Sunday, October 23, 2005

First day of FOCS

A guest post from FOCS attendee Rocco Servedio.

Thanks to Lance for giving me this opportunity to fill in. I'm in Pittsburgh for FOCS, which started today and runs through Tuesday. Unfortunately because of travel constraints I couldn't make it to the Frieze Fest or FOCS tutorials that took place yesterday.

Pittsburgh is a city which sometimes gets a bad rap, but I've always enjoyed coming here. Besides the obvious -- at least for this blog's readers -- attraction of CMU, there are lots of neat things that you can't find anywhere else. I personally like the National Aviary, and the Carnegie museums are fun too. At the Warhol museum you can watch movies that make even the driest FOCS talk seem like a Jerry Bruckheimer production.

No time for museums today, though; the FOCS schedule is full of cool-looking talks, and tonight there is the business meeting and a panel discussion on "Exciting the public about (theoretical) Computer Science." I'll give a report on the business meeting and panel discussion later.

3 comments:

  1. -- Pittsburgh is a city which sometimes gets a bad rap.

    Sometimes? Pittsburgh has recovered quite nicely from the lows in the 70s but this hasn't been widely reported by the press.

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  2. But beware! A recent study indicates that Pittsburgh is unprepared and could easily succumb in the event of a zombie attack.

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  3. Who are the winners of the best paper award, and the Machtey award?

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