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Back from the ECM-30 meeting in Basel
Saturday the 3rd of September 2016 at 11:09, permalink: 2016.09.03.11.09.ECM30basel, edit
During this week, I was in Basel to participate in the 30th meeting of the European Crystallographic Association (ECM) - the first time for me to participate in this conference. There were way more people than I had expected - I heard mentioned around 920 participants - and the whole thing was super inspiring.
I had actually tried getting a talk about my almost-ready to publish work on staging in LSCO, but I only got to present a poster. I did, however, get to catch up with a few people, as well as meet some of the people that I met at the Aperiodic Crystals school back a few weeks ago in Antwerp.
Monday evening there was a Young Crystallographers Mixer at the Bar Rouge in the second-highest building in Basel. The view was amazing, the drinks were great, and the music was loud. Quite a fun experience, although I'm not sure whether it worked well for networking or not..
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We got in there to quite a view of the sunset over Basel |
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They had rented out part of the bar, and even had the conference logo on the wall! |
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The view after sunset was really cool |
Tuesday evening I got to visit the new Dectris headquarters in Baden-Daettwil, with a really interesting tour, as well as some awesome barbecue to top it off afterwards. It was really cool to see where they make the Pilatus detectors that I've seen so many times, as well as hear about all of the newer products they have been developing, and the history of the company.
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The venue had countless rooms on three floors |
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My poster at the stands during Monday |
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The center of the venue was full of different companies, many using very inventive ways of getting our attention |
The venue itself was really great, and there was a professional team of conference arrangers that took care of the practicals - everything ran so smoothly! We also had some pretty long lunch breaks, so there was good opportunity to get around Basel a bit. I might actually go to Basel again on a vacation some day, it was a great city - and the public transport was very efficient.
Finally, the conference dinner on Wednesday evening was held in the Zoo in Basel, in one of the big restaurant halls. Before the actual dinner (which was awesome, by the way), we were divided into groups and sent on tours around the Zoo. I got on the tour in their little aquarium, where one of the biologists showed us around in the back, where they breed corals, seahorses, and jellyfish. It was super interesting, and way too short. I could have stayed there for hours and hours.
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When you get to the conference center, you are met with the huge alien-looking Messe building with a big hole in the roof over one of the tram stops - it looked very surreal |
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One of the round jellyfish breeding aquariums, where they could swim around without getting stuck in the edges |
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One of the beautiful places I visited in the city - Barfussplatz, I think it was |
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I could stare at the river for ages - with the beautiful bridges crossing in several places, silly little boats being dragged across, and people floating down stream with their little fish-shaped waterproof bags |