This is a report of my trip to the H+ Summit, June 12-13 2010 at the Harvard University Science Center in Cambridge, MA. The main purpose of this post is to avoid writing about uninteresting non-summit related parts of the trip in my posts about the summit itself. I felt the need to write about some of this, but didn’t want to clutter up the other posts.

We decided we’d take it easy this weekend, so we took the train rather than driving. It was a bit expensive but seemed entirely worth it. We also planned to stay at the Inn at Harvard, a 4-star hotel, though it was chosen primarily because it’s right across Harvard Yard from the Science Center.

I left my day job early on Friday so we could catch the train, leaving Christa at home to deal with all the preparations. She got the train tickets, packed everything we needed, and met me at work with just enough time to catch the early, cheap train… but she forgot her wallet. Fearful that we would be stuck in Boston (or on the train) without needed ID, we abandoned the train, traded up our tickets for the next train (costing an additional $40), and rushed home. We made it back just in time to see our new train leaving the station - we were crushed for a moment but then they actually stopped (for some technical reason) and let us on the train. And as it turns out, no one asked for ID the entire weekend, despite large angry letters on everything insisting ID is necessary.

The train ride was nice. Amtrack trains feel a lot like airplanes in terms of the design of their interior, and they seem a lot nicer/cleaner than Metro-North (to NYC). It had a cafe car, but I got around to trying to get a drink just as it was closing up; I hadn’t noticed we’d already arrived in Boston.

Since we arrived late, but hungry, we quickly shared a plate of Chinese food from the chain at South Station (Master Wok) and then went straight to Harvard Square on the subway. It was easy to get our bearings from our phones (Motorola Backflip). It turns out Boston is great for GPS - our phones were always spot on - in contrast to Manhattan, in which our phones were consistently about 4 blocks off in a random direction. It was a short walk to the hotel to get cleaned up, changed, and out to a late dinner. We decided on take-out Chinese at Yenching and ice cream at JP Licks. It’s great how Google Maps had every restaurant in the area clearly marked, so we didn’t even have to search - we just browsed the map to see what’s where.

Yenching was not very good, but it shouldn’t be surprising since a) we’re used to New Haven Chinese food, which has a very distinctive style that we like, and b) it seems to be more of an eat-in sort of place and we ordered take-out.

JP Licks is pretty cool - it’s a tiny ice cream shop. There were probably about 30 people in line when we got there. I had their pistachio ice cream, which is amongst the best I’ve had (gelato doesn’t count).

Walking around, I got the impression that we’d come home. Every conversation I overheard was about science, technology, or design. Two people stopped me to comment on my Helvetica shirt. Christa and I both decided at the same time that we’d like to live in Cambridge in the future if we can (though friends still want us to go to Silicon Valley instead).

We quickly retreated back to our hotel room in hopes of getting some sleep so we could get up early and do the registration thing at the summit. We nonetheless managed to sleep late so we had to skip breakfast and run out the door.

Registration was a breeze. As it turns out, I left my paperwork in our car back in CT, but they didn’t even ask for ID, they just gave me my badge. Apparently I managed to register Christa’s ticket under my name, so they had to hand-write her tag. The tags were very unimpressive; they could learn a lot from those who run anime conventions. Maybe the next H+ Summit can be sponsored by Funimation!

After the first few talks, we snuck out to Grafton Street for breakfast; they opened early for the World Cup and so we got in at 10, just as they opened. Christa had the Eggs Benedict, and I had an Irish Breakfast. It was rather good; I had been thinking a traditional English breakfast would be nice - a couple of sausages, some bacon, two eggs, grilled tomato, beans, toast, potatoes - and this was just that with the addition of some gross sausages called “bangers” - black and white. Altogether it was very good.

We arrived back just about in time for the lunch break, and decided to shoot the breeze for a bit till the lady talking about pets was done. I managed to hobnob a little at this point. I verified on this trip that it’s very difficult for me to do the proper sort of academic hobnobbing while I’m with Christa - she’s the person I’d rather talk to in all situations, so I’m not going to bother talking to anyone else if she’s around. I really must find a solution to this.

I’d previously planned a Less Wrong meetup during the Summit, supposing (correctly) that several people from Lw would likely be there. However, our early plan to meet at a bar was a bad one, since various sporting events would surely dominate the atmosphere. Conveniently, a really cool event called hplusbeer was going on after the day’s events at the summit, so I unilaterally decided to relocate there. However, Christa and I managed to once again have mass transit related troubles and so we didn’t make it at all. I fail at meetup.

Instead, we went over to Fire & Ice, an interesting Mongoligan Grill type of restaurant, kindof a fresh buffet. It had a weird, sticky, night club style of atmosphere, but it was interesting.

The next morning we managed to oversleep even worse. We left our bags at the hotel (they had no problem checking our bags till the evening even though we were checking out, and the staff was very helpful). We went to Au Bon Pain for breakfast, where I had a strange wasabi salmon bagel. It appeared to have cream cheese on it (despite that not being mentioned on the sign) which is a big no-no for me (aside from thining it’s gross, I’m lactose intolerant). But i have a rule about vacationing - I try to order the strangest thing on the menu, if I feel any aversion towards a food for its weirdness then I have to try it, and I can’t not eat the food because it’s weird. It’s an important rule, and I only get its effects by sticking to it without exception.

We then rushed across the Yard to the Summit, where thankfully they were a bit behind so we hadn’t missed as much as we thought we did. Aside from a brief lunch run to Qdoba Mexican Grill, we stayed in the main conference room the entire time, going between watching the speakers, looking up things they were talking about, and trash-talking on Twitter.

At the end of the conference, we ran off, got our bags, and headed straight for South Station, as we couldn’t afford to miss our train again. We walked around a little when we got there, and then parked and ate some more cheap Chinese food at Master Wok and some disturbingly similar food at Cajun Cajun. As it turns out, we caught our train home without incident and settled in to talk excitedly about Transhumanist topics for the next several days straight (interrupted by my having to work in the morning).