Random Bullets of Meeting: the personal edition

• This meeting was >10,000 people. I prefer smaller meetings because it is so hard to find people at the big ones. There are so many different places people can be that you don't keep running into the same folks again and again and that makes it hard to network. It also makes me think I must be missing something cool when I don't recognize anyone in a session. Where are all the other people like me?
• My talk went fine. I felt very neutral about it, but people told me I did well, including a few who didn't need to say anything. That was nice.
• I didn't wear a skirt. I wore khaki pants the day of my talk and jeans the rest of the time.
• I feel bad for really shy people at meetings. I'm pretty outgoing and I find it challenging to be as socially aggressive as one needs to be to meet people at these things.
• The more experienced I get, the better I am at pacing myself. This meeting was long and intense and I was tired at the end of each day, but not totally overwhelmed like I used to get. Part of this comes from knowing more people so the social pressure is relaxed a little. Another part comes from a flatter learning curve. I still learn new things at meetings, but not as much as I did at the first ones I attended, where everything was new and exciting. The last part comes from not going out at night so much, so I sleep more. I used to be able to stay up drinking past midnight, but now if I do that at all it's only once. This meeting didn't have any of the people I party with anyway.
• I'm glad to be home. I'm pumped to start writing up the data from my talk. But I'm glad to have the weekend off before I have to go to work so I can recover. Also I need to Christmas shop.