Chicago. Good for steak, deep-dish pizza and baseball curses (unless you are a White Sox fan). Not so good, however, for ACS meetings.

With the exception of one of the Hyatts, the hotels are a loooooooong way from the convention centre. To be fair, the bus service has been good, and I haven’t had to wait more than a few minutes to get on one. Once you get dropped off, however, the session you are interested in could be a day’s hike away – as for all of you multidisciplinary types out there who fancy some PMSE one minute and some ORGN the next, forget it.

Finding the press room was also a challenge – I was very conscientious, printing out the e-mail that I received before the meeting, telling me exactly where to find it… it’s just a shame that the room number I was given just had a passing resemblance to the actual press room… what’s a couple of digits between friends?

Lunch is another matter. As Ben Davis remarked yesterday as he sped off in the opposite direction in search of a sandwich; 11,000 delegates, 4 restaurants – the maths just doesn’t work. We were a relatively quick moving Starbuck’s queue away from having fudge for lunch… yes, there is a fudge shop in the convention centre, so it’s not all that bad.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)