IWEPNM 2013 Survey: Results

Below please find the results of the survey we conducted after the last Kirchberg Winterschool in a continuing effort to improve the scientific and overall quality of IWEPNM.

Christian Thomsen (for the organizers)

Comments

Comments:
Apart from internet service, overall it was good experience. I am looking forward to it next year.
As usual: the most productive and communicative conference. Great fun, totally enjoyable, exciting science, fantastic conversations, right balance of scientific program and miniworkshops... etc! Congratulations to the excellent organisation and great thanks for doing it!
Continue as up to now, keep familiar atmosphere, the "real" mini workshop was a good idea, the triangle science-innovation-commercialisation could be continued, the balance between theory and applications was well established, unfortunately 2 interesting speakers could not come. Best regards
Excellent choice for my first ever conference. I'm hopeful that I'll get to go again.
For a winterschool, more tutorials would be appropriate.
For the hotel service: I wish they had water boilers in the rooms, it is not expensive but increases quality of living for me enormously as I like to make tea and what they prepare in the bar using warm water from the tap (yes, not boiled!) is not drinkable. The workshop itself is perfect!Thanks to organizers...
I enjoyed IWEPNM 2013 very much and strongly encourage my students and co-workers to submit their studies to the next IWEPNM.
i suggest to randomize the order of the posters, otherwise sirnames with Z/A will always be in the corner
I thoroughly enjoyed the winter school, and would very much like to congratulate the entire organizing team on doing a tremendous job. The only thing aside the internet that warrants improvement is the ready supply of drinking water - would it be possible to put up a water cooler in the lobby? I also heard people complain about the waiting staff attire, and would like to state that I do not subscribe to this criticism. Everyone looked completely fine to me.
I would suggest to slightly diversify the content of contributions. Concentration on (almost) one subject with (almost) one characterization technique was dominating. The talks should also be more general taking into account that there are both chemists and physicists in the audience which not necessarily are familiar with a very narrow, sometimes, scope of presentation.
In this year the number of papers concerning of the areas adjacent to nanocarbon was increased. It is necessary to continue expanding the conference topics'
It was a bit loud in the bar (espresso machine, side talks). Internet was working only in the hall. I was really impressed with the attention to poster sessions. Generally, I've never seen anything like that at conferences and workshops. I started to learn skiing after the Workshop. Hopefully, next time I will be able to enjoy "mini-workshops".
It was a pleasure to return to IWEPNM. The mix between high scientific standards and very friendly atmosphere is quite unique. Stephane Berciaud
It was an excelent and fruitful conference !!! Thanks to the Organizers !
It was wonderfull, as usual!
IWEPNM 2013 was just an exceptional and exciting meeting as usual!'
Little bit more chemistry if possible! :)
Nice school - big thanks to the organizers! A lot of cooperation could arise from this year's event.
Notes: Q7: even though not a vegetarian myself, I found the optional vegetarian meals rather unsatisfying Q11: I must admit the internet connection has greatly improved compared to last years, however, there is still a plenty of room for further improvement - there was close to no signal in rooms in Sonnalp hotel further from the stairway
question 12: I agree that my hotel room was excellent, still it was not very exciting to share double bed with someone
Question 7: The vegetarian menus were usually quite a bit smaller than the other menus, and not always enough (plus not always really vegetarian) Question 11: The internet was very slow, but OK Question 13: I didn't listen to any talks from the bar Thank you!
Scientific talks were great, food was great, and the hotel Rosengarten was phenomenal!
See you again next year!
Some criticism, apart from my overall very positive impression: the main lecture hall is very hot and too crowded, it is probably better to put in 10-20 % less seats, more people will go into the side-room then. Numerous chairmen did not keep the time which is mostly disturbing for people who want to go to the miniworkshops. Some loudspeakers, ring, bell etc. would be of advantage to signal the end of the coffee break. Otherwise the chairpersons had to clap or shout to the people to come back for the after-the-break session. The internet was still very slow although some improvement was experienced compared to previous years. I understand that it is hard to maintain an internet system in the hotel for a single week but internet access is important to the participants and the present situation was frustrating in many instants.
The internet eivironment was now very good (very slow).
The lecture hall was a bit too small for all of the participants, but the arrangement otherwise (the seats were higher at the back) was good. The internet was extremely slow at time to time which made working difficult. Othervise, thank you for vey nice and enjoyable winterschool!
The organizers should reconsider their policy of inviting some of the same speakers every year, regardless of their (lack of) recent exciting work. The projected image was considerably smaller than the screen for most of the time. Internet access was, as usual, horrible :)
The scientific content was excellent! In the second part of the Winter School I got a single room: this was splendid!
The sharing of bedrooms is really annoying. I wouldn't mind so much if there were two beds to a room, but sharing a 1,40m double bed with a stranger takes a lot of getting used to. Since many people where hosted outside Sonnalp, I don't see why the "single bed room" option should be impossible for more participants. The lecture hall was quite crowded at times.
The winterschool 2013 was very well organized and had a high scientific level.
There were too many chairs in the lecture hall. Some rows couldn't be occupied because there was no free space for legs.
truly excellent job, keep going strong
Unfortunately, I have not seen many people during the mini-workshop (skying), which was not the case several years ago. I miss discussions on the ski-lift, in the bus or even on the ski slope with people I meet for the first time during the conference. Maybe this is a consequence of the organizers being not active skying people? I also would appreciate if there could be a some kind of arrangement in terms of the shuttle transfer from Munich airport to Kirchberg. I spent 5 hours in the bus because not many people were going to Kirchberg and the bus was stopping at different locations incl. change from one bus to the other. And apparently, just one hour later, several people came together with the same company and they only spent 3 hours to Kirchberg.
Unfortunately, not all high-profile speakers stay for the whole duration of the school.
Vegetarian food options was not properly available on all days.
We have described the problems with Internet connection to our IT department. Their simple estimation is that the routers (wifi) are for home use only i.e. only limited max. 10 people are able to efficiently work on it. In case of hotel they recommend more expensive (3 times) but more stable devices which can withstand for example 70 people. As you can see one router only for 70 people even that it might theoretically be used for 250 people. Due to long term cooperation with the Hotel Sonnenalp this might be and investment which will be payed back. Thank you Stepan Potocky