Conference in Copenhagen

The school sent me to a conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. Last June. Yes, long time, no post. However, I am posting now! Sadly, Lee wouldn't have been able to come with me without us paying for a lot of really expensive plane tickets, so he stayed home. First off, we (the school sent a sizable delegation) went to Tokyo the day before our flight to Denmark so as to be certain we were on it. This was an act of excessive caution considering that the morning flight from Kanazawa would have landed hours before the Denmark flight took off, but hey, they were paying and the room was really nice:

Of course, being in Japan, it can't just be a nice room - you know there must be something special about some aspect of it that could only be from Japan.  I was not disappointed this time.

On this package, it says

SHAPE UP GEL

 I can't join the party due to ugly body. I am now in shape-up mode. Some day I will do it with dress up. BODY SELEB is willing to help you achieve it. The success gives you self-confidence. Let's go to the party where a lot of celeb gather. You will see yourself changed drastically.

I still have no idea what the heck you are supposed to do with it. It's Red Heat Hot Pepper...flavored? Scented? Containing those extracts? I chose to leave it there rather than risk it.

After the night in Tokyo, we left for Copenhagen. I knit and watched movies on the flight. I had a much smaller room in Copenhagen, but a much more comfortable bed. Since the Japanese tend to sleep on thin mats on the floor, their beds tend to be harder to approximate that feeling. I am not a fan.

Sadly, the bed here was too comfortable, and although I love, love, loved it, I woke up stiff and with a sore back. Obviously I have been in Japan for far too long!

For the next few days, I was at the conference. I met people, heard interesting seminars, and played with Legos as an official part of official business:

The conference was really well put together. They bused you from a central location out to the campus and fed you at all the appropriate times, with delicious Danish pastries and things you can't easily get in Japan like lasagna and roast beef. The big conference dinner had a live band that played well and was a lot of fun, especially with the available wine:

There were also more hands-on sessions like the Lego session than I'd anticipated, which was a plus. Many times you'll sit around and be lectured about how hands-on education is the best way to learn, whereas here, they actually used hands-on education to illustrate its effectiveness. Of course, not all sessions were interactive, and many looked more like this:

(Yes, I was knitting, though it was usually under the desk and not a distraction to others, yes, I was taking notes and yes, I actually pay attention better when knitting; it stops my mind from wandering)

I was hoping for a bit more research and fewer "Here's what we did and we think it went well! Yay for not-actually-science!" papers, but given the size of most of the schools involved, real comparisons between heavily monitored control and experimental groups is understandably difficult. Complaining too much would also smack of hypocrisy due to the fact that my paper and presentation were awfully fluffy and definitely not a real addition to the science of engineering education - a trend I hope to reverse in the next few years.  My paper was mostly on things the school will be doing to implement educational reform in the future, so obviously no results could be given, though more scientific reasons for why we're doing what we'll be doing would have been nice.

Next up, sightseeing! Also check out the full Flickr set for more pictures.