So IASSIST is over for another year, and as always it was well worth the price of admission – I should know I paid my own expenses this trip!

The week starting with strong with the developers meeting on Monday, then discussing XML and social science while climbing the 560ish stairs in the Koeln Dom on Tuesday. The conference started on Wednesday, and despite fretting through sessions as I prepped for my own just before closing, I was still able to take notes on data citations and am glad to see that people are converging on solutions for academic referencing of data sources. Thursday was a relatively quiet day, punctuated by moments of frantic demonstrations – one more than one occasion I was on the threshold of a session door before being pulled to discuss my presentation! Thursday evening was the conference dinner, a fun affair, with more Koelsch and talks of data that continued far, far to late into the evening which brought those of us who stayed out closer to and overlapped with Friday. The last day, more than a few familiar faces were late, even I slept over the first session; apologies to all who spoke, but I look forward to reading your papers in the IASSIST Quarterly soon!

With the Kecha Kucha and the IASSIST song, the sessions formally ended, but that didn’t stop many of us from finding a quiet place for dinner. However, its a shame that as soon as a group of IASSISTers arrive at a quiet place, it explodes with friendly banter!

For those asking what I got out of IASSIST, in one week I have:

  • Promised to write for the IQ about my talk on questionnaire design, and my tool Canard.
  • Discussed writing transformations for SQBL to Blaise, DDI and CSPro
  • Started drafting a white paper on disabled access to data
  • Received a few strong leads on jobs closer to IASSIST (thanks to many people for that)
  • Learned many new German words
  • Discovered that with practice and dedication I can drink from 4 beer glasses at once!

In closing, thanks to everyone who makes the long trip to IASSIST, and makes my own trip worth it. It is a rare group of people that can talk together for 5 days and not run out of things to say. And a special thanks to all my German friends who tried so hard to teach me German while I was here, especially my new Deutsch großer Bruder!