

What I learned hanging out at the vascular surgery conference - progga
http://petdance.com/2011/09/hanging-out-at-the-vascular-surgery-conference/

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pingswept
My girlfriend, who is a landscape architect, has a subscription to
Interlocking Concrete Pavement magazine (<http://www.icpi.org/node/745>). On
average, I probably spend twice as much time reading it as she does. Most
recently, there was an article that described different parking lot geometries
designed to prevent rainwater that lands on the parking lot from making it out
of the parking lot, carrying lots of toxic crap with it. I also learned
recently about horseshoe swales, which collect runoff from things like tennis
courts.

I've previously read issues of Appliance Design and American Laundry Digest
and found similarly interesting stuff.

[Edit: In trying to find a diagram of a horseshoe swale, I discovered that
there exists a social network for landscape architects:
<http://land8lounge.com/> Looking at the source, I think it's a Ning site
branded to look independent (or at least there are a bunch of ning.com assets
linked).]

~~~
wallflower
You would love "Design News"

~~~
pingswept
Thanks for the suggestion.

Strangely, that's approximately my field of expertise. I got Design News for a
few years, but it was less interesting because I was already familiar with
most of the tech. Contrast that with ICP Magazine: they have pictures of
machines that make racks of bricks shaped with interlocking profiles.

------
_delirium
A friend of mine in grad school in Atlanta, which hosts a bunch of conferences
in the big hotels downtown (partly due to the well-connected airport), used to
crash them mainly for free food, but found some pretty interesting
conversations as a result. One pointer was to go to "boring-sounding" biz
conferences where people are mostly there because their company sent them. The
novelty of you _not_ being from the conference makes it fairly easy to talk to
people, they don't usually care about you crashing it (unless perhaps they're
the organizers), and it's a good way of finding out what people in an
industry/sector think is broken in their industry (by the 2nd or 3rd day of a
conference on Subject X, many attendees have a lot of rants about Subject X
collected on the tip of their tongues).

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wallflower
Last week, I was talking with a guy at a cocktail party who was reading "Ways
of Seeing" by Berger _and_ studying physics by reading The Feynman Lectures.
He was one of the most fascinating people I have met in a while because he was
genuinely interested in your life (even though we only talked ten minutes, I
was left wanting more...). And he was a marketing guy.

~~~
sliverstorm
He's not just a marketing guy. He's a _good_ marketing guy. Building rapport
is a key skill for a salesman.

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russnewcomer
My grandpa once advised me to read a new book or magazine about something I
was unfamiliar with every month. Terrific advice, I have so much more general
knowledge that lets me interact with customers and new people than many of my
peers.

~~~
dhughes
That's what I like about Khan Academy just sit back and watch so many subjects
as well so many universities have free videos.

In a way reading HN feels like I'm crashing a vascular conference.

~~~
kb101
The cool thing about crashing the HN conference is you don't have to go to
school for twelve years to pick up some tools and start hacking away (pardon
the double entendre).

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marshray
I used to work for a surgeon and was tangentially involved with some
conferences. I'll confirm they're like he described. The only person I've ever
heard of being asked to leave was a malpractice lawyer digging for dirt.

Surgeons, like developers, tend to be very particular about their tools. The
one I worked for designed a few of his own and worked with medical device
companies to produce and sell them.

The sales reps are an interesting mix of "sales-ey" and technical. One medical
device sales rep I knew became one after having sold his business stocking
sandwich vending machines. Other sales reps were practicing PAs (Physician
Assistants) who were known to scrub in and sometimes perform parts of the
surgery.

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ajtaylor
Hmmm, I've always said if I quit programming I'd probably go into Civil
Engineering. Perhaps it's time to look for some magazines next time I go to
the library. I'll read just about anything, for precisely the same reason Andy
crashed the conference - gaining new knowledge is fun!

