I am currently at the fifth Irsee conference on “Finite Geometry” which takes place in at the old monastery in the village of Irsee (Germany). The first day consisted mainly of talks on maximum distance rank codes, which is currently a hot topic in finite geometry. The plenary lecture on this topic, by Olga Polverino, was fantastic, and the contributed talks in the morning session continued the theme. One of the main themes was “John Sheekey” who could not attend, but was probably mentioned two-score times in the morning session. I even learnt of a new expression: the Sheekey connection. It has a ring to it! Some talks I expecially enjoyed were by Giuseppe Marino and Geertrui van de Voorde.
The afternoon session was on finite semifields, bent functions, and related objects. Then the late afternoon session was a bit more random, but I particularly enjoyed the talks by Sudhir Ghorpade and my close colleague Tomasz Popiel.
After a long of day of interesting talks and many many research meetings, I was exhausted. Four more days to go!
SymOmega 