(Originally posted in the 2014 INFORMS blog).
I came to San Francisco aiming to know what is going on in the field. In most part, I have tried to stretch the boundaries of what is in my comfort zone. The result has been awesome: I got aware of many interesting research work going on, of great people behind them, and also got some interesting notes for my own research agenda.
Besides that, I met in person a number of people I have been following online, like Sertalp and Pelin Çay, Marc-André Carle, and Marco Lübbecke (got all your special characters right?). Not to mention those I saw before in the 2012 meeting. We even managed to promote a sequel to the official tweetup in a local pub before the last conference reception!
Finally, participating in the chapters/fora meeting was instrumental for me and Alex Kazachkov, my colleague at CMU who lead the foundation of our student chapter. I hope we can soon put some interesting ideas we heard here in practice.
Hope to see all of you next year in Phillie!
PS: Thank you for the iPad, Gurobi!
Thiago Serra 