Boston

Wow! First time I've had a chance to get online since getting to Boston. It really has been a full schedule of events. 6am starts for registrations and 12-1am finally getting back from post conference dinners.
After a few days in New York, I headed back up to Boston to get settled into the hotel and meet Mark Finch, classmate from NZCM from the Panmure days, and have a chance for a catch up. I switched on the tv and every channel had coverage of the Red Soxs v LA Angels playoff for the east coast baseball series. I thought I'd go for a walk and check out the ground - Fenway Park - across the river. When i got to the bridge and saw 4 fighter planes fly in formation over the ground with afterburners firing i figured it was a big deal. (I just checked the result of the AB's vs France. Was pretty difficult to find anywhere to watch the game with the baseball on! I know the result however and like see a replay at some stage, what happened?!)
Not really being a big baseball fan i passed up the kind offer of the scalpers to buy a ticket for $75 and soaked up the atmosphere with the crowd outside the park.
I found the venue for the Fascia Research Congress and pre -registered and headed back to the hotel. Having not seen Mark for 18 months we didn't get the earlier of bedtimes from all the story swapping and generally catching up.

Up early for breakfast and then headed over to Harvard Medical School conference centre for a 8am start.
What an amazing venue, big crowd and great organisation. It was quite something. Tom Findley opened the conference by saying he'd been dreaming about have an event like this for 30 years. That got a rousing response.
First speaker was by Donald Ingber who, in 30 minutes covered 20 years of cellular mechanotransduction. Wow! He set the standard so high and the information was so great, that the continued applause that followed was justly deserved.

As is usual at these kinds of confernces, strict time limits apply, so on the podium is a small box with 3 'traffic' lights on it. Green for go, yellow goes on for 5 minutes to go and red flashes with 10 seconds to wind up before the crook comes out and you get hauled off!!
I'll write more later but food and sleep are what I need right now. I'm now at the end of the first day of the IASI symposium so my head is swimming with knowledge and new thoughts from the past 3 days so I'll post more entries once I've had a chance to reflect.