ISMP.3

Today I had the luxury of an 09:00 start at the conference, but the talk was a disappointment. A rather smug guy from Google was championing a method for solving huge problems but, at the end, my colleague J and I tag-teamed him to dismiss his claims. Then there was little until lunch, so I went for a wander, taking the last five Turf zones in Montréal that I didn't hold. И messaged me asking about lunch, and shortly after we met, we encountered our very eminent friend (German) S. He was glad to see us, and glad to share an excellent lunch in an upmarket restaurant.

In the afternoon I attended just three talks. One was a great chance to learn more from the world's expert on something I'd started implementing a month ago. The second was a talk by a rather naïve guy from a start-up who began by implying that the commercial solvers were not as good as they might be, before proposing a technique that the commercial developer next to me shot down first, before I and then two other commercial developers joined in. Afterwards, this led to a brief but very valuable discussion between me and the commercial guys. What they told me will save us months of work. The last talk was by the boss of a Brazilian friend of ours, ending in an excellent chat with both of them. 

There was still an hour and a half before the conference dinner, so I was able to buy myself a smart casual shirt and walk back to my B&B. There, I showered, and changed, before taking the metro back downtown. И caught me up as I walked to the dinner venue, so we sat together with a friend from Berlin, and a guy from the Netherlands who informed that the next edition of this conference will be in Amsterdam in three years time. In the food queue, I was approached by a Chinese guy wo just wanted to say how fantastic HiGHS was, and take a photo with me. I also had a couple of interesting conversations as the venue started to empty. I ended the evening chatting with И and one of our Japanese friends.