Pre-APS March meeting

This Sunday starts the official yearly meeting of Solid State Physicists; the meeting is called the March meeting. How clever is that? The annual meeting occurs every March and it is called the March meeting. It is the most painful, useless meeting in the history of meetings. Let me paint you a picture of the meeting, over 6000 physicists (and students) descends on the convention center. Six thousand inflated egos and 6000 socially awkward people all in one place at the same time.

There are a few famous physicist there and you always know who they are because the surround themselves with groupies. You can see them walking the convention center with a cloud of people around them. I imagine it is similar to seeing a rap star walk through a place. Most everyone else will stand alone and look pathetic, just hoping that they will see someone they know so they can talk with them. When they do start talking it is almost always about science, and not cool science but boring science like growth and characterization of samples (yawn!).

The meeting is 5 full days of 12 minute talks with a few invited talks in between that are 30 minutes. The talks are boring! Including my own which is painfully stupid and boring (my mentor’s fault). Even if you wanted to it is too much information to absorb over such a short time. The best part of the meeting is getting to see all my friends from grad school. Other than that the meeting is a complete waste of time, it is just too big.

Did I mention I am one of the organizers of the meeting? That’s right I am talking from a place of authority about it being too big, boring and a complete waste of time. Any meeting that they let me help organize can’t be that great. So for the next week I will keep you updated on the APS March meeting. Complete with social commentary on the level that only the truly socially disabled can provide.