A few days has past and reports from the ILC are pouring in (Zach is keeping track). My own report will be divided in two, one for the talks and this one for the rest.

Overall, the conference was a magnificent success, I think. A very well done goes out to the organising commitee in general and Nick Levine in particular. Lots and lots of work went into allowing the rest of us to just show up and enjoy the ride.

The venue in Cambridge was incredible nice and quiet. For some reason I kept waking at around 06:00 and the only thing heard was the occassional owl somewhere in the distance and a few early birds in the court yard.

It was a very special feeling to be staying at an institution that will celebrate its 800'th birthday in 2009. With the colleges, and the banquet in the great hall of Clare College (the third oldest of the colleges), I was not the only person to feel like being in the midst of a Harry Potter story.

The conference website has put up the group photo that was taken (a very nice idea by the way) and promises to deliver links to various goodies such as photos, blogs, recordings and pdfs. There will also be a list of those participants that opted in to have it listed.

Food (breakfast and lunch) was provided, partly because the organizers realised that if people had to scatter for lunch, half would no come back for the afternoon sessions which I think was very well seen. Food was overall very good. In the evenings, we generally teamed up in larger groups to a much bigger extent than I remember doing when I was at the ILC 2002 in San Francisco. Perhaps the combination of a smaller crowd and a smaller city, or the fact that most lived in the college accomodations was a part of the reason for that.

The conference location was a bit more scattered than I had imagined, but fortunately the weather was mostly very good with only a single cloudy day with a few drips so this was not a problem. It was a bit chilly though most of the time.

I flew directly from Århus to Stansted with Ryan Air. It was very nice to have a direct and cheap connection but I must admit that I am glad I do not normally travel like this. The plane was packed both out and home and the weight limit of 15 Kg for checked baggage is ridiculously low. Obviously, it was not Ryan Airs fault that I came back to Stansted later than I should have (I should have calculated at least two hours) but the home trip ended up being rather stressfull; I even managed to forget my laptop at the security check point, but for some reason I decided to check whether it was there or not shortly after, so I was able to get hold of it without problems.

I decided to pay a visit to the big Cambridge University Press bookstore, but I had some problems fitting it in to the schedule. I ended up dashing off in the Wednesday afternoon break (and subsequenty missed most of the Liskell talk) but I was glad I did. It had a rather interesting Computer Science part and I ended up buying three books, one on the great pyramids of Egypt, one on Abductive Inference and one on Planning Algorithms which apparently is also available for download.

I arrived Saturday but unfortunately too late for the punting and city walk. After registration I was given several option for where to go for dinner. I ended up at the Free Press which was indeed cosy with good beer and a nice curry. English draught beer, of which Greene King was prominently featured in the pubs I went to, is somewhat different from the continental style with noticeably less carbondioxide. I kind of prefer the continental style but the beer I got was good none the less.

Walking back to Clare College, I discovered that there was a festival going in Cambridge. I didn't have the energy to try to catch anything that evening but I decided to go to the Wednesday concert with Bachs St. Johns Passion at the Kings College Chapel with the King College Choir and Academy of Ancient Music. The concert was really good although I did need a little while to tune in to the music. Among the soloist, especially the Evangelist (William Kendall) stood out but the choir was magnificent as well.

Tags: ilc07, lisp