I am now in Lille at the Euromicro SEAA conference. I intended to blog more often, but connectivity has not been great and my time has been a little constraint.

In short, Lille is much, much bigger than I expected. It is easy to believe that the population is more than a million, as everyone claims. Of course, it is hard to judge, because I have only seen selected parts, but it seems about the size of Helsinki in terms of population, although the central town is perhaps a little more compact.  The strangest thing (and good indicator of size) is probably the large number of beggars, young and old. Maybe that is only because I stay in the centre of town, but they seem to be numerous. It is perhaps also a little dirty, but the buildings are old and beautiful. All in all, it seems like a nice place to live, very vibrant.

The conference itself is almost over. In fact, the last session is about to begin. It is a actually the keynote of the “other” conference, DSD, that is being held at the same time. Digital System Design is not really my field, but I can at least understand what these guys are talking about.  My side of the conference, SEAA, is of course much closer to home, but I’ll be honest and say that I have not found many talks that greatly interests me. That is somewhat to be expected; Software Engineering is a vast field. In the session where I presented my work, the other talks were more engaging to me, naturally.

I met a lot of interesting people, and have “networked” a little in my own way, but I think that I am becoming immune to the excitement that conferences usually elicit.

OK, now the keynote is starting and this guy seems like a good speaker.