The Nerd Conference

A couple of weeks ago I went to the annual meeting for the American Physical Society’s Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics (DAMOP). It’s about a 1200 person conference and needless to say it’s a ‘noticeable’ group. The conference was held in the Marriott Marquis hotel in Atlanta which has a 47 story open lobby with glass elevators.

The exhibition for the conference was in the lobby of the hotel and one day James and I were riding down the glass elevator when a business man got in the elevator with us. You know how someone can be “fat” without being round? He was a very squarely “thick” guy which actually made his suit hang very well. When he got in the elevator James was facing away from him and I was not wearing my name tag. The conversation went like this:

Him: “Looks like the Nerd Conference is in town or something. I saw this guy walking around in shorts and sandals!”

James then turned around so that he could see his name tag and immediately the moment was awkward.

James: “Yeah, it’s a Physics conference. Some of the brightest people in the world are here.” (He should have mentioned that included 2 Nobel Laureates and several people who’d made the short list at my last count)

The elevator door then opened and he was itching for his escape.

Him: “At least you two don’t uh…” It was then that he looked at our attire for the first time. “at least you have uh…”

“Shoes?” I offered him.

“Yeah, shoes.” And he was off like a lightning bolt. Seriously the only difference between us and his disdainful description of the other scientist was that we weren’t wearing sandals.

While his description matched probably one third of the conference attendees I’ll mention that Wolfgang Ketterle, Nobel Prize in Physics 2002(?), only wore sandals during the conference (but never shorts).