Participant Testimonials
This was most probably the best workshop I ever attended. I was able to meet colleagues with similar interests and, due to the accommodation at BIRS, had the opportunity to have many interesting discussions during the workshop as well as during outside activities.
Tufts University
It was my first visit to BIRS and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is a beautiful place which is run by friendly staff very efficiently. The restaurant with its excellent food provides a very cozy place for informal chat. The workshop was very stimulating - it was good to get to know researchers who I would not otherwise meet at other conferences. It was a very good idea to have a small group of people and to focus on a specific theme. The workshop really widened my horizon and is very helpful to my research.
My participation in the BIRS workshop impacted my current research and made me aware of new results in my field and related fields.
These are exactly the sorts of meetings I go to nowadays, small, well organized so that there is a viable cross section of participants present. Viable means that the knowledge and interests distances between participants are not too large so that we all learn new things and at the same time can talk to each other in some depth. At the BIRS meeting last week, I learned several new things which I am beginning to think about in more detail. I would strongly recommend that a majority of talks are given via white or blackboard. Power point presentations suffer for two reasons. First, because of all the pretty pictures and professional formatting, one undergoes the illusion that one is understanding more than one actually is. Second, a good blackboard talk allows the listener to peruse the blackboard and be reminded of steps already taken, which steps have already been long passed by the power point flyby. Power point is useful for some slides but, for the kind of meetings that BIRS prides itself on, blackboard discussions should be encouraged. Folk learn far more. ... Thanks to BIRS and the organizers for a wonderful week...
