THE 2003 OBERWOLFACH MEETINGS ON COMPLEXITY THEORY
LACONIC and PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS OF ODED GOLDREICH

The move (from the fall) to late spring was very much
to my personal dislike, but everybody else seemed very
happy about it. Another thing that annoyed me personally
was the renovation of the building that took place during
the meeting -- blocking the view from the rooms
(which was already diminished in glory by the year's period). 

As for the technical contents, according to my recall, 
the highlights of the meeting included
-- Adi Akavia's presentation of the AKS's algorithm, 
   which establishes Primes in P 
   (settling a famous "Oberwolfach bet" dating to the 1970's).
-- Boaz's talk on "going beyond the black-box barrier"
   (i.e., using non-BB techniques in Cryptography).
-- Irit's presentation of an improved VC hardness result (1.36 factor).
-- Luca's talk on worst-case vs average-case for NP.
-- Talks on Locally Testable Codes (LTC) by me and Avi.
And still (see 2000 meeting) there was much interest in randomness extractors
(see talks of Ronen, Chris, and Avi).

[written: May 2006]