Bubbles in the Bathtub

We are ahead of schedule on almost all counts. So far 693 people have registered, more than have registered this far in advance for any previous symposium. Of those 214, or about 30%, are students. Probably a pretty good proportion for any professional meeting.

The distribution of international representation is good as always. The US makes up most of the registered participants so far with 464, or 67%. The downside is that that is a lot higher than usual. While people have registered from 65 countries, the number two country on the list has only 21 representatives. Here's the top 12 (there's a four-way tie at the bottom).

USA: 464
Mexico: 21
Costa Rica: 20
United Kingdom: 17
Canada: 13
Australia: 10
Venezuela: 8
Portugal: 7
Guatemala: 6
India: 6
Italy: 6
Japan: 6

Come on folks, this is going to be a great symposium. Let's see more international participation!

The graph above is a great illustration of how many people wait until the last minute to register (and submit abstracts, and submit travel grant applications...). About one-third of the registrants so far registered in the last 24 hours before the initial pre-registration deadline. This is not usually a big deal, but a small number of people always run in to problems for one reason or another (they don't understand the process, they don't read the instructions, they have technical difficulties, etc). Imagine if the server went down on the deadline day? YIKES! In any case, the small number of people that need help all end up needing it at the same time, which makes for a busy few days for me.

For future reference, I would appreciate if more people would take care of business a little bit earlier, even if it's only a few days earlier :)