LANET is a conference on the path to become the referent for network science in Latin America. These are some thoughts after participating in the second edition in Cartagena, Colombia:
The organizing committe did a good job with the general logistics. The venue was quite comfortable for most academic activities.
Transportation arrangements to and from the venue (located just outside the city of Cartagena) were adequate.
The lunch services gave us a nice taste of colombian food (arepas de huevo and carimañolas are awesome).
Adjustments to the program were needed since the road to the conference was closed one morning. This was adequately handled, although 1) it was very hard for me to figure out the schedule after that and 2) some sessions became too long in order to accommodate all presentations.
The international school was excellent, addressing topics of interest for both experienced network scientists and researchers who have joined the field more recently. Perhaps in the future the school could be split into fundamentals and advanced topics in order to cater to each demographic more adequately.
Some posters were placed far from the main traffic area, making them less visited.
As a network biologist, I really enjoyed the amount of biology and biomedicine works presented. Furthermore, I was quite happy with the fact that fundamental (as opposed to applied) network scientists participated in these sessions.
An area of improvement for future editions could be the implementation of a code of conduct. Most of the interactions throughout the conference were quite nice, but here and there some less than savory language and tones could be heard. I hope that as time goes by, we can make this conference most accommodating for all network scientists of the region.
