THETA 2015 at the Gold Coast
May. 15th, 2015 08:57 pmHave spent the last four days at The Higher Education Agenda conference at the Gold Coast. To be honest, it was a bit of a mixed bag. The first day was very good, the second not so much, and the third somewhere in between. I particularly enjoyed Bryan Alexander's keynote, along with Dr. Xiaolin Zhang's presentation on the third day, albeit somewhat hampered by not having English as a native language. Alison Makin's paper on copyright issues was refreshingly sensible. My own paper, on comparing user education with interface improvements in HPC, attracted some attention and seemed well received, although I was frankly horrified by one attendee who totally misunderstood it. Also worthy of note was the vendors exhibition which was sufficiently good enough to note. The conference dinner was held at Dreamworld which included some good entertainment although, with no sense of irony, "the fun police"; Happiness is mandatory.
Which does set the scene for the Gold Coast as a whole, a name once used for derogatory remarks about the price of real estate and now the official name for the city. With the exception of a couple of universities (one public, one private) there is no industry except entertainment and tourism. The high rises are not for business, but for hotels along the coastline from the border of New South Wales to Brisbane. The weather was a perfect mid-twenties with blue skies every day, which was nice to wander along but would be frightfully dull after a couple of weeks. With![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
caseopaya escaping work for a few days, we stayed at the remarkably inexpensive Grand Chancellor, whose breakfast helpfully informed us that bacon contains pork. The Gold Coast itself consists of an endless beach and theme parks (Dreamworld, Seaworld, Movieworld, Surfworld, Fartworld - ok, I made the last one up), which enjoyable enough in its own right, but if you're a nerd who like museums your best bet is the Ripley's Odditorium, which we visited, along with the light and mirrors of Infinity Attraction, and for big kids, Dracula's Haunted House - being 'digested' by Kevin Rudd was perhaps the most horrific.
Which does set the scene for the Gold Coast as a whole, a name once used for derogatory remarks about the price of real estate and now the official name for the city. With the exception of a couple of universities (one public, one private) there is no industry except entertainment and tourism. The high rises are not for business, but for hotels along the coastline from the border of New South Wales to Brisbane. The weather was a perfect mid-twenties with blue skies every day, which was nice to wander along but would be frightfully dull after a couple of weeks. With
caseopaya escaping work for a few days, we stayed at the remarkably inexpensive Grand Chancellor, whose breakfast helpfully informed us that bacon contains pork. The Gold Coast itself consists of an endless beach and theme parks (Dreamworld, Seaworld, Movieworld, Surfworld, Fartworld - ok, I made the last one up), which enjoyable enough in its own right, but if you're a nerd who like museums your best bet is the Ripley's Odditorium, which we visited, along with the light and mirrors of Infinity Attraction, and for big kids, Dracula's Haunted House - being 'digested' by Kevin Rudd was perhaps the most horrific.
