at a research meeting

I was invited to a research meeting at another institute today, and was very interested to see the social dynamics. One of the customs was for everone to make the rounds of those already arrived to shake their hands. The meeting also had coffee and tea waiting in thermos jugs, with real china cups and saucers, and also mineral water with real glasses.

The content of the meeting ran like any ordinary meeting in the US, with a few people speaking regularly, and some others only intermittently or not at all. Only two women were present, but this was a strongly computing-related topic so the numbers might not have been very different in the US.

Two men wore suits (I was one, only because I can't find my sewing kit to fix the button that fell off of my blue blazer), three others had on suit jackets. Only one tie was present (and not on one of the suit wearers -- we both had open shirts). All the other men were in jeans or other informal trousers, and wore polo or other open shirts.

The women naturally dressed somethwhat better. The younger woman (who has a prestigeous but time-limited "jounior professorship" ) wore a jacket and jeans, the other slightly older woman (mid thirties?) had a pretty scarf that she fiddled with constantly. The average age in the room was probably late 40s, early 50s.

Oddly enough the grant proposal they were working on was in English. I learned afterwards that it was in English because this particular competition involved such a broad range of German academics that none remained to give a impartial judgment, so the DFG (German Research Society) decided to require proposals to be in English to be able to attract outside reviewers.