Seeing as I had the first word...
My perspective on the lisp conference is a bit skewed, given that I chose to go to so few talks. I thoroughly enjoyed Christian Queinnec's talk about teaching Computer Science, Manuel Serrano's about HOP, and Richard Jones' about memory management techniques; I dozed through a couple of others (my fault, not yours!) and I skived off everything else. Just too keyed up and over-exhausted to be able to sit down and concentrate.

Low point - Monday April 3rd 2006. Edi Weitz and I walked the "conference route", from Clare Old Court through to the Law building. Late morning temperatures about 2 degrees above freezing. Strong feeling that I'd got something wrong.

Low point - first five days of March, only four registrations.

High point - March 6th-21st, 53 registrations. On some days (March 9th sticks to mind) it was raining delegates. The final tally was 128.

High point - day before the conference, trotting through Clare, coming across the college choir rehearsing for a concert that evening.

High point - cycling from my front door to an international lisp conference.

Low point - the ALU meeting and subsequent fallout.

High point - at the next ILC my only involvement is going to be to show up as a delegate.

High point - the group photo. I'm getting a large copy printed and framed and will keep it on the wall as a memento of some seriously crazy months.

High point - dressing up for the banquet, and there being someone with a Masters in Classics on High Table to read "Grace".

High point - knowing how little work there still is to do, and none of it is time critical now.

High point - that when I go back to work this Monday I'm going to spend the day immersed in lisp rather than in conference stuff.

High point - meeting all the people I spent months corresponding with.

Highest point of all - when 100 lispers barreled out of tutorials for morning break on the first day. Seeing everyone in one place really drove home that it had all come together.



ilc07