Conference Day 2

Day 2 of the conference was a long one. Even though I was giving my second conference talk, I still spent most of the time thinking over my slides. The talk went well, though 2 slides in, my right leg started to shake. It wasn't noticable, but was in the back of my mind as I spent most of the remainder of the talk standing on one leg so that I wouldn't feel like I was shaking. ha. It is always amazing how it is a 'relief' after the talk is over. Certainly a build up of adrenaline.

After my talk I spoke with a prof at another institution. My advisor sure must have sold me well, as the conversation was pretty much him selling his work and institution. It seemed like he did everything but flat out offer me a post-doc job. How sweet was that. I've got a standing offer to come visit some time in the next 6 months, to give a talk and look around. As that institution is just a several hour drive from mine, he even mentioned the possibility of me being shared between the two, half the week in each...My advisor must have indicated fairly strongly that he'd like to keep me around for a bit also. I need to have a real conversation with him on that...there are the occasional hints, but I'd like to hear specifics!

My session had several of those presentation gaffs. One person must have saved his talk with built-in timings. Shortly into the talk, it started moving forward when he didn't want it to. After several minutes of messing around, he finally just ran the presentation from the editing window. Another person arrived later into the session, so it took a bit to load his talk. Adding to his initial lateness, he wasn't timely and had to get the near-hook from the moderator. Why can't people plan better??? I guess it shouldn't be too unexpected, being around a bunch of engineers, that some have a lack of awareness/planning.

Today will be more touristy stuff, with brief times spent at the conference at the start and end. After the talk/"networking" yesterday, I feel that I've done my part here and don't feel bad about not being involved as much.