The INFORMS Practice Conference is one of my favorite conferences. It is here that I get most of my stories for my classes and get inspired about the areas I work in. I also get inspired about Operations Research in general: it is a great field, and this conference shows the wonderful things we do.
If you haven’t been to a Practice Conference, it is nothing like the big fall conferences. The Practice Conference is seen as a “Listener’s Conference”: unlike the main conference where anyone can present, only invited speakers present at the Practice Conference. The quality of talks given by invited speakers ranges from good to unbelievably amazing (in contrast with the fall conference where the lower bound is much, much, much lower). There are very few parallel sessions (no more than 5 or 6) and there are lots of opportunities for interaction, greatly enhancing the social capital of the conference.
Unfortunately, it is not a cheap conference. Running a conference of the quality of the Practice conference takes money. So if you are planning to go, be sure to register by February 27 to save yourself $150 or so.
Of course, one highlight of the conference is the Edelman Competition.
I already have my registration in!
The speaker program – almost final at this point – looks very strong. In addition to the usual suspects (supply chain management, transportation, simulation and optimization in various settings,…) I’m especially excited about the new Service Systems track, which includes speakers from Amex, McDonald’s and FEMA. FEMA! Two other organizations I’m looking forward to are Southwest Airlines (schedule building, IIRC) and the Clinton Foundation (healthcare).
On the software side, Microsoft’s demo of the new Solver Foundation and Gurobi’s debut of their much blogged-about LP/MIP heavy-weight contender should be interesting.
Finally I’m looking forward to Pierre Haren’s plenary. (I can”t recall when I last eagerly anticipated a plenary at an INFORMS meeting…) Pierre’s ability to balance a leader’s perspective with technical content is remarkable. That he is a fellow techie, just absurdly more successful, is a bonus!
Having said all that, I really =must= remember to register before the fee goes up.