My first impressions of this meeting are not fantastic. On reading through the programme book I note that there are a lot of people doing what appears to be very similar work. I give my presentation – the first one in my session. The room is packed in a satisfactory manner but the questions afterwards are disappointing. Were they listening? Was I communicating?

The presentation from M. Lutolf was very good. He is making biomietic hydrogels exploiting the same cross-linking mechanisms found in fibrin gels but using modified PEG. This is interesting work but I feel it may not be practical for a real application.

I listen to Michael Gelinsky from Dresden and chat to him afterwards. I last saw him 2 years ago in Dresden – he now has a permanent position there.

In the afternoon I attend the biomechanics sessions and I am lucky because the first talk by Prendergast from Trinity College Dublin is excellent. I am left a little unconvinced by his arguments. He is using an algorithmic approach to model stem cell differentiation and subseqent cell population dynamics using a very simple rule based model. The results look good but I am unhappy with an approach that is so conciously devoid of mechanisms. I am also convinced that his bounary conditions impose constraints that he does not mention. I cannot formulate the appropriate question in time and I will have to track him down later.

The later papers are less interesting. In the early evening it is the posters. There are too many posters to see easily so I have a couple of beers with my students. This meeting is too big for comfort, 9 parallel sessions are spread out over a large congress site. Some rooms must be 200m distant – not convenient for session hopping.