On the road at Boston - random stuff

I went to Boston last week for a technical conference. The conference was held at Marriott at Copley Place, across Charles river from MIT. 

Boarding Airplane

As I was waiting to board the plane, it occurred to me that the boarding process of letting front seat passengers on first is an inefficient process. The most speedy way would be to let the passengers in the last rows to board and sequentially board from back to front. No one would slow down the boarding process because of loading baggage into overhead cabins, 

The airline industry must have known this - but they keep the current process.

  

Subway and Marriott Hotel

It costs only $2.65 from Logan Airport to the hotel by subway, $50 by Taxi.  Four day rental plus parking would cost ~ $400 (parking is very expensive in downtown Boston). Instead of rental car, I decided to ride subway. It saved me trouble driving in Boston's traffic and saved my company ~ $400!

I wandered around the Copley Square after dinner last Sunday. The place was beautiful in the evening. But my night at Marriott was not so good - I was the victim of bed bugs at the 5 star hotel. I took picture of my bitten leg but did not get chance to report it to the front desk.

Church at Copley Square

pond at Copley Square

Victim of Bed Bugs at Marriott Copley Place

 Enjoy the conference

Meeting old friends, showing off my own work and feeling the trend in my technical area are always my main objectives to attend the conference.

But I had another goal this time after reading a HBR article "How an Introverted Engineer Learned
to Lead", I wanted to go out of my comfort zone, make new friends, grab chance to speak when needed. I dinned with attendees I was not familiar with, I congratulated the keynote speaker, a British professor and asked a couple questions after the plenary session, I made a friend of a speaker Sandeep since he and I went to the same graduate school.

When I was chatting with Sandeep during a break, the conference's marketing manager Lori joined us. She asked about Sandeep's presentation earlier of the day. When she finished asking Sandeep questions, I took the chance to preview my next day presentation, stating that I will use a home experiment with bottled water to illustrate my ideas. It grabbed her attention right away!

Meeting old friends at the conference

 Light show at Boston Museum of Science after conference Banquet