Goodbye TRB 2014
Goodbye TRB #93. This book of TRBs has closed and a new edition begins next year at the convention center.
Goodbye (for me) to the 1/2″ thick conference program. I took one this year, but truthfully I never used it. The app is *that good*. I don’t plan on taking a book next year or beyond.
Goodbye to the Hilton staff, because even though many of us don’t care for the hotel itself, the staff has done lots to help us feel at home. We’ll miss y’all, but we won’t miss the uncomfortable chairs, limited free WiFi, or many other physical aspects of the hotel.
Goodbye to the %&$# hill on Connecticut Avenue. Many of us government employees are rejoicing that next year we will not be schlepping a rolling suitcase up that hill.
Goodbye to the Bier Baron. Well maybe. I’d be fine with going back as the service was better this year and, well, bacon lollipops! Hopefully @e-lo doesn’t call my beer selection “toxic” if we make it back next year.
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I have been thinking about three things lately, and these will be topics over the next few weeks:
Recap of TRBAM and Transportation Camp.
How to blog. I’ve been approached by a few people asking about starting a blog. I’m going to have a post describing my process, tools, etc.
Narrowing the Research-Practice gap. I have some ideas, and some things I’m going to put into practice here with the University of Cincinnati (whom we already have a great relationship with).
Model Testing. It is becoming increasingly important to ensure we are testing our models, and not just calibrating and validating. I have some new ideas that may expand what we test, even further than what TMIP will be coming out with later this year (that I am involved with)
Licensing of Government Code. I have the feeling that we need to revisit how we license code written by MPOs and DOTs as well as code purchased by the same (and to a degree, where do we draw the line between code as an executable and code as code?)
Open Presenting. I want to look into having presentations hosted on-line and accessible to anyone. This is because there was a projector problem in Transportation Camp that wouldn’t have been an issue except that the presentation was a ppt/pptx and it wasn’t online. Nearly everyone in the audience had a tablet or laptop, and I’m sure everyone had a smartphone.
Cell Phone Data. OKI purchased cell phone data from Airsage, and I will be posting about our processing of it, and I will also post about the Cell Phone Data Symposium at TRB in February.
Decision Trees. Among the things I learned a little bit about, this is one that I want to look more into.
I think that’s it. I had fun this year, and it was great to talk with old friends and make new friends, too.
Tags: transportation camp, trbam
