Innovation Science

Travels

I’ve been traveling for almost two months straight, so am enjoying being back in town for a couple of weeks. Traveling so much is not pleasant, but at least there’s the advantage of being able to stay at a place like the Colegio Arzobispo Fonseca in Salamanca, Spain (pictured to the right, taken with my cell phone), built in 1519. Rooms were spartan, but the setting was amazing. I was invited to speak there at an audiology conference—an interesting meeting because Spain does not officially recognize the profession of audiology. The town is beautiful, with a large university that dates back to 1218. Also, I ate gooseneck barnacles, which tasted like tiny mussels, for the first time.

That’s me at the far right of the photo, trying to speak as slowly as I can so that interpreters can translate what I was saying into Spanish for the audience. I enjoy answering questions from an audience more than I do giving talks, so the panel discussion was a lot of fun, particularly when the audience asks insightful questions like this one did.

Too bad this was only a few days of my total travel.

A Little Help, Avis?

Once again today, I drove my car rental into a gas station and suddenly realized that I had no idea on which side the gas tank was. I checked both side-view mirrors hoping to see the cover in one of them, but with no luck. So, I made a guess, pulled up to a gas pump station, got out of the car, and sure enough I made the wrong choice. Got back in, backed up, drove to the other side of the island. Wasted time, added annoyance.

This scenario, sadly, gets repeated with an embarrassing frequency for me. On which side of my car rental is the @#$ gas tank? I frequently think about checking which side it’s on while I’m driving down the highway, or in a meeting, or in a hotel, but I always have something else on my mind when I can actually check and inevitably fail to do so until it is too late.

I can’t believe that I am alone in my repeated “which side” dilemma. It's a consumer need and a usability issue. Car rental agencies should put stickers like the one shown on the right on their dashboard to help poor customers like me when I’m in a mad rush to fill up the tank on my way to the airport.

I’m tempted to make one myself and bring it with me whenever I travel. But then I’d have to remember to check which side the tank is on to know how to orient the sticker…

Travels in South Africa

A friend of mine at Microsoft, Jon Beighle, just posted an amazing account of his business trip to South Africa. Interesting comments on giving presentations in airplane hangers, nearly being attacked by an elephant at a game reserve, experiencing the poverty and HIV crisis in Soweto and Capetown.

UHA in Nuremberg

Got back this past weekend from the main hearing aid and audiology conference in Europe called UHA (Union der Hörgeräteakustiker Kongress). Its location alternates between Frankfurt and Nuremberg, and luckily this year it was in the latter. The little that I saw of the city was charming. Much of it was leveled in WWII, but they've reconstructed many of their old landmarks so that the town center incorporates the partial appearance of a preserved medieval village, complete with the surrounding city wall and towers. Here are some photos:

Interestingly (or not), the meeting's name has been changed to EUHA (E for European) to make the meeting seem that it is representative of all of Europe rather than just of Germany (in the past it has been known as the German Congress). Still, almost all of the meeting is still in German and the people that I talked to said that the meeting will never in the foreseeable future be held outside of Germany.