Mark has already mentioned the Particles and Nuclei International Conference held in Santa Fe 24-28 October, 2005. This is a major international conference held approximately every 3 years. And it was my first time to attend. By now, I am used to seeing the same familiar faces at conferences, and this one was refreshingly different in that regard. 500 physicists were in attendance, including 80 students.

The real story of the meeting was the students. 80 student participants is an unusually high number for such meetings, and the organizors took special care of them. There were ample poster and parallel sessions for students to present their work. There were special topics lunchtime seminars geared towards the students to help them understand different aspects of the program. And last, but not least, there was a contest for the best plenary talk – judged solely by the students! Many speakers told me this influenced the amount of time they spent preparing their talk…..And the winners are……drumroll please.…..2nd runner up, our own CV blogger Mark Trodden on Cosmology, 1st runner up (most important in case the winner cannot fulfill their duties during the coming year) Angela Olinto on Ultra-high energy cosmic rays, and the winner was Boris Kayser on Neutrino Physics. (I note that I was the last speaker of the conference and the voting had essentially ended before I spoke.) The winners received a coffee-table picture book of New Mexico. None of the winners were present at the end of the meeting to claim their prize.

It was a good experience overall – always nice to meet new colleagues and catch-up with old ones. I saw both of my office-mates from graduate school! Plus there were some first-class restaurants, and I got invited to visit the University of Hawaii this spring to finish a long-outstanding paper. Life could be worse.