Sunday, October 12. 2008No Sushi Tonight
The Wasabi Restaurant, on 17th street, was recommended by a staffer in Senator Domenici's office. So, it must be good, right?
Much to my surprise, they close early on Sunday nights! :( Fortunately, we sent Dave Woodruff ahead to scout the restaurant, pick out the wines, etc. Dave discovered a nice french restaurant just down the block: Cafe Soleil. Vichysoisse and lamb shank! Yummm.  Good job, Dave! Sunday, October 12. 2008INFORMS Job Fair
For the first time this year, I am representing Sandia National Laboratories in the INFORMS Job Fair. Despite the uncertain economy, Sandia's applied math group is looking to hire OR-ish people to work in a variety of research and application areas.
INFORMS does a great job organizing the job fair. They provide a database of applicants who have registered for the fair, which provides a nice resource for employers. However, I was surprised by the number of folks who registered for the fair! The plan was to review all of the resumes, to help prepare for our informal conversations. But I think we will just have to look at them after the conference in case we missed an interesting candidate.  Jean-Paul Watson and Patty Hough worked the booth with me. After a while, they were happy to sit and rest!  The COIN-OR booth was across the room, facing the Sandia table. I was quite impressed with how Matt Saltzman managed the crowds:
 Sunday, October 12. 2008A Heart-Healthy Conference?
This year, INFORMS is spread between two hotels: the Omni Shoreham and the Marriott Wardman Park. As I walked up the hill from the Omni to the Marriott, I pondered whether the conference was organized to encourage exercise. Rather than wander down a hall, you get to hike up a hill, and the thick program ensures that you are at your optimal heart rate by the time you get to your next session!
But, I doubt that that was really the organizers' goal. If it was, they would have mixed up the tracks so people would have to switch between the hotels after every session. Or, even better, they could have mix up talks in different sessions, and create a frenzy of activity in the halls! Sunday, October 12. 2008Arriving at INFORMS
This year, I actually got into the conference hotel. Of course, I was not organized enough to make a reservation in time to get the conference rate. I convinced my colleague, John Siirola, to room with me. When we split the non-conference room rate, it is almost as cheap as the conference rate!!! For that rate, you would think that we would get a room with a view. Well, the full room rate did not buy me much of a view...
 I suppose it is better than the construction site I saw last year! By the way, this is John's first INFORMS conference. If you see him, say hi! I am sure it will confuse him that people already know is name! :) Sunday, October 12. 2008Monday, October 6. 2008Wednesday, October 1. 2008Wednesday, November 7. 2007INFORMS Day 5Good Morning, INFORMS! The ICS celebration Monday night was hilarious. Thanks again to Jeff for pictures... "John shows off his pocket protectors" or "What a geek!" "Ariela shows how she plans to wear her pocket protector" "Brady whips out his trusty slide ruler to figure out the tip!" "A New Leader Is Crowned" "RPMs, MathML, software testing ... is this a computer science conference?" "Robin shows off her new margarita stein!" "The COIN-OR Cup"
Monday, November 5. 2007INFORMS Seattle Day 3I will probably crash tonight after the COIN-OR Cup. Here are some pics that Jeff Linderoth and I took, along with captions.
Monday, November 5. 2007INFORMS Seattle - Day 2Well, this morning started out slow for me. My hotel forgot my wakeup call! Apparently, the construction crews get the day off on Sunday, so they didn't wake me up, either... It was a cool, cloudy morning in Seattle. The air was chilly and I always feel like a kid in a candy shop when I come to an INFORMS meeting. There are so many things to hear about, and so little time... This year, I was planned to attend a "diverse" set of sessions to make this blog more interesting. But, then I realized that there are 60 parallel tracks! Thus, I can only attend less than 2% of the INFORMS sessions... A Session on Generating Diverse Solutions: Real-world applications often use approximate models. Further, the end-user may have other "undefined" objectives and constraints. Thus, we need to provide a user with a diverse set of solutions that are near-optimal. But, we also need think about sequential screening, since for some problems we can generate more solutions than we can store in memory! No free wireless at INFORMs.
A Session on System of Systems: This is a buzzword that is increasingly used within the military to describe complex systems that are Composed of many interacting subsystems, especially when these subsystems work independent. SoS models can be categorized by the degree to which these models are coordinated by a central model. However, effective analysis capabilities have not been developed for these models. In particular, core issues have not been addressed, such as resolving equilibrium constraints and analyzing modeling uncertainties. These issues are particularly challenging when subsystems are modeled with third-party models or simulations that are opaque. A sushi dinner at "Wasabi Bistro" Yum! There was lots of wasabi! Saturday, November 3. 2007INFORMS Seattle 2007 - Day 1Greetings from Seattle, ICS! Cindy Phillips and I flew in from Albuquerque this morning. On the way, we passed Mt. Raineir. From 35,000 feet, climbing it looked like a nice day hike!  Cindy and I are staying down the street, at the La Quinta hotel. I think we're going to save the taxpayers several hundred dollars! And they should thank me. Check out the view from my hotel room. The front desk assured me that they would not start working until at least 7:30... LOL When we got to the conference center, we realized that the INFORMS registration opened up. Instead, there was a Fall Bridal Spectacular. Somehow, I don't think the ladies attending this were going to be fooled into following the INFORMS sign! I attended a bit of the NSF Workshop on Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation. NSF is trying to reinvigorate their research to take higher risks on transformative technologies. The CDI initiative sounds like a very interesting step in that direction! See http://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2008/pdf/39_fy2008.pdf and I joined Cindy in a tour of U Washington, where we visited her son. The sun came out for a nice walk. We had a great dinner at Ivars Salmon House. I highly recommend this place. The restaurant is a beautiful cedar replica of a Northwest Indian Longhouse. See http://www.ivars.net  Thursday, October 25. 2007Wednesday, October 3. 2007Tuesday, October 2. 2007 |
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I guess real-time blogging is not going to happen. 
INFORMS Dress Code? I was musing over the INFORMS dress code as I walked into the conference center morning. I have been to conferences where I was overdressed in a dress shirt and slacks, and I have been to conferences where everyone but me had a suitcoat and tie ... except 
