A couple of weeks ago, two former colleagues and dear friends, who I had not seen in several years, blew through San Diego for a short conference visit: Dr. Kenji Itoh, formerly of Mitsubishi and now of Kanazawa Institute of Technology, and Dr. Larry Larson, formerly of IBM and now inaugural Dean of the new School of Engineering at my alma mater, Brown University. They were both so busy, I managed to only have a quick bite with them separately and on the fly. We three pledged to get together again at IMS in Phoenix where we would finally have a chance to catch up over the course of the conference. I have not been to IMS for a couple of years. Time, money, circumstance… life has a way of intervening in the best laid plans of mice and men. But the occasion of seeing my two dear colleagues again resurrected all the reasons I need to get myself together to attend the conference once again. There are soooo many good reasons to do this and so few reasons not to, that even the irony of Jimmy Fallon’s Pros and Cons cannot dissuade me from doing so this year.
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