My talk today

So I signed up for this conference and I wanted to give a talk, so I decided to talk about this idea I had, a way to model email networks so as to get results similar to those in a paper published a couple of years ago and presented last year at this conference. I didn't have any data or proof that this model would work when I sent in the abstract, but I figured, meh, I'd come up with something. Well, I had end of classes, and the interview this week, and Mother's Day, and so I had no time. I had to spend a lot of today (the first day of the conference) running simulations, trying different parameters, trying to make it work and having no idea if it would.

Well, it does. :) Maybe not perfectly, but I've got a preliminary match to that previous paper, and a talk all prepared for tomorrow. I am very impressed with myself. :)

It's 2am, the talk's at 8am, must go to bed...but had to crow to someone.

Research at conferences

So my talk went pretty well. It was a small audience (4 people) as I expected, but it was well-received. I even had someone come up to me this afternoon and ask me for the gist, since he'd missed the talk earlier. Pretty cool. I'm hoping to show the results to Bar-Yam when he comes, some time before his scheduled talk on Wednesday (although there's something I have to prepare myself for: it is entirely natural, when presenting research to someone who knows the background, for that person to look for weaknesses and whatnot, just as part of the scientific process. I'm not sure I'm immune to the criticism.)

Although I didn't have to work on my talk this afternoon, I did find myself working on a queueing simulation, instead of listening to some talks. Conferences always inspire me to start new research projects, and not even necessarily in any field being discussed. I think it's because conferences are the only time I allow myself to be all about research. Outside, I only do research in bits and pieces, and don't give myself the time to think of new things to do. SO when I get here, it gets released and I want to do this work, when it would be more appropriate to network and talk with people and listen to talks and save the work for later. If I want to be a physicist full-time, I need to give more time and respect to the research side of my career than I do now.