The conference is at the City Center Marriott in Salt Lake City. We were essentially required to rent rooms here, due to the terms of the conference contract. No one complained, of course, because the grant pays for the whole thing anyway.
The hotel is very plush. The catering (breakfast, lunch, coffee, and an afternoon snack) is kind of astounding. The food is great, the variety is impressive, and the overabundance is almost disheartening. I hope they have something useful to do with the ridiculous amount of left-over food.
The hotel weight room is very nearly as well equipped as the ones at Harvard, and the conference-room internet access is fast enough not to choke entirely when the gymnasium-size room fills with programmers on laptops. The rooms, too, are beautiful, although they don’t seem to have net access, and the HD flat panel only has an analog feed.
So far, the city seems anonymous and dead. The smog, the 5-lane streets, the concrete plazas and dull architecture make me think of Stamford, or any other bland city. What really gets me, though, is the emptiness. Last night we walked to and from dinner, maybe half a mile, and saw the barest handful of pedestrians and cars. There were plenty of people in the restaurant (a nice enough fancy-pizza place), but somehow the city makes them disappear on the streets.
Of course, I was only out for one night. I could have a totally different view by Thursday.