Well, they sure don’t call Chicago “The Windy City” for nothing! The following snapshots (taken after my presentation on Friday) really are deceptive. We only had a couple of sunny days during AERA.
This is the view from the hotel where Wendy and I stayed. Fans of Wilco’s (2001) album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot will recognize the twin buildings from their CD cover. There were many memorable architectural landmarks besides these.
The Wrigley Building, for example, or
The Chicago Tribune Building.
A view looking east, out onto Lake Michigan.
What were the rest of the days like? Slushy snow and wind. I was slip-sliding down the hill from the Hyatt, one of the conference hotels. To get to other conference hotels such as the Marriott or the Sheraton, we had to cross the bridge, which is nice when there are westerly winds, like in the photos above (the flags aren’t a good indication, I’m afraid, they swirl about misleadingly), but those easterlies were gusting something closer to 20 knots.
Which meant that we had to be pretty keen to attend some sessions:) I did really enjoy the ones I went to despite the weather, though, because they were rich sources of ideas for future papers I’d like to write. And, as Huang-Yao, one of the IKIT postdocs pointed out to me, conferences like these are really great for networking. I did do some of that, of course 😉 but I also got some valuable feedback from Niki Davis, my discussant, and from others who attended my session. I also learned a lot from a how-to-publish workshop that I went to at AERA, so maybe we’ll talk more about that at the next research group meeting.
Leave a Reply