Boy, Are My Arms Tired

I just flew back from the enormous International Studies Association annual meeting, which was held in Hawaii this year.

More travel horrors: I left for the airport at 11:15 am Saturday (that would be 4:15 pm ET) and arrived in Boston Sunday about 5:30 pm ET. Yech. Even with 11 hours of flying (5000 miles), that's a looooong trip.

The plane had mechanical difficulties in Hawaii, so I missed my connection in SF. United put me up in a hotel, which means that I slept for 5 hours instead of flying all night. Not too bad, though I lost a full day to travel.

On the networking front: For the first time, I had explicit blog conversations with other bloggers, some I knew fairly well from prior interactions, some I didn't know that well before. I didn't have a chance to talk to Dan Drezner, but we finally shook hands after various electronic interactions. I intended to have coffee with Henry Farrell of Crooked Timber, but that didn't come off.

On the plane home, I read "Web of Influence" by Dan and Henry. Check it out because it is interesting and the material will be on the exam.

Even the convention had its own blog. Indeed, I had an interesting conversation with a journal editor about doing a piece on the role of blogging in the profession. More on that later.