Back from the HT01 conference - and still postconferencing in a way, as Stuart Moulthrop & his partner Nancy Kaplan stopped by for coffee today, visiting Copenhagen on the way home to US. Stuart's experience of the conference is that the "aesthetics", lit theory people have gradually taken over more and more space at the conference. My own personal experience was that there seemed to be a lot of systems & software development people around, but then again, this is admittedly my first conference out of the Humanistic realm. And it was fun to meet systems development people who only dreamt of collaborating with authors as to develop their systems most adequately. This truely seems like a win-win situation to me!

- There were some nice papers too, but in general I was a bit disappointed, perhaps because I missed out on the beginning of some of the more seemingly interesting sessions, and hence perhaps did not hear some of the good stuff. But I really get annoyed when I either directly experience that people are repeating old papers or old ideas and not much seems to have happened since last time, I heard them talk. Or when I indirectly get the feeling that although this is the first time, _I_ hear a paper, it seems like old stuff to both the speaker and most of the audience. I know I do that myself, and I know that is inevitably part of the trade, but sometimes I wish we all had more time to think new thoughts...Well, perhaps I'll change my mind when I sit down and read the proceedings, looking forward to that.

Btw, there are photos from the conference here. Århus University is a wonderful place.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 19:15