The 65th International Astronautical Congress

Next week, I will be attending and presenting at the 65th International Astronautical Congress (IAC).  It is the annual space conference with the highest attendance in the world.  Thousands of experts in industry and academia from all corners of the world with gather to share expertise in anything and everything space-related.  The event will take place between Sept. 29 and Oct. 3 in Toronto, Ontario, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre; the location changes every year - it's like the Olympics for nerds.

The scale of the event is kind of mind-boggling.  There will be 180 symposiums, each on a specific space topic.  Each symposium consists of anywhere from five to ten 14-minute talks.  Therefore, there will be about one thousand presenters and more than one thousand presentations, as some speakers will be giving several talks.

It is impossible to physically attend more than 6% of these talks.  At any given time, there are eighteen symposiums taking place.  When attending such a conference, one must make choices; there will be interesting talks missed because something more interesting is taking place at the time.  Spinning it more positively: there is always something amazing going on.