for a few years interacting with people as a professor rather than as a student. It also helps that the people I knew in grad school (and elsewhere) have scattered off to other institutions, so that's helped me bridge a bit to other social circles. In any case, I've been having a great time, not just in (most of ) the talks but also the socialization during breaks.


Fun moment of the day: during the introduction of one talk, someone used my pretty D-brane figure to illustrate one step in a chain of reasoning. (Just the picture at right, not the whole slide). It made me grin to see that people in the actual field are aware of it. (They didn't credit me for it, sadly, though doing so without disrupting the point of the slide would have been tricky. I asked the speaker a question in the next break and mentioned the picture, and he said, "Oh, I probably should have credited you...," so at least he sounded a bit apologetic. I'm not too troubled by it.)