I have been writing madly while cruising at 40,000 some feet on my way back to New York. The entire midwest is clear and I can see towns and cities laid out from horizon to horizon, orange grids and cloudy distant nebula sprinkled in the pitch black under the stars.

After my last post during the ISDC I was too deep into sleep deprivation and too swamped with work to attempt coherent discourse. Other than meals I hardly saw any of the other sessions. I did at least get in much late night party time with old and new friends from various rocket companies and organizations. Despite or perhaps because of our large numbers in the hotel, our somewhat noisy parties kept getting shut down. The volume level of a large number of engineers, activists and artists packed into a suite discussing their life's passion, when mixed with copious alcohol, is impressive. This led to a series of 'floating parties', moving goodies from one part of the hotel to another to stay one step ahead of the security staff. The only ones who got mildly burned was one of the small rocket companies which had $500 of refreshments impounded over night. That is another story, of the sort best held for late night hanger talk -- "Do you remember the time?" -- amongst the insiders. All in all it was great fun.

Now for the news on this and future ISDC's. The LA conference this year, the 25th ISDC, broke all records. We had over 1300 warm bodies at the event, a number which comfortably exceeds what we believe to have been the previous largest attendence. The profitability of the event was.... pleasing ;-)

I am currently shepherding teams for several future years. Next year the ISDC is in the Dallas - Fort Worth area. If the organization of their party this year is any example, it will be well organized and a great deal of fun, Texas style.

The board approved a bid from a DC team for 2008. We had a couple pre-bid year parties thrown by the Australian led Canadian Toronto in 2009 team. They go through the bid and approval process next year. I also now have potential team leaders considering bids for 2010.

It was an altogether great experience. I will now and over the ensuing weeks pass on more about it.