The Mitchell Conference is hosted every year at Texas A&M, with the stated goal of bringing together experimentalists working on different frontiers and pheno/theory folks to discuss recent developments on dark matter, standard model, and neutrino physics. This goal seems to be quite successful, as many participants shared work that had begun from discussions at the same conference in year past. Even this time, it proved to be a great experience to see what directions the field was taking, which results were exciting and to who, and what the challenges were. I was happy to have been invited to give a talk on Dark Matter and Dark Sectors at the LHC, which gave me the opportunity for the first time to systematically survey the field, read as many papers as I could, study the ideas and techniques that have been attempted, the limitations we have encountered, and form for myself a picture of the history, present, and future of our quest for new physics at colliders, and beyond.
Thankfully, it wasn’t *all* work. A trip to a local observatory was organized one of the nights, where we got the chance to observe star clusters and nebulae, and a wonderful homemade Texan BBQ was served to us, overlooking the pastures east of College Station.
