NERD

The NumFOCUS Project Summit began with breakfast at 08:00, saving me paying something like $25 to eat at the hotel. The event is taking place at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center, usually abbreviated to the Microsoft NERD Centre. 

Being relatively new to the global open-source scientific software community, I know next to no-one here. Since I don't do the "Hey! What do you do that I'm not interested in" small talk, I felt a bit self-conscious in a room in which most people were engaged in intense discussion. 

However, I spoke to the boss of NumFOCUS, who was very well aware of JuMP - the project I'm formally representing - and HiGHS. This was consistent with what I'd been told by my Kiwi collaborator, who said that JuMP is one of the most lucrative of the 60 projects that use NumFOCUS to handle their finances. 

As well as the presentation about NumFOCUS itself, there were some interesting "lightning talks" by other open-source projects. 

Lunch was barely acceptable, and this afternoon there are more talks about NumFOCUS and their ideas for future activities.

One interesting facet of the meeting is that 90% of the NumFOCUS staff are female, and 90% if the attendees are male