Back in one piece

After a particulary long wait in the airport on the way to the conference, the trip back was quick and short. I even had time to sit in Toronto and eat a nice lunch before heading back to Peterborough.

CSEE '09 was big. There were many talks going on in many rooms at all times, so none of the rooms were really full. The talks were broken into rough categories, but with so much overlap, sometimes seemingly related talks were held in different rooms, often in different buildlings. This meant that in between each talk you had to leave during question period and scramble to another buildling to see the next talk you were interested in, often after the speaker for the next talk had already started.

The conference package included a reusable mug (excellent idea!), a reusable bag (excellent idea!), and a t-shirt(who actually wears them?). The coffee breaks had good munchies and the lunchs (in the Dalhousie cafeteria) were hot and delicious. Strangely enough, the 'banquet' on Saturday night did not have a sit down meal, instead hors d'oeurves and roast beef sandwiches (no veggie option)... I was under the impression that banquet meant a feast, so I googled the definition:

"A banquet is a large public meal or feast, complete with main courses and desserts" according to Wikipedia. I thought so!

Compartively to OEEC, I was expecting more in the talks department. I actually didn't see any talks interesting enough to discuss here, except the plenary speaker, Krebs of the snowshoe hare cycles fame. He spent his first 3 slides lambasting the government of Canada for not providing enough research funding (Canada actually provides less than Israel currently) and for specifically not providing enough funding to ecology and evolution research (physics gets 3x as much). It was captivating, especially since NSERC representatives were giving a talk right after his.

My presentation went well, I even got the "You did good" from the supervisor... I'm going to ignore the slightly suprised tone he used and I will try not to be offended. And now it's back to the grind... time to write this damn thesis.

Prepping my presentation

I'm in the airport on my way to Halifax for the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution (CSEE) conference. I'm flying a few days early to spend time with some friends... and that meant showing my presentation to my supervisor on Thursday. Now, if you read the last post you know I did the chemical immobilization course all last week (in fact, until Thursday at 12). Guess when I had to present to my supervisor? Thursday at 12.

Needless to say, I did not have any time to change my presentation from the OEEC conference. I do plan to present some additional data but that had to be added verbally on the fly while I presented to my lab. The two PhD students went before me, and of course both of their presentations were well composed and they were well spoken. Then it was my turn... every slide had a problem, sometimes my intonation was wrong, my conclusion was weak... and I was missing some data (which I likely will not get analyzed in time for the conference).

Groan. Not my finest moment, but at least all the bad things have been pointed out to me and I conveniently now have a week to fix them. I'd rather make an ass out of myself in front of my lab than a whole room of CSEE conference goers! That's my first task for tomorrow - edit presentation. Wish me luck!