I'm attending the annual American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Conference next week in Vancouver. Yeah, it is joint with the Canadian Organization of Medical Physicsts. My poster is (basically) ready, though not printed. I think I have plane tickets, a hotel room reserved, and a conference registration. So is the hard part done yet?
I haven't started looking at the conference schedule to figure out what I am going to attend. I don't even know if I need to do so. At the APS (March or April meeting) conferences there are so many parallel sessions that it is impossible to just wander and hope you see the right talks. APS even has a helpful schedule planner on the website. It is much easier to do planning ahead for APS meetings rather than trying to use the booklet to plan once you get there.
I haven't started collecting a list of other events I want to go to. I know there is a Geant4 meeting/get together the first evening, which I will attend. There is a Stanford get together the same night, so I don't know if I will be going to that. I don't know if there are other things I would want to go to. Again, at APS there were often breakfasts and evening meetings for students or specific interests. Some of the breakfasts required advanced registration.
I haven't looked at the poster authors and speakers to see if there are people I know who will be there. I don't know that many people who are going from Stanford, so it would be great if my social circle at this meeting had more than 3 people. Otherwise, I will take a lot of books. Which means I need to go stock up at borders...
I haven't started packing. This is my first time going to Vancouver, so I don't know what type of weather to expect. Worse, I don't know what the indoor climate will be like. My assumptions about Anaheim were pretty spot on - it was usually freezing in the convention center. It is hard to pack minimally when the error bars are 10 degrees. I also don't know the level of dress that I will feel most comfortable in. At American physics conferences (opposed to European ones) talks are regularly given by people (students, usually) in jeans and tennis shoes. The audience looks similar. An e-mail reminder about the AAPM conference stated that the dress code in business casual, which I expected. The medical physics crowd is used to clinic dress code, which - here at Stanford - is conservative business casual. I'm not entirely sure I could put together an outfit that satisfies the clinic dress code here, but I hope to never need to... Also, I might want to pack enough so that if the US economy collapses I can just stay in Canada (-:
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