ESOF 2008 - Last Day and Departure

The sun is out again, blue sky today. This is the last day of ESOF 2008. I pack my stuff and check out from the hotel, leaving my luggage there in storage for picking it up in the afternoon.

Had not much time yet to see things in Barcelona, due to attendance at the conference. There is another social event in the afternoon, in the Mies-van-der-Rohe pavillion, where the ESOF responsibility is handed over from Barcelona this year to Torino in 2010. I may have a look - maybe I could engage a bit with this community and could participate in one of the sessions as speaker.

A bit walking around in Barcelona, up the hill of Tibidabo with its old-fashioned Luna-Park. There is a real whole airplane hanging on a construction and is "carried around", with passengers in it. Great view from there over the city.

There are also interesting Roman remains in the city: a few columns of a temple, city walls, and gates.

The plane leaves at 19:40. I take again the train, but it is quite a hazzle: have to carry all my luggage around the metro, as there are not everywhere esculators or lifts. At the train station, there are sign for the airport, but it is difficult to find the tracks where the trains leave. The announcement boards are very unclear, no mention of the train to the airport. Finally I see it, at track 10. Many people are on the platform, waiting for the train. It goes only every 30 minutes, clearly to infrequently for the demand. The train is then packed. Arrive well in time, as I have planned with lots of time buffer.

The Jet2 counter is still without personnel, a long line of passengers is already waiting. For one hour I stay in the queue, chat with a nice patent lawyer who is in the queue. Finally, the queue moves, just 1 h 1/2 hours before take-off.

The flight is without any incidents, arrive well in Leeds.

ESOF 2008 - 4th day

Today the weather is cloudy, the sky is covered by a white layer, no more blue, and the air is quite humid. It is still very warm.

The focus of the ESOF conference today is significantly on government policies regarding research funding. In many talks, there appears the notion that the US is far ahead, and that Europe needs to catch up. "Threatening" are the increased efforts in the Asian area, specifically by China. The consequence of this is that measures are being recommended, for increasing Europe's research activities and moving forward to a "Knowledge Economy", as outlined in the so-called "Lisbon Agenda". A lot of buzzwords here, many people talking and thinking, while the rest of the world is just doing, and is moving ahead. I personally believe that all this planning and policy making has a lot of inherent overhead built-in and reduces the effectiveness of any measure. As I have seen it in the US: there is less policy, less bureaucracy, must more immediate action, and a willingness to take more risks. That is why they are more successful, at least considered in a simplified viewpoint.

ESOF 2008 - 3rd Day

Again I get up at 7:30 - and am alone in the breakfast room. Understandable - who would want to get up so early on a Sunday morning? But I am interested in the session "Are the arts the language of the brain?". Interesting talks, but they do not answer the question. That is a general "theme" of this ESOF conference: the titles are quite provocative and thought-provoking, but then the panels to not really live up to those ambitious titles, and instead of giving an answer to the question, they talk either about the problems and question itself or just about their own work which has some remote link to the question. Nevertheless, the talks are interesting. Overall, there are several main themes in this conference: Brain imaging, energy, environment, and health as main research topics. Europe as a Knowledge Society in the policy topic. A lot of sessions deal with how Europe can be made more competitive, and the EU is always compared to the US. An interesting demo from the realm of Mixed Reality: a music synthesizer which is assembled form tangible objects. Developed and demonstrated by the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona.

ESOF 2008 - Party in Pablo Espagnol

On Saturday evening, the ESOF conference holds a "party" at the "Pablo Espagnol" which is just a short walk from the exhibition centre. This "village" consists of a set of historic houses, taken from all parts of Spain and representing the architactural variety. One seems to pay admission for entering this village, but for us ESOF participants the entry is free. There are several restaurants in this quarter, but we have a large area in the centre which is specifically reserved for the conference, with a stage and life music on one end and many black-covered tables in the middle.

ESOF 2008 - 1st Afternoon

As the participation at the Marie Curie workshop allows participation at the ESOF 2008 Conference, I begin to look at which of the talks I would listen to. There are many parallel session and talks. I decide to go to the one given by Sir David King from UK, U.Oxford,about the challenges of the 21st century. Naturally, a big challenge is the climate change. By 2050 there will be 9 Billion people on Earth, with the population growth fortunately levelling out. The CO2 content in the atmosphere had been in the past 300,000 years between 200 and 280 ppm. Right now it is about 380 ppm, and it will stabilize in the most optimistic scenario at about 450 ppm. He is a proponent of nuclear energy and of gen-manipulated (GM) crops. In some ways he appears to be a bit close to politics, as he had been an advisor of the UK government, and he made some remarks which imply his close links with the UK government.



I had sat down at a row far in the back, with a lot of leg space as a walk way was going through there. I sat down quite low, being exhausted from the long days, and at a few instances I had slightly dozed off. Hope that I had not snored...!

In the evening there was the official opening of ESOF, with 8 welcome speeches, 3 of them in Spanish.



A stage performance of two artists working with bib bubbles completed the evening.