Cocktail Party Physics: behold my data, for it is MIGHTY!

I have been working on a symposium for just about two years, and as far as I can tell, it will never, ever end. It may in fact be that I died two years ago, and this is one of the circles of Hell that Dante missed while sliding down the spiral in The Divine Comedy. My symposium might not be a circle, exactly, but a corridor on the sixth floor, where the heretics roast.

It all began when my boss accepted an invitation to chair this exclusive symposium that only takes place once every seven years. The first time that I had heard of it was just after 9/11, when my boss and his colleagues were trapped in Scotland during the no-fly order and had no way home to the States. I was new to the Lab, and was still sorting out the expense reports from the Symposium that would come back to haunt me five years later.

My boss asked if I’d help with it, and I of course said I would. At the time, I was running a small event planning business on the side, doing charity fundraising galas with the casts of various television shows, book release parties, and a few pieces of organization work for http://www.screenwritingexpo.com/ Screenwriting Expo. So I figured putting together a symposium would be a piece of cake after going ten rounds with 20^th Century Fox’s legal department, the cast of LOST being trapped in Hawaii for an unplanned 23^rd episode during an event in LA, and trying to get an actual stuffed polar bear up the freight elevator of the Hollywood & Highland Renaissance hotel without breaking it in half.

Two years later, and I am but a shadow of the woman I once was, pleading for proceedings and trying to figure out how to mail a hundred copies of this book to eight countries and stay in budget.

The first step in conference planning is the simple matter of finding a venue that will hold the expected number of attendees. You arrive at the projected number by averaging the number of attendees from the past three symposiums, multiplying it by the percentage of hope you have, and then subtracting your number of doubts. Then, you must find the appropriate venue that will be appealing to a large number of scientists who range in age from twenty-something to Methuselah, hailing from every continent except Antarctica, with travel budgets ranging from two chickens and a root vegetable to the net-worth of Bill Gates.

We went with wine country and Asilomar Conference Grounds. Gorgeous views. No television. All meals included. No television. A fireplace in every room. No television. Also, internet access in the main lodge, only. I love television and internet more than I love my mom. I live with a television writer. You have no idea how much cable we have. Name a channel. We have it. If it aired, we have it on the TiVo. Where was I?

Ah. I was in wine country with one hundred and six physicists and no television. As it turns out, if you drink enough wine, you don’t need television, but you still miss it.

But before we got to Monterey, there were three-thousand budget meetings, four hundred menus options, twenty-six wine selections, paper selection, registration, seven-hundred and twenty-eight emails (not exaggerating on the emails, I just checked my in-box), three sponsorships, two near violent yelling matches with my boss, and one high holiday I missed on my calendar, causing me to grovel for forgiveness on the Day of Atonement. So at least that last part worked out.

I spent several months on my knees, begging for abstracts, and another few weeks on my ass, sorting through a hundred abstracts with the word “clock” in the title, and nudging the registration numbers upwards by promising magic atoms producing a beanstalk to 0 decibels in exchange for the family cow.

Post-it notes, program committee meetings, printing charges, attrition rates, several denied visas, a dozen calls to the State Department. I started checking my email at 2am in fear that the LHC would wipe out 10% of my invited speakers.

The Symposium lasted five days, and oddly, it turned out fine. Better than fine. I mean, by the fourteenth technical talk that sounded like, “BEHOLD MY DATA, FOR IT IS MIGHTY!” I thought I was going to shrivel up and die. But I managed to finish writing a book I was working on, and during the meal breaks I was finally able to meet some of the scientists I had been corresponding with for years. Usually, secretaries do very little travel, so while I’ve been making arrangements for meetings between these folks for years and had warm feelings toward many of them, I had never actually met a lot of these people face-to-face. And mostly, they were a lovely bunch: gracious, kind, alternately boisterous and shy. Scientists. Except that one guy who never said good morning to me. If the Rapture happens, I’m totally not going to save him from the cannibals, and I have an anti-cannibal plan.

Things I learned while dealing with the symposium:

Everything automatically sounds pretty when said in a French accent. Try it out. Ask a French friend to say something absurd, like, “May I chop down a bouquet of herpes for your brother in-law?” It’ll sound like music, I swear.

If you stand back and cross your eyes, all metrology posters will look like a Jackson Pollock. In fact, if you have no knowledge at all of the science at hand, it is best to deal with posters sessions as if you are looking at abstract art. Wander around and put on your best pretentious face and say things like, “This piece represents the artist’s early work in the development of his ‘red dots on blue lines’ phase. They say it’s an Oedipal thing.”

Every attendee knows that the conference secretary has suffered greatly to put the whole thing together, and speak to you with a mix of sympathy, pity, and gratitude at all times. Except the guy who never said “good morning” back to me. That guy still sucks.

Despite notice that the conference is invitation-only, you will be faced with a walk-in with registration money in his pocket who will then proceed to put his bare feet up on a dressed table and promptly fall asleep during a talk.

When the proceedings are due, people will duck you like you’re the local sheriff trying to execute an eviction notice. They will shut off the lights, the phone, pretend they’ve passed away, and blow up the entire internet to avoid email. I should be annoyed, but I just find it ridiculously charming, and make calls where I purr, “Oh my sweet baby, did the dog eat your homework, again?” This does not help get the proceedings completed any faster, but I just can’t play the heavy on this matter. I have edits due to my agent and I’m placing a bundle of TNT on the internet right now. I understand their pain.

So that’s pretty much it. I’m still waiting for the last few papers to trickle in while ducking the publisher’s emails, and then will toss together a table of contents and send it out to print. Then I will ship the books off to the people who became an integral part of my 40-plus hour work weeks and weekends, and I’ll likely never see most of them ever again. That last part breaks my heart a little. All the months spent preparing for this thing, and it all went by in a blink. The attendees were the best part, and I almost never had time to talk with them.

There’s quite a few people I wish I had shared a bottle of wine with while I was busy not watching television, and I’m deeply regretting that, now. So do me a favor, the next time you go to a conference/symposium/annual meeting of meaty brains, invite the conference secretary to your table to share some wine and say, “May I chop down a bouquet of herpes for your brother in-law?” But only if you can do it in a French accent. Otherwise it’ll just sound absurd.