The conference center is enormous, with a gigantic domed hall for plenary lectures at the center. It can hold a crowd of twenty-two thousand participants at full capacity. We are not even filling it at half capacity. Even then, the experience is humbling. Large holoscreens show the speakers, too far away to clearly see with the naked eye. They give clear guidelines and advice to a rapt audience.
Smaller halls and auditoria are sprawling around it along six lanes that are laid out as the arms of a snowflake, splitting in many sideways. Simultaneous "semi-plenary" talks are held in each of the six main halls, but after that the talks split up along the many side rooms in the fractal architecture.
The 'little talks', like my own, only last fifteen minutes, but they are scheduled back to back from early morning till late evening. You cannot learn much from these short talks, but the sheer amount of them plunge you into a bath of science, and you can learn where the field in general is heading too.
Around noon, the participants conglomerate in the lower floor below the large domed main hall. That's where you get the lunch packages and where the trade exhibit is.
Tomorrow I have my own talk... I wonder how that will go
