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success at the IAC
Oct. 19th, 2005 05:45 pmI was up at 5am this morning, reworking my slides... added two new ones. Which apparently helped. :)
My paper session went well, today... I led with a very safe joke, gave a good talk, and received lots of questions... enough that the session chair had to cut them short. Audience was about 75-80, not bad for the leadoff paper of the morning. Five different companies/entities approached me afterward, seeking more information or even possible future collaborations. And several more people came up to me through the day, unprompted, and complimented my presentation. Complete success, as far as my presence here goes, so I'm a proverbially happy camper.
Today after lunch I was being surveyed as to how I liked the conference facilities, etc. by a local guy with a clipboard. He asked if I was planning to visit anything outside of Fukuoka. The world's largest caldera is 90km south of here, and is active. "Mt. Aso", I replied. He looked startled... I described a cone with my hands. "Big volcano" I said... he blinked, then grinned and laughed. Apparently my pronunciation was... initially misinterpreted. (chuckle)
And YK came down last night, to see the conference -- she is also a space buff. I was able to get her an "accompanying person" badge, which also made me happy... she has been very good to me during my visits here, and it was good to be able to do something in return. She nearly hugged me. :) And we had lunch (great local ramen hole-in-wall place), walked around the space trade show, and sat together through most of the afternoon technical sessions.
Technically... some lacklustre space colonization papers, but in the optimization session I learned about ant colony algorithms (useful in discrete-space optimizations, and it is IMO how we humans pick hotels and restaurants), and that we could sufficiently deflect an incoming impacting asteroid with a simple chemical-engined probe, if we intercepted it a year or more in advance.
My paper session went well, today... I led with a very safe joke, gave a good talk, and received lots of questions... enough that the session chair had to cut them short. Audience was about 75-80, not bad for the leadoff paper of the morning. Five different companies/entities approached me afterward, seeking more information or even possible future collaborations. And several more people came up to me through the day, unprompted, and complimented my presentation. Complete success, as far as my presence here goes, so I'm a proverbially happy camper.
Today after lunch I was being surveyed as to how I liked the conference facilities, etc. by a local guy with a clipboard. He asked if I was planning to visit anything outside of Fukuoka. The world's largest caldera is 90km south of here, and is active. "Mt. Aso", I replied. He looked startled... I described a cone with my hands. "Big volcano" I said... he blinked, then grinned and laughed. Apparently my pronunciation was... initially misinterpreted. (chuckle)
And YK came down last night, to see the conference -- she is also a space buff. I was able to get her an "accompanying person" badge, which also made me happy... she has been very good to me during my visits here, and it was good to be able to do something in return. She nearly hugged me. :) And we had lunch (great local ramen hole-in-wall place), walked around the space trade show, and sat together through most of the afternoon technical sessions.
Technically... some lacklustre space colonization papers, but in the optimization session I learned about ant colony algorithms (useful in discrete-space optimizations, and it is IMO how we humans pick hotels and restaurants), and that we could sufficiently deflect an incoming impacting asteroid with a simple chemical-engined probe, if we intercepted it a year or more in advance.
