CLEO:2014 -- The fractal conference
Arti Agrawal
The great thing is that since several talks (almost all the plenaries and invited talks, and many contributed talks) are available as recordings, the clashes in sessions aren’t worrying me as much as they normally do. Nothing beats being able to hear it live and to be able to chat with the speaker. But the papers can be downloaded from the OSA opticsinfobase website up to 1 week in advance of the conference. So I can read up the papers beforehand to have a better understanding and talk to the speaker in a break (if I cant make their actual talk).
But there is still more! The posters for a starter. Then the expo is huge and as I want to meet some of the people who have stalls (not just looking for the free T-shirt from Thorlabs), and there are so many of these, I have to make a little planner for the exhibitors. The special events like the International Year of Light meeting, the receptions, the list is pretty long.
So while the conference programme looks huge, my personal mini-plan doesn’t seem that mini to me. The conference is displaying an almost fractal like nature: the schedule being replicated at a smaller scale for each person!
