CTO-Meeting

Already two days before the Congress, many of us were hunted by questions: „What shall I wear?“, „Who am I?“, „Will there be alcohol for free?“, „How shall I behave?“, „What kind of food will be served?“ or „Are bad business cards better than none at all?“
On Friday we met at 8:30 AM in front of the dorm, in order to be at the Westin Chosun Hotel on time. After arrival we had to fill out a form and based on the given information there, a name card was printed for all of us. After that we attended the opening ceremony in a dining hall, where all chairs had been covered white sheaths. Some suspected rather less aesthetic reasons for that, but we wont go into details here.
The ceremony started at 10:30 AM and was followed by so-called „Key lectures“, which lasted 30 minutes each. The speeches were all about the goals of this CTO-Forum and were translated, so we could even understand the Korean speakers. Finally at 12 o’clock we had lunch and because this was one of the few chances here to get a decent meal, we almost ate it off the dishes before it reached our table.
Then at 2 PM the lectures, held by company representatives and professors, took place and we attended many of them. This presentations lasted 10-15 minutes and were of rather changing quality and showed us, that even the big company chiefs make mistakes. Following each speech, the audience was allowed to ask questions. We took advantage of this chance, but not all questions have been answered as we expected it. This often was due to not finished research. Every 45 minutes coffee breaks took place, and we had the chance to look at poster presentations as well as one-to-one meetings with company representatives.
At 5:30 PM we all met in the dining room again, where Prof. Cho held a closing speech and offered a very nice buffet. Once again we ate too much and had lots of time to reflect the day at the table. We all agreed that this day has been a great experience and were really happy we had a chance the meet all this interesting people and have a glance at their work.
We ended the official part of the day in a small cafe at the beach, where Prof. Arlt invited us to a beer. Too bad he had to leave early, because he left Korea already early the next day. On the way home we stopped at Seomyeon to once again talk about the day and have a cocktail.

Rika Astin
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