>This is very cruel. I wanted so much to go to this
conference and it sounds as if it was everything I
thought it would be.<

Sorry Geoff,

There were  recently a few thinly-veiled requests for some reports on the
meeting... and so far, no one had bitten.

As Joan points out, there's lots of sides to the extremely complex visit.
Not every moment was silver-lined, but the overall experiece was quite
fine. And I'd like to mention that whatever ommissions and mis-steps the
hosting committe might have made, it was not for lack of trying. I've been
involved behind the scenes on many of the annual meetings and I never saw
such a hard-working group. Ever. Arriving early to stay with Pedro during
the days leading up to the event, I was in the company of folks who were
working 21 hour days- home at 5am and the alarm gets set for 8- to make
this happen. These guys slept even less than me!

Logisticly this was big-league. And a huge undertaking for the volunteers,
who were mostly young (and somestimes aspiring) illustrators. A
profe$$ional conference sevice would have had their hands full with this
one. And they would have never added the touches that really set this
conferences apart.

Anyway, hopefully others will chime in with their perspective- whatever
their take. Everyone's been rather quiet lately. Even my expoding-mammals
link didn't raise an eyebrow <g>....

Frank