Toronto for the Medicine 2.0 conference

I've now arrived in Toronto for the Medicine 2.0 conference. The flight was long & as work had booked me a cheap flight it came into Hamilton International rather than the local Pearson Airport, which meant bus rides - which was OK, but the fact that it was a bank holiday in Canada meant that some trains etc were not running.

First impressions from the air were of a massive country with lots of lakes and very straight roads - but green and pleasant, as they have had lots of rain this summer. The people seem very relaxed and friendly - thanks to 2 ladies I met on the transfer bus who gave me an introduction to places to see and go.

Today I'm seem to be recovering from the jet lag - we shall see if I sleep this evening - and have had a wander around the city, including the harbourside, Distillery historic district, and St Lawrence Market.I've also booked myself a trip to Niagra Falls tomorrow before the conference gets going.

I'm not quite sure what to expect from the conference - the very nature of the innovative technologies may have attracted a different crowd from the usual academic conference and the papers listed in the proceedings look interesting. I'm hoping that there will be a real buzz around the potential applications and lots of new ideas and contacts being generated - we shall see.

I will be posting my impressions here and others, including Peter Murray will be posting at hi-blogs.info. If there is an official conference blog I will link to this later. There has been a dedicated social networking site using crowdvine, for conference participants, but I think anyone is welcome to contribute.

On a final note I've written this entry & done the links etc using Google's Beta release of its browser Chrome - which all seems to be working well so far. I'm also playing with a new camera on this trip.