mem·o·ry·less·ness

I got home from INFORMS 2010 yesterday.  It was a good conference.  I learned a lot and met some interesting people, but I’m glad to be home.

On Tuesday evening, I met Kay-Yut Chen.  He’s an economist at HP Labs, and he wrote a book called Secrets of the Moneylab:

Secrets of the Moneylab offers practical lessons being put to use right now at HP and other leading companies. It explains, for instance, how to:

• Use incentives to influence employees, suppliers, and buyers
• Determine whom to trust, and how much
• Reduce the negative effects of irrational behavior by noticing patterns that don’t seem logical—but are utterly predictable
• Overcome the human tendency to game the system
• Profit from motives beyond money

I’m looking forward to reading it.  While I’m guessing it’s directed at a firm’s management, I’m sure it will be interesting.

I’ve met several interesting people at INFORMS 2010.  I’ve even met (and reconnected with) some that are connected to me.

For instance, yesterday I met Chung-Yee Lee.  Dr. Lee was the PhD advisor of one of my MS advisors, Surya Liman.  He told me that he is my grandfather; I’m not sure if that’s entirely correct as I don’t know if academic genealogy applies to master’s degree holders (and I didn’t finish my thesis - my MS is non-thesis - so maybe I’m his step-grandson or something).  Regardless, it was nice to meet him and I’m looking forward to his keynote talk tomorrow.

Then at last night’s reception, I ran into John Kobza, my other MS advisor, and Tim Matis, who’s a professor at Texas Tech that wasn’t there when I was.  Dr. Kobza joined us for dinner tonight.  It was nice catching up with him and he gave me some good insights into questions I had regarding an OR career.

This morning, as we were leaving a session, my boss spotted Saravanan Venkatachalam.  Saravanan worked in our group from 2005 to 2007 or so.  He and I worked closely on some projects and we were co-authors on an INFORMS presentation in 2005, but I’d never met him in person.  He’s now at Texas A&M, where he’s about to start the PhD program in Industrial Engineering.