RUME Conference - Portland - Day 1

I'm currently at the Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education (a special interest group of the Mathematical Association of American) conference in Portland Oregon (in the US) [see conference website]. I flew into LA from Brisbane 2 days ago and then up to Portland yesterday, after coming back from the Philippines and family holidays 3.5 days ago. I am massively tired! This is also the coldest place I have ever been! It's been below 0 almost the entire day. Foolishly I went out for dinner and to visit a microbrewery (Deschutes) and I am now fairly sick with sinus and headache kind of stuff ... not good.

I'm talking tomorrow on much the same talk as I gave at QANZIAM late last year - that is, student perceptions of criterion referenced assessment in an ODEs class. This is good because I've already written the slides.

Some thoughts for the day:
- Don't be an ass. When you become an important person in your particular field, try not to be a jerk. It's unnecessary.  One of the talks I was at today was by an undergraduate student who had done a research project. I thought it was a good talk - not necessarily a really high end piece of research, but certainly good and worthy of presentation at the conference. Anyway, one of the invited speakers was up the back and in the Q&A session, she essentially ripped this guy a new one. I thought it was really uncalled for. She even did the "I don't mean to attack you" etc...but she was.
- Frozen water. Frozen water should be found in two places: 1) refrigerators/freezers, 2) drinks. That's it. Not on footpaths, not on car boots/trunks, not in water features/fountains. NO. That is just not right.
- Theme. Conferences have topics/areas of interest of course. But usually there is also an underlying style or theme that might not be obviously advertised (intentionally or otherwise). Often the community involved in the conf or just the organiser has a particular slanted view of the world. This is definitely the case here. Although, even thought the majority may have a particular style there are enough outsiders (like me) to dampen this a little and make it more inviting/welcoming for other outsiders. This is perfectly illustrated by the three reviews I received for my initial conference paper - two trashed it, barely passing it as acceptable while the third gave it brilliant reviews. Can't please everyone.

One interesting thing to come out of this is that the undergrad student I mentioned above is actually interested in some of the same topics in maths ed that I am. He is also looking for somewhere to do a PhD, so I'm going to drop him an email to discuss - imagine a conference being a useful networking opportunity! Crazy.