PAC Day 5

My "reporters" at the 2007 Particle Accelerator Conference haven't been reporting as frequently as I would like, so news and information coming out of it has been sparse. If I had gone, I'd probably had reported a lot more stuff and "gossips". :)

We finally got a short and brief message from Reporter 3

Reporter 3: Scientific progress is mostly incremental. So, PAC did not have any major breakthrough. SNS (Spallation Neutron Source) is producing some beam since 2006, but still ramping up (for another couple of years). Laser plasma acceleration did not achieve any extraordinary progress recently (i.e. since their last report/papers). Barry Barish declared that he is aware of Orbach's time horizon for the ILC (2020s), but chooses to develop a parallel "technical timeline".

So that's it. Today is the final technical day for PAC07. Tomorrow is mostly tours of Oak Ridge lab and the surrounding area. Most attendees would probably start leaving today and tomorrow.

Zz.

PAC Day 1

Everybody from our group arrived safely. But already there were grumbling of unhappiness.

Reporter 1:
During Sunday there was a special student poster session. It create a little bit of a controversy. There were lots of posters, so committee prescreened abstracts and did not visited most of the posters. Some students were not happy with that.

Unlike last PAC the welcome reception (I'm assuming this to be on Sunday evening - Zz) had alcohol for sale. Students were not happy with that either. I think the students were expecting free drinks.

Monday started with invited overview-type presentations. Vendors started setting up as well.

Reporter 2:
This morning (Monday) we were held prisoner listening to the plenary talks as the organizers decided to turn off wireless access to all the meeting rooms. Despite this, I still managed to miss most of what was said. Another notable was that this year they mixed the vendor booths and the poster sessions together. It was a bit chaotic at first but I was glad to see them treating the vendors well for once. Finally, the graduate students were happy today since they finally got the free alcohol they were waiting for, but we old timers on a budget were not as happy since there was no food.

That's nasty to turn off wireless access like that. I don't normally bring my laptop with me when I attend a talk at a conference. I figure if I don't care to listen to whatever is being presented, then I shouldn't be in the room in the first place. Just going online or doing some stuff while someone else is talking just doesn't sit right with me. Still, I certainly do not want to force this onto everyone and cut off the wireless access.

Zz.

PAC07 Day 0

I mentioned earlier that while I won't be attending the 2007 Particle Accelerator Conference in Albuquerque this year, I will have "reporters" checking in now and then with reports from the conference. Today is when most of the attendees will be arriving, with the registration starting in the afternoon. I know that almost everyone from our group will be flying off today.

Hopefully, one of them at least will start to send reports (and pictures) either later today or early tomorrow.

Zz.

PAC07

This is one week before the start of the 2007 Particle Accelerator Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I have attended the last 2 PACs, PAC 2003 in Portland, OR, and PAC 2005 in Knoxville, TN. Unfortunately, I will not be attending to the one this year. But, it doesn't mean that you won't be hearing anything about. I have recruited several volunteers to send me daily reports on the going-ons at this year's PAC, ranging from the scientific content to what they serve at the banquets and coffee breaks. So we will have a good coverage of what goes on during the event.

If you happen to be in Albuquerque the weekend before the start of the conference (June 23rd), you may want to drop by the Science Weekend organized by the PAC organizers and organizers of Pulsed Power and Plasma Conference. See the PAC webpage for more detail.

Zz.