i am not the only one who thinks they should change their name, although i am pretty sure international federation for applied computing doesn´t help.

what should someone do who has to deal with 2000 presentations in five days? get some coffee and a little bit of sun. super mechanic systems, underwater vehicles, train/airplane/ship control - you name it - , non linear dynamic systems are simply things you can´t sell media these days anyhow.

one session was called future directions of automatic control but what they meant by this was: ok, where can we get our next research funded. that - by its own - is fine with me, but if it is followed by the line: i looked up what the futurists are telling us, than it sucks. (quote by michael masten - also sitting in the financial committee of ieee and now got elected to be president - or something like that - of ifac. i forgot the right term and i can´t find it on their webpage). in my opinion there was just one person in the room who asked the right question: don´t you think the question here should be: what would be really, really challenging? (george w. irwin) that´s the guy i am looking forward to have coffee with.