It just galls me

In graduate school, I studied agrobacterium and that bacterium had its own conference every year: The Crown Gall Conference. It wasn't that big of a conference, usually less than 200 of us each year, held at some university (usually in the midwest somewhere) in mid-November. It was not glamorous, but we all went every year. It was like the nerdiest class reunion ever.

Since it was a small-ish conference, we were all expected to present our research. And since we all worked on the same organism, no need for background, straight to the meat. It intense and kind of fantastic. And at the end of the day would be the big dinner/party, then more of the same the next day.

One year, our lab had a few really strong talks. It was a good year for the research and a lot of data pulled together just in time for the meeting. There were some surprising results and we did a few clever things. After the talks, someone from another lab told Binns (my PI), "You know, your lab, they're scientists!" Andy couldn't stop grinning. He told us that story for about a month.

I should point out that there was one cool kid: David. David was our collaborator, and all the women in the lab swooned over him. ("Ooh! David is in town!") Everyone wanted to be at his table, which was fine, as he would gather extra chairs and steal bottles of wine. He needed about an hour of sleep, so he was the last one out drinking and the first to breakfast. When he asked you about your research, it was clearly the most fascinating thing he had heard in ages. 

But, basically, we were all there to completely nerd out on agro. We would all come together, swap information, make plans to send DNA and bacterium strains. It's one of the few things I miss about grad school, although it was stressful and tiring. But it was always inspiring as well. It always seemed that the research started to work, shortly after returning from these meetings. And that's really what it was all about.