Start of the meeting...

Well, I got here.

Typically for a conference, I met a bunch of other people going to the conference as well. Some I knew, some were rather obvious because they were carrying long plastic tubes (for posters). Monday was just for registration and a reception, so I did a bit of networking - catching up with old friends, meeting people who send me blank emails, that sort of thing. There are 1300 people here, so I guess I won't see everyone.

The conference abstract book is huge, about 600 pages of A4.

This is just silly: they have had to print out 390 000 sheets of paper (anyone know how much forest that is?). If they were piled one on top of another, they would be 55m high (that's as tall as, err, a very high building. For reference, Uppsala cathedral is 118m high).

So, today we start with the talks etc. We kick off with a plenary (Sean Carroll), and then 5 parallel sessions. Of course, I want to go to two of them.

Oh, and we also found the pub.