Winter Simulation Conference, Day 1 - 10.12.12

I think today may have been the most boring day of my entire life.  I spent most of the day in a booth with Brandon (from America), Ralf (from Germany), and Steven (from Holland).  We are exhibitors, and we have an exhibitors booth with all the other exhibitors.  Not very many people walked by, and we only had the chance to talk to a few of those that did.
We went to the presentation by Stephan Seidel from the Fraunhofer Institut.  He presented the project I've been working on for the last few months.  It was in a group of three presentations, and it was by far the most interesting, even though I didn't learn anything from it because I had proofread his presentation paper.
The other presentations were an hour of jargon so technical and abstract that I had no idea what they were about (and I'm not an uneducated person) and almost nobody had any questions.
I walked around a little and talked to people about their software, but by far the most interesting was the booth of the Math Works.  I started talking to them about my optimized linear algebra software, and one of the people there used to be in the numerical group.  He said he could get me in contact with people who are interested in my project, of which there are only a handful in the world.  He also said that he knows the guy who started the LINPACK project, the predecessor to LAPACK.  That's kind of like telling a history buff that you could arrange a personal meeting with George Washington, except this guy is actually still alive.
We had a nice dinner in our hotel, talked, and now I'm in bed.