Last June, I attended the FLASABE conference in Ft. Myers. Though in theory public and open to everyone, nearly every attendee was also a presenter, and a significant majority were affiliated with UF IFAS. In practice, it was as if they all said “let’s have a school-wide meeting, but let’s have it at the beach!”
Not that I’m complaining.
It was very enlightening to see what everybody else was working on, especially those who are in another department or sequestered at some remote satellite campus. This process was helped along by Dr. Gorucu, who immediately volunteered me to help judge the poster competition. She also introduced me to Alex Foessel, who, when I met him, was in the middle of a conversation about motorcycle riding that I sadly was not qualified to participate in. That wasn’t all: he also told me that he had a cattle ranch in Chile.
“I felt very humbled talking to these Florida farmers who have an order of magnitude, two orders of magnitude, more cattle than I do,” he said.
The keynote was given by Alex Foessel. He was also on the opening panel. He claimed that he had been given the questions beforehand, and that his opinions would likely differ from those of his fellow panelists. Dr. Hofstetter encouraged him to be as contentious as possible, as this would make for a more entertaining discussion. That didn’t really happen, though, and the panel discussion ended up being somewhat subdued.
The presentations on the first day were pretty good, overall. I took lots of notes, and got some ideas for things that I could maybe use in my own work. There were two sessions running concurrently, so I did not see everything.
Eventually, we broke for lunch. When I went into the hotel restaurant, I once again saw Dr. Gorucu and Alex Foessel at a table with some other professors. Alex Foessel was sitting next to Dr. Cardenas, another professor from IFAS. They were both Chilean, so they were giving me a crash course in their homeland. I mentioned that I spoke Spanish, and they both agreed that Chilean Spanish was a mess.
“The purest Spanish,” said Dr. Cardenas, “is Colombian or Guatemalan Spanish. They speak with a beautiful accent.”
“My Spanish was once good enough that I could read Gabriel Garcia Marquez without translation,” I said. “But I did get tripped up by everyone being named the same damn thing.”
“Oh yes, all the Buendias,” said Dr. Cardenas.
“Most of what I know of Chilean history comes by way of Isabel Allende,” I said.
They were ebullient about the fact that I was familiar with at least one Chilean author.
“I think that’s the only one I know,” I admitted.
After an afternoon session, it was time to judge posters, so I headed to the appointed room. Poster judging was set up so that two people would be judging each poster. I ran into Dr. Watson outside of the room, and we quickly discovered that we were judging the same people. He proposed that we do our judging together, which I agreed to. This made things a little easier, because I could stand back and let him ask most of the questions.
I caught up with Jacob after the poster session, and asked if he wanted to get dinner. It turns out that, while I had been judging posters, he had gone down to the lobby to ask the concierge about “good restaurants on a student budget”. We agreed on a Mexican place, and he volunteered to drive us all there. By this point, “us” included my erstwhile roommate Peigeng, as well as two of Jacob’s friends.
I related to Jacob what Dr. Cardenas had told me about Colombian Spanish being the “purest”.
“You’re lucky no Venezuelans heard you say that!”, he said.
We still had a couple of hours before bedtime and I had just had a heavy meal, so when we got back, I decided to take a walk around the grounds of the resort. Peigeng agreed to come with me when I invited him. Eventually, we found ourselves out at the pier where the cruise ship owned by the resort docks.
“It reminds me of the ferries across the river back home in Wuhan”, said Peigeng.
On Friday morning, I was up early again, but I found that most of the morning sessions weren’t super relevant. Even so, I did my best to listen and take notes. I knew that I had to stay focused for my presentation, which was that afternoon.
When I was having lunch, I spotted Dr. Reyes and his wife, and they invited me over to sit at their table. I ordered soup once again. Dr. Reyes was eating some kind of Caesar salad.
“Can you tell the chef that this chicken has way too much rosemary?”, he asked the waiter.
“The chicken is almost inedible,” he remarked after she had left.
When it came time to pay, we got separate checks.
“I would offer to pay for yours, but I know that Dr. Li is going to cover it anyway,” he explained.
I was looking in my wallet my credit card and I somehow couldn’t find it. The waiter noticed me looking.
“I think you left your credit card at the restaurant this morning,” she said. “It’s at the front desk.”
That was pretty mortifying, especially because it happened in front of Dr. Reyes. I really have no idea how I managed to do that.
The afternoon session was the one where I was scheduled to present. My presentation was on automatic bee tracking using deep learning on an edge device. You can download my slides here if you’re curious.
There were not a whole ton of people watching my session, although Jacob and Peigeng did show up. I saw them sitting in the back, taking pictures. I thought my presentation went decently, although I was a little nervous and rambled a bit. I do tend to do that, especially when I maybe don’t practice as much as I should have. Even so, Dr. Reyes was after me, and he did a great job. I can tell that he is passionate about teaching, because it felt more like a very polished lecture as opposed to conference presentation.
I didn’t stay until the very end of the conference, because I wasn’t spending another night in the hotel, and I wanted to leave before the traffic got too bad. Which is a little unfortunate. It might have been fun to get some free food at the banquet and watch the IFAS people give each-other awards. Oh well. Maybe next year.
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