APL98 Retrospective

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 10

Dear APL friends, first of all let me thank all of you that came to the APL98 Conference in Rome for the participation and for the great enthusiasm shown. I believe that the Conference as a whole was appreciated very much by all the participants; at least this was my impression from the comments heard during the conference, and from several very kind messages received after the end. Looking at the scientific program, unfortunately I can give no direct feeling, because the many duties I had to satisfy didn’t allow me to follow any of the many talks, tutorials and workshops. At any rate I heard rumours that convinced me that the scientific program was quite valuable in any respect: talks were of a good level and people find tutorials and workshops really profitable.

Let me thank here all the fantastic people that with their works, their personal sacrifice and their enthusiasm made the Conference possible; first I would thank the members of Program Committee for the really valuable advice I received; then the Organising Committee fellows that freed me from many heavy tasks and, last but not least, all the delicious girls that, on the buses, at the reception desk and in any other circumstance did their job always with a smile, trying to help anyone with a problem and looking everytime fresh, pretty and available. I remember somebody asked me "Where did you put the ugly girls?"

Moreover I would like to point out one more thing: it seems to me that among all the attendees there was truly a spirit of cooperation and I think that the possibility to talk each other and exchange opinions and experiences has been appreciated by all the participants. Such a possibility was of course because the Conference had a moderate parallelism among the sessions. I firmly believe that this has to be one of the main goals of a good conference, not only running from one room to the other trying to follow five or six talks at the same time.

One feature of APL98 that seems to me has been proven quite successful is the set of social events. I think everybody enjoyed the gala dinner (someone told me that he didn’t eat in such a way even at his wedding party), but I’m sure that people liked also the musical evening and the Rome by night tour. The accompanying person program also earned a great success. I’m very sorry for all the people that left before Friday evening, because they missed the Survivors’ bruschetta and wine: I think that this has been the most enjoyable event of all: thanks to the Jim Lucas music (maybe due also to the flood of excellent Frascati wine) everybody had a very good time tasting some typical Roman food, in spite of the painful attempt of myself to play guitar and, worst of all, singing Roman songs.

Of course there were some shadows: my main disappointment was the low number of attendees; perhaps this happened because of the poor communication and publicity for the Conference and the delay in the availability of the Program.

Although I said that the organisation of a conference should be done at least once in everybody lifetime, but not twice, if you want to have a long life, after this experience I’m pleased to be self-contradictory: I truly hope that sooner or later I’d have the honour and the onus to host the APL community once again in Italy.

To close these few words let me tell you the most important target APL98 Conference achieved as far as my personal life is concerned: before it I had just some APL colleagues and acquaintances, now I can safely affirm that I have a lot of true friends all over the world. Thanks also for that.