The importance of conferences [From the Editor´s Bench]

Until I started helping edit the I&M magazine, I was not one to attend a conference unless it was either fairly local or located near someone with whom I was trying to collaborate. Because of the need to meet with my colleagues, I went to last year\´s I²MTC. While there, I gave a tutorial, presented a paper, worked with the then editor-in-chief of this magazine, Kim Fowler, to prepare for the changeover, and went to meetings of various committees connected to the magazine and the I&M society. As someone with a fulltime job from which I was "playing hooky," I was also busily working on projects connected to my job. As a parent who was missing his middle child\´s birthday, I was feeling guilty.