3rd Place Poster Winner

Last week we had my laboratory's annual Symposium. My lab is actually a cross-departmental lab, and my advisor is one of eight or so professors in the collaboration (each with their own students and individual lines of research). The Symposium is a day and a half of talks by professors from our own lab, guest speakers in our field, a poster session from all current students, and a celebration dinner.

We just had a poster session this spring, so instead of requiring students to make a new poster, the head of the lab said that students could just re-submit the posters from the spring.

But I was traveling this spring to a conference in Korea, so I wasn't around to make a poster.

I really didn't want to make a poster this time around, so I just kind of snuck under the radar and didn't remind anybody that I didn't have a poster from the spring... therefore, I assumed I just didn't have a poster in the display.

There are prizes for the student posters. The attendees of the symposium can vote for their favorite posters, and the top votes get first, second and third place cash prizes. But because our symposium is small, and nobody really has an incentive to vote, the joke around the office is that the prizes go to the only three students that can convince someone to turn in a ballot for them...

So one morning while procrastinating from work, my labmate pushed his chair back, spun around, and said to me, "Miss Outlier - did you even turn in a poster?"

"Nope," I said, looking at my hands, "Didn't do one this year."

He laughed and replied, "I was gonna give you $20 if you won the competition this year, because I knew you don't have results to show."

Now that was a bit of a low blow to begin with, but he teases a lot so I didn't take it personally.

And guess what.

Instead of NO poster for me, turns out some dedicated admin dug up my poster from LAST year's symposium, and put that on display.

Guess what AGAIN.

I won 3rd place. And I didn't even solicit votes - I didn't know I was in the running!

Can I collect that $20, please? :)

Leadership Skills

I got my butt handed to me today. I'm organizing a conference, and I'm one of two co-leads. I thought I was doing a good job being a leader, but I had one of the team come to me today and say... hey, Miss Outlier, I was talking with a few other people on the team the other day, and I wanted to share the feedback they gave me.

Basically the feedback was that my team doesn't feel a supportive atmosphere, don't feel like they are contributing, or owning any part of the process - don't feel like it's any fun. Like they are just cogs in the machine, there to execute rather than to be a creative force in the organization process.

Bugger.

I was trying to correct what I felt was wrong in previous years - I always felt that things were disorganized, and as part of the team I didn't know what was going on. So this year as lead organizer I tried a few new things - I send out meeting minutes after each meeting, and I try to keep meetings shorter and more efficient. But I think in trying to make things more structured, I may have squashed some of the good elements in how the organization functioned.

So somehow I have gone too far in the other direction, and people don't feel like discussion and brainstorming is encouraged. The camaraderie has apparently been lost.

Part of this is exacerbated by the fact that we have a very young, new team this year - so the veterans aren't there to shout out ideas and demonstrate that contributions are encouraged. And part of this is because the meeting where we did the most brainstorming - the one where I felt like the ideas were really flowing - was one where only four people attended.

Actually I felt much more comfortable with just the four people - I know how to lead a conversation with a small group, and perhaps I just feel lost with 15 people staring at me while I lead the meeting.

What to do now, then? Well, this weekend is the annual retreat. This retreat is supposed to be a time for the team to bond, to review high-level ideas, to think about the bigger picture. And this is an excellent time and place to build atmosphere - camaraderie, if you will.

So I am going to try my very hardest to let people know this weekend that their ideas are valuable and wanted, that everybody is part of the team, and that this is supposed to feel like a group of friends.

This conference has always been about the people, and the relationships formed - between the team members, and between the team and the international community. And maybe I've lost that in my quest to keep on top of the logistical details. Perhaps I have failed somewhat as a leader so far - but this I know: the real failure is only if I can't change and adapt. This is a chance for me to learn and to grow, and I will do my best.

I really appreciated that the team member who came to me was being honest with me, and that they shared the feelings of the team with me candidly. Because now I have a chance to make some adjustments.

But dammit, it hurts to know I've been trying my best and I'm still not doing the right thing. Being a leader is difficult - so many ways to screw it up!

Keeping International Hours

So remember that entrepreneurship conference that I help organize? Two years ago it was in Iceland, and this year it was in Korea. Well I'm pleased to announce that next year, I'm one of the two lead organizers.

I've already been working hard setting the stage for next year's conference. It's all been behind-the-scenes so far, but now we're going public.

Tonight I was woken up at 1am by a cell phone call from my co-lead-organizer. Before I could even clear my throat (and gees... need to go pee, people...) I found myself on a three-way Skype call with our website designer, who is currently in Delhi. After working through some final details, in the middle of the night we launched an updated website for the 2012 conference. And at 3am, sent out an official press release announcing the location of next year's upcoming conference.

Some people brag about what they can do before lunch - I'll see that, and raise you what I can do before I even get up in the morning. :)

All I'm saying is, it's just a good thing I slept in PJ's tonight - not a forgone conclusion, given how hot it is these days...

Korea Conference Wear

This post is on dress code, which is kind of an odd topic, but since it's my blog I can write as I choose - so here you go. As my dad says, it's good to be king.

During the conference I helped organize in Korea, the team wears a "uniform" of sorts. It's not an entire outift uniform, just some identifying piece of clothing. This is common practice every year, and the goal is to make it easier for the conference attendees to recognize the staffers, so they can ask questions, request help, or of course compliment us on the awesome job we're doing. :) 

Last year, we had blue ties for the men, and blue scarves for the women. But to be honest, the quality of the ties wasn't all that good, and the bright baby blue color was a bit loud (and so, looked a bit cheap). This year, we wanted to up the quality of the uniform.

So we had really nice ties designed, out of high-quality material, and with a subtle conference logo stiched in. I helped design them, and I was quite pleased with how they turned out. (As a side note - four engineers, sitting around a conference table, trying to converge on an aesthetically pleasing tie design? Hilarious.)

So the ties were no problem, but the issue was this - the minimum order of women's scarves was 150. And we only had five girls going. So, we girls could either a) wear a tie too, b) find a scarf in a similar color, or c) wear nothing. Well, not nothing, but no uniform at least...

I happen to think women in ties can look really professional - the woman in question just has to have the confidence to pull it off. (As another side note, I just googled for images of women in ties to find a picture to illustrate that point, and apparently a lot of men have women-in-suit fantasies. Definitely a NSFW search, who'd have guessed? Teach me to blog at work...)

Never having lacked in confidence (ahem, for better or worse), I opted to wear the tie. With, might I mention, all buttons buttoned on my shirt. Sheesh.

I had to get one of the guys to tie it for me the first day, though, because I didn't actually know how to tie a tie. I wore a suit, as shown above, and it didn't stand out too much.

The second day I chose a pencil skirt and no jacket, so the tie was more obvious. Still, nobody really did a double-take, so I think it still looked professional. I also learned how difficult it is to get a tie to hit right at the proper length at your waistband - you have to guess ahead of time, because you use up a lot of tie fabric while making the knot. I guess guys have a lot of practice at this, but for me it's a bit tricky.

Now, all the other girls on the team opted for the "no uniform" option. While I understand why they didn't want to wear a tie (have to have a collared shirt, it's an odd fashion statement, etc.), come on now, I think that's cheating!

Because hardly any of the conference attendees realized the other four girls were part of the hosting team - they had no identifier, and the rest of the guys and me all had the same ties. So none of the attendees asked the other women any questions, or bothered them about water bottles, or asked about getting a new nametag, or any other host-type questions. No fair! :)

Figure: Obligatory MySpace shot, dedicated to my sister who is the queen of  self-posing

In the end, nobody cared that I was wearing a tie, and in fact I got several compliments. What do you think - would you have gone for a scarf?

Sightseeing in Korea

I recently went to Korea for a conference, and I intentionally stayed an extra two days so that I could have a chance to do some sightseeing.

Of course two days isn't nearly enough to explore an entire country, but I did my best to see a bunch of things. I took one of the very touristy "hop-on, hop-off" buses that runs loops around the sights of Seoul. I "hopped off" at a traditional village.

Figure: Traditional village, right in the middle of modern Seoul.

Turns out, the traditional village didn't have much to do, because it wasn't set up as museum or anything, it's just a bunch of empty buildings. Neat architecture, but moving on, moving on...

I attempted to "hop on" that bus, which was supposed to come around every 20 minutes, but I waited thirty minutes and saw no sign of my bus. I did however see every possible city bus route, and approximately seventilly buses from other touristy companies, just to taunt me. Just as I was pondering buying a ticket for one of those OTHER hop-on-hop-off companies, who actually seemed to be in the "hopping-on" business instead of just the "hopping-off" side - my bus finally appeared.

I went to see Seoul Tower, which is like the Empire State Building in that the only reason people go, is to make it to the top and look out. So I went. Rode to the top. Looked out the side. Tried to take pictures, but the windows were dirty.

Huh?

The one attraction is to look out, and the windows are crusted up? Come on now... Also it was a twenty minute wait to get to the elevator to go back down. How is that possible? Doesn't conservation of mass indicate that if I only had to wait 5 minutes to go UP, there shouldn't be a twenty minute line to get DOWN? Tis a mystery...

On Saturday night, a bunch of us went out to the local clubs. Since I was sightseeing with four single guys, I was not surprised that they were way more excited about this than I was. In contrast to Boston, where the bars and clubs all close at 2am, the nightlife never stops in Seoul. The subway stops running from 1am to 5am, so the common thing is to stay out at least to 5am, so you can get home. I went home at 3am (by cab, thank you very much), but the guys apparently made a night of it.

I have to say that the clubbing scene is much different than Boston. In Seoul, the clubs are packed into one area, with people pouring out into the streets and just hanging out on the sidewalks, and the feeling is incredibly alive and vibrant. And in the clubs, the music of choice is techno/electronic. In Boston, you can't have alcohol outside, so everybody is inside, and the common music is hip-hop, or house music. 

Let me just say that I'm not bad as a dancer, (especially as an engineer), but I could not for the life of me figure out how to dance to techno. Fortunately once the club got busy, there was no need - everybody was packed in so tightly, it hardly mattered. It was an experience I wouldn't have missed - the lasers, light show, special effects, and electric atmosphere were pretty incredible.

Until 3am. And then nothing but bed is incredible in my book.

Sunday I took a tour to the DMZ - the border between North and South Korea. This was actually my favorite part of the trip. It's pretty fascinating to hear the history of Korea, which I only knew a little about. For instance, there is a railroad that goes from South Korea to North Korea and back that ran every day from 2003-2008. Did you know that? I had no idea. I thought that border has been sealed with machine guns ever since the DMZ was established.

The plan was to bring raw materials from the South, manufacture items using cheap labor in the North, and then have huge warehouses to store the goods. It's pretty incredible that enough companies got together to finance such a risky venture, I think. For a while it worked great, and then a North Korean guard shot a South Korean woman on the train, and they shut it down. So now there is the brand new train station, and giant warehouses, just sitting empty. It's eerie, really.

Also cool to learn that four tunnels have been discovered underneath the border. The North Koreans claim the tunnels were built to invade towards the north, but since all the dynamite marks are going south, and the tunnel slopes toward the south, it's pretty obvious the purpose was to invade South Korea... And the DMZ tour lets you go down and walk in these tunnels. The closest you can get to the North Korean border is 170 meters, which is where you are stopped by a concrete wall. So folks, I've been as close to North Korea as I care to get. This lady writes about the same tour with much more elegance and better photos than I, so you can visit her blog for her take.

Sunday we visited a traditional temple, which was beautiful and calm.

Still surrounded by Seoul, but peaceful nonetheless. It's a functioning temple, so people were there praying and lighting incense.

And the artwork and detailed architecture - gorgeous. Why can't churches in the US be like this? We pat ourselves on the back when we hang a nice banner on the putty-white wall above the gray Berber carpet, or when we put a few flowers on the stage once a year for Easter. These people paint every ceiling (see above)

... put sculptures on the church grounds...

...and hang colorful, cheerful pendants that dance in the breeze.

Beauty in nature and creativity in expression are part of God's gifts as well, and I might enjoy going to church more if it looked more like this. :) It's one of the things I have always enjoyed about Catholic churches in particular, actually.

Anyway - in conclusion, Seoul was an adventure I will not soon forgot. I enjoyed seeing the city, tried to experience some of the culture, and definitely established that I will have to go back in order to fully explore! For instance, I didn't get to go to a tea ceremony, which I would have liked, or go to the outdoor marketplace. Another time, another time. Until then, I will enjoy the memories.

Eating in Korea

If I might jog your memory, last year I helped organize an entrepreneurship conference, which was held in Iceland. I got to meet the President of Iceland, visit the Blue Lagoon, and snowmobile out to the erupting volcano. Oh, and of course, run the conference...

This year I was also involved in running the same conference, held in Seoul, South Korea during the last week of March. I will have another post about the sightseeing I did in Korea, but for today I want to talk about the food in Korea. (all tongue-in-cheek of course, no disrespect intended anywhere...)

One of the first things I noticed when walking around the city was that all the people over there (the women especially) are much smaller than in America. A little shorter, maybe, but that's not the main thing - mostly they are just skinny! This is partly because a large portion of people in the US are overweight, so I'm not used to seeing a population that is a healthy weight.

But even accounting for my perception bias, I mean - come on. Those women had hips that were as big around as one of my legs. How is that possible? Are they missing organs?

But then, dear friends, I discovered the answer. After a week of eating in Korea, it is quite simple - it's the food!

Consider the Korean Barbeque. Many people even in the states have had Korean food in this style. You order a meat (beef, chicken, whatever your fancy) which is brought to you - for you to cook yourself. It falls unfortunately to the youngest person in the group to cook for the rest of the group, out of respect. So already you have one person who has no time to eat.

Figure: See the guy on the far right? No smile. He's the youngest, and has spent all his time cooking, and hasn't eaten any of it.

And the rest of the group? Well while you wait for the raw food you paid good money to cook, they bring you endless sides to munch on. Endless sides, you say? Fantastic! Well, not really. All the side dishes come on tiny little saucers, with only a couple bites worth of food. But they are refillable, you say, so who cares how much is on each plate? Ah yes, excellent point. The reason they only give you that much turns out to be because nobody wants to eat more than those couple bites.

Figure: At the VIP dinner on Thursday night

Either the side dish is ridiculously spicy (whole peppers on a plate? entire cloves of garlic? really?), or pickled (the favorite preparation method for perfectly good vegetables is to add vinegar), or - wait for it - ROTTEN. Yes. Spoiled, fermented, whatever you call it, that food is no good. What am I talking about? Oh, you know it. Kimchi. YES, kimchi, a food which is inexplicably a favorite dish for many people. The way you make kimchi is to put cabbage in a jar and LEAVE IT, possibly for years, and then hope all the spices you dumped in cover the smell and taste. When recipes have to warn you that "film may develop at the top of the jar," or "may bubble over time," then I think you need to step back and re-evaluate...

And what if you don't eat meat? Well, you can try ordering a vegetarian dish. But the problem is that fish and seafood are considered vegetarian. We've already established that most foods are prepared way beyond their original recognizable state, so it's already a gamble what you are eating. The one dish which is always vegetarian is "bibimbap" which is actually my favorite food in Korea. Everybody else liked it too, (had no kimchi, so already you are starting off well), so we all ended up running around yelling, "Bibimbap! Bibimbap!" when trying to get a decent meal. Fortunately all the vegetarians on our team were that way out of choice, and not allergic, so if they ended up eating any "vegetarian" meats, we just chalked it up to life experience and kept going...

At the end of the conference, we decided we could all use a drink, so we took ourselves out to celebrate.

All of the team ordered a beer, except for one guy. He ordered a cocktail, which (he claims) is a "manly" drink in the US, and usually comes in a highball glass with ice, like a Scotch.

Figure: hello fruity girl drink

Well, not in Korea.  Apparently here, that cocktail is a bright pink frothy drink that comes in a girl glass. With a cherry on top!

To end the night on a proper manly note, then, the gentlemen decided to relax with a couple Cuban cigars. (Available in Korea, but not the US. I am however skeptical that they could tell the difference; I view this in the same category with people who claim to tell the difference between a $40 and a $200 wine. I say after you crack $25, to the majority of people the wine's about the same...) Problem was, it was really cold in March when you are on a windy 17th floor balcony.

So here are our manly gentlemen, bundled up in bathrobes and a bedspread. Except the guy on the left, who you will note is the same one who ended up with the fruity drink. I think he was trying to redeem himself. That, and there were no more bathrobes... :)

On our last day in Korea, we went to a highly recommended spot for a traditional dish, ginseng chicken soup. Finally, I thought - chicken soup! Not spicy, not fermented. This I can handle. But when the dish arrived at our table, imagine my surprise to learn that chicken soup means that a whole baby chicken is stuffed into a bowl of chicken broth, and handed to you with chopsticks.

Do you remember my argument that the reason Korean women are gorgeous and skinny is because of the food? People, the traditional dish is a whole bird in a broth, with CHOPSTICKS for the complicated de-boning process and for eating a liquid.

I rest my case.

'Fess Up

I've been learning the hard lesson recently that "the truth will out," no matter what it is. Even if you'd like to avoid the truth, or pretend things aren't as they actually are, or you think it will be less painful to gloss over the truth - it's really not. Better to 'fess up and confront the truth, as early and as often as possible.

For instance - this year I am helping organize a conference. The same one I helped organize last year, actually. I am in charge of getting four panelists for my assigned panel, and a case study speaker. I was supposed to be researching potential panelists, and sending out invitations, in November of 2010. If the conference is in March, you want to start early.

But I wasn't on my game.

I got distracted, I wasn't motivated, and I just plain didn't get it done. I did SOME work, but a pretty pathetic amount.

And suddenly I had the conference organizers on my tail, wondering what was going on, and where are my panelists?

At first I brushed it off, saying, I'm working on it, it's December and the holidays slowed me down - but don't worry! I'm on top of it! Things are coming together! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

But now it's January. And I'm applying the painful lesson that the truth is always better than avoidance.

I sent an email to the conference organizers. I said, I'm sorry, I've been slacking off my work. Here's what I've done, it's not much, and here is where I honestly am. I asked for help. I outlined what I needed, and asked for some assistance. And I offered to volunteer extra time during the "calling" phase, where we contact people in the database to see if they want to register this year.

And you know what? It was worth it. My conscience felt so much better after I had laid out exactly where I stood. I felt a little sad that I didn't keep up with what I had promised, but at least nobody was being mislead, and everybody was on the same page with the real situation.

So here's hoping that this inspires you this week - stick to the truth, in personal and professional life. No varnishing, no avoidance, just reality. 'Fess up. It's always the right choice.

Blue Lagoon

While in Iceland, after the conference was over the organizing team did some sightseeing. One of the places we went was to the natural hot springs.

Figure: Ah, relaxation...

It was a little surreal. We took a bus out to the middle of nowhere, shivered in our winter coats while we hiked over a moon-like landscape of lava, and then suddenly came upon this tourist attraction built around this lake. They have dressing rooms where you can change (and everyone is required to strip naked and shower in the communal locker room before going to the water - such an odd European thing...). Then you have to run, run, run the short distance from the lockers outside to the water, and gratefully scamper into the warm water.

Figure: And when I say warm water, I do mean steaming...

The water is filled with silica, so it's no longer clear, it's a robin's-egg-blue color. You can't see the bottom, but the mud on the bottom is supposed to be good for your skin. We tried it. Some of us. Most of the boys scoffed at it.

Figure: See, I'm so white you can't even tell I'm wearing any mud...

All in all, an excellent way to unwind. And since it was paid for by the conference, it's no wonder we are smiling.... :)

Volcano!

You know that conference I went on in March? The one where I had to watch out for the volcano to get there? Yep, turns out I should thank my lucky stars that the conference went off without a hitch.

That volcano is now erupting furiously, disrupting travel and stranding passengers worldwide. It's permanently on the front page of CNN reporting. We have BBC reporting.

I read entrepreneurship blogs and startup blogs to stay up on the happenings of that community, and everybody is complaining. TechCrunch says that "Eyjafjallajökull has become a curse word in Europe". It's putting startups in Europe in a nasty pickle.

But while I was in Iceland, it was still erupting in a happy, awesome-but-not-life-threatening way. A few other conference organizers and I decided that we wanted to go see the volcano. Because hey, how often do you get that chance?

There are various ways that you can get to the volcano. You can fly over in a little airplane, and take pictures out the window. But there is no airstrip in the middle of a glacier by a random volcano, so you can't land. You can take a helicopter, which will land in a clearing and you can get out and look. But you won't be very close, because you'd like to stay far enough away that you don't fly through lava whizzing through the air.

Or, OR, you can do what we did. Check out this adventure:

We drove to a little tiny town in the middle of nowhere that is as close as you can get by car.

We got into a huge tank-looking truck with tires as big as me, and 27 gears (so says the driver, who also added "most of them are low....").

The truck took us up the mountain to the top of the glacier - over rocks, ice, snow, and ridiculous slopes.

Then we loaded ourselves onto snowmobiles (paired up, two to a vehicle.) Guess who is driving? Ha!

We then drove across the glacier for AN HOUR. With the windchill, it was about -15F. The wind was blowing snow everywhere, so you had to stick close to the guide so you didn't get lost. Every so often the conditions would be nearly white-out, so we would have to stop and regroup.

We eventually made it right to the foot of the erupting volcano. The snow looks dirty because of the layer of ash. You could feel the ground vibrate, and hear the rumblings from deep inside the earth.

On the front side of the volcano, you could see the bright red lava shooting out the top. It was like thunder and lightning - first a rumble, then a crash, then a spray of lava high into the air.

Then we drove around to the backside of the volcano. Here, you could see the lava flowing down like a waterfall and melting into the glacier. We were standing on a cliff, and I wondered why there happened to be a cliff right there. It was because the lava had melted straight down into the ice.

There were all these holes in the snow - some as large as a dinner plate - and I was a little worried. I have read about Antarctic explorers - I know that there are such things as fissures in glaciers. You know, step on the wrong place and fall to your death down a bottomless crevice. But our guide reassured us that it was not the case. No indeed, instead of being warnings of unstable snow, those were simply cylinders melted into the snow by flying pieces of lava. At the bottom of each round hole, way down below, would be a piece of rock. Yeah, like being hit with lava is better than falling down a crevice.

Maybe we better stand a little farther away.

So how awesome is that? I got to go see a erupting volcano! Felt the heat of the lava, heard the crashing, watched the red lava turn black as it flew through the air.

Paid a bit of a price, though (and not only the money - and they do charge you for "an experience of a lifetime..."). While we were standing at the volcano, my feet were getting colder and colder. On the way back, the snow that had melted in my boots froze. Especially the foot that was on the wind-ward side of the snowmobile. By the time we were halfway back, I couldn't feel my feet.

I learned it's a little tough to walk when you can't feel your feet - a bit surreal. When we got back down the mountain, they warmed up, but I still couldn't feel my toes on the wind-ward foot. Even by that night. And my big toe was white.

When I got back to Boston, I went to see the doctor - and it turns out I got frostnip. Which is not as bad as frostbite, and not permanent. It just makes me a legit adventurer and adds a dramatic touch to the story. :)

So there is one tiny spot on the corner of my big toe where even now I still can't feel anything - although it'll heal eventually. It's my reminder of the mountain. Which I CONQUERED!

I'm so glad I got to do this while I was in Iceland. Because now that volcano looks like this:

Iceland Volcano Spews Anew from National Geographic. Gorgeous photography here and here from the Big Picture (one of the blogs I regularly follow).

You can see the road we took in this YouTube video...wow. And look at the flooding - it's scary.

In conclusion, this was quite possibly one of the coolest things I've done. I mean, come on: snowmobiling across a glacier, in white-out conditions, to the mouth of an active volcano - braving negative temperatures, frostbite, and flying lava - to stand triumphantly for a picture with the eruption and lava in the background. AWESOME!

It's Going to Be A Good Trip

We arrived this morning at 7:30am after an overnight flight from Boston. Breakfast was quick, then we got to work. Lunch for today was a buffet with soup, salads, sides, bread, cheese, fruit, and all manner of entrees - from sushi, to reindeer pate.

After work for the conference was done, I went to dinner with friends at a place called The LobsterHouse. Appetizers were smoked Pacific salmon served beside celeriac foam, and the bread was fresh gingerbread slices. For an entree I had catch-of-the-day salmon, served with lobster tail, puree of yellow beets, green onions, and locally brewed Koldt beer. My friends ordered dishes such as whale sashimi, tenderloin of horse, and garlic lobster tails. Delicious, delicious!

Then after dinner, we relaxed in the naturally fed hot springs swimming area. With a waterslide. The waterslide was cold water (the other girls wimped out), but the guys and I thought the ride was very worth it!

Tomorrow, let the conference begin!

Flight Delay Due to WHAT?

Tomorrow I leave for Iceland for a conference I helped to organize.

Today also there is this lovely item in the news: Volcano Erupts in Iceland. That eruption has been diverting US flights. It's supposed to be back to normal by tomorrow, but we shall see.... Usually from Boston to Iceland in March you have to watch for blizzards, not volcanoes!

I have left the girls in my dorm fresh fruit and brownies (can't let those spoil while I'm away, you know...). I did the laundry, I cleaned my dishes. I wrote a list of things to tie up for research tomorrow, and I should be on my way.

Another stamp on the passport, coming right up!

Conference Pictures

Last November I attended a conference in Sunny, Warm city, and I had a great time all around. However I realized I failed to show the pictures I took! So:

First stop upon arrival - bed!

In the morning, making my way through the hotel lobby to the conference:

Okay, so I tried to be a little artsy with it. :)

Next day, exploring the grounds in the afternoon:

Taking note of some interesting sculptural details at dinner:

In the middle of the conference, the Lamborghini Murcielago LP 670-4 SuperVeloce was unveiled and placed on exhibit. Lamborghini actually gave a talk on how they make this car - some pretty advanved stuff goes on, including intense aerodynamics, innovative lightweight carbon-fiber composites, etc. 

Of course, all anybody cares about is the new 670-horsepower engine that achieves a top speed of 212 miles per hour:

And of interest to me - look at the size of the brakes needed to stop this thing!

You don't think I passed up a chance to sit in the driver's seat, do you? :)

All in all, it was a much needed vacation as well as academic exercise. It was good to sit back and just let life (and the sun) soak in. I should go to conferences more often. Maybe I should get back to work this morning so I can write the papers to get me in. :)

Entrepreneurship Workshop

World's Best School has a club that organizes an annual workshop, which I'm calling the Entrepreneurship Workshop (EW), that is going on its 13th year. This conference is the world’s premier student run entrepreneurship conference, and this year it's being held in March in Cold Foreign Land, far away from here. The conference focuses on fostering entrepreneurship through the creation of infrastructure such as that epitomized at World's Best School. Originally founded to help inspire business plan competitions around the world, the EW has expanded and shifted its focus towards building sustainable environments for entrepreneurship.

I haven't mentioned this on the blog yet, but I'm on the organizing team for this year's conference. The conference is three days long, and it's full of keynote speakers, panels, case studies, mixers, and other exciting activities. I am in charge of one panel, and one case study. I decided to do the panel on the subject of "Young Entrepreneurs," because that's a subject near and dear to my heart.

I have lined up an excellent moderator for the panel, and three successful young entrepreneurs from around the world - Canada, the UK, and San Francisco. Actually come to think of it I did kinda skew that toward English-speaking countries, didn't I? Maybe I should add someone from the India/China region... My case study is on "Starting a Company without Venture Capital," and I haven't officially confirmed the speaker but I'm excited about the company I'm trying to nail down.

The organizing team is split into two parts - the team that organizes the content of the conference (event planning, recruiting speakers, organizing panelists, logistical issues, housing and transportation, etc.), and the team that does contacts (marketing, sales, cold calling, generally getting people to show up to this thing in Cold Land Far Away). During last semester, the content people (that's me) were very busy nailing down the substance of the conference. Now, the majority of the content is (or should be) settled. Now it's the other way around - the contacting people are very busy with the marketing and calling efforts.

The contacting people have to spend a certain amount of time each week manning the phone banks, calling potential conference attendees from our database. The content people ALSO have to do this, although only two hours per week.

So I've now done a total of four hours of cold calling people to come to this conference. I've never done sales before, I've never done telemarketing, or anything of the sort. I had a training session, but it's still completely new to me. I had some trepidation about this, because... well shoot, everybody feel squeamish throwing themselves out there to strangers and asking them to spend money.

Each person has an appointed a region of the world, and all the database contacts in that region are then assigned to that person. My region happens to be Africa/Middle East, and I have about 450 people in the database assigned to me. After I got into the swing of things, it's really not as bad as I expected.

It's actually kind of exciting knowing I am sitting here, comfortable in my chair at the phone bank, calling up Egypt and Nigeria and Tunisia and Morocco and Syria. I've only been hung up on once, and I've gotten a few good leads. A lot of the time the person answers the phone in some other language, but on most occasions when I pipe up "Hi, I'm Miss Outlier" they change over to English. Broken English, perhaps, but usually I can untangle it.

This morning I called Seychelles. I had to Google that before I called to make sure that's even a country.

So now I'm feeling very multi-cultural, very global, very small-world-after-all. 

Miss Outlier, meet world - World, Attention, la voici... [Watch out, here she comes... in French, the language of choice in Tunisia]

Conference Summary

Whew! I made it. Conference complete. I don't have the mental energy to put together paragraphs, so I beg your indulgence for bullet points.

- On my own personal scorecard, the winner of the best title of paper at the conference: Pendulum Animal Impact Testing. That threw me for a loop so much that I looked up the paper just to see what it was about. From the abstract: "The authors have developed a pendulum test incorporating an animal dummy to generate similar roof deformation to that experienced in real world animal impact accidents." Well, I guess somebody has to do it...

- My presentation this morning (at 8am - yeek!) went quite well, I thought. There were more hands up with questions than I had time to answer at the end of the talk. That either means people were interested, or people couldn't understand what in the world I was talking about. I'm hoping the former.

- I met two professors from World's Best School here, and met up with four other World's Best School students. My school was well-represented!

- I spent my days in sessions listening to talks, but in the evenings I was left to my own devices. Two nights I had to work (although I'm not actually AT school this week, homework is still due....) but two other nights I spent socializing. I was worried about the meet-and-greet type stuff, but it turned out to be quite enjoyable and I met some really great students.



- Wednesday night all of us World's Best School students went out for a nice dinner. I was acquaintances with these students (knew their faces from the department) before this conference but I'd never gotten to know them. Turns out they are fascinating people, and we had great dinner conversation. Also, the food was divine. We went to a Greek restaurant run by Cat Cora (of Iron Chef fame on the Food Network). Every dish we ordered was sublime. Perfectly seasoned, unique but balanced recipes. Delicious! I got the "Traditional Whole Fish"



and fortunately, the restaurant staff was available to show me how to filet the fish - I didn't know how to eat what was on my plate.... Now I'm an expert! We all sampled each other's dishes (fisherman's stew, rack of lamb) and although they were all excellent, we agreed mine was the best.

- I got to soak up the sun one afternoon out by the pool, and then slip into the hot tub after the sun went down. I could practically feel the stress melt away... I tried to store up as much sun as possible before I head back to the New England winter!

- I walked out and about one afternoon, and there was an outdoor magician putting on a show. I stopped to watch, and enjoyed feeling like a little kid again.

- The food situation at the conference was terrible. Bad planning all around - the logistics were all screwed up. On Monday, they ran out of food after half an hour (in an hour and a half lunch slot). I was in line, and had to wait 15 minutes before they showed up with more sandwiches. Then just as I was about to get to the front of the line, they ran out again. Another 15 minute wait, and they came out with pasta. I got one meager spoonfull (on a dessert-sized plate) and a pack of chips, and that was all for lunch. Boo.

Then Tuesday, you got a choice of sandwiches. I chose the roasted pepper wrap, and it turned out to be this tiny little burrito sized thing. Whereas the people who wanted Philly Cheese Steak got huge subs. Unfair!

On Wednesday, there was no choice of food - and just as I got to the front of the line at my station, that station ran out. Everybody in line had to move over to a different station and wait in line all over again.

Then finally today, they didn't run out of food (it was hamburgers). But the problem was they lined everybody up in two lines to get the hamburger. Then they put one table with condiments (lettuce, tomato, ketchup, that sort of thing) to one side of the serving lines, requiring you to pass THROUGH the line to get to the condiments. Then because there was only one table, there was a bottleneck and the queue backed up into the hamburger line and caused a huge mess. Then to get your drink, you had to go back to the other side of the room (again, THROUGH the hamburger line). And then there were no tables to sit at.

Bah. For an engineering conference, nobody thought to count number of registrants and compare to the number of sandwiches? Or was there no systems engineer able to work out logisitcal queueing flow? AND there was no coffee available after 9am. Really? Coffee should be available at a near-constant rate, I think. There's STUDENTS attending, for crying out loud...

- I looked good at this conference. I had to buy a couple pairs of dress pants and shirts last week for this purpose (I haven't worn dress clothes in a while, and I've lost weight so my old things don't fit). I wanted to get a suit, but I couldn't find one on short notice that fit me well. Despite that, I felt very confident and svelte in my sharp clothes. Nothing like a black pencil skirt, crisp white button down and kitten heels to put a spring in your step. They were partly bought with birthday money, so thank you to family for that!


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So other than the food, a successful experience all the way around. I have a pocket full of business cards of people doing things relevant to my work (although I have none to give them), and I've been inspired to try a few new things in my own research. Tomorrow it's home again, home again, jiggety jig!