I got to present our results on black hole shadows at the 15. Marcel Grossmann Meeting in Rome. This years meeting was very heavy on the physics side and little mathematical relativity. It was interesting to get an update on recent progresses in observations. It was evident on the theoretical side of the event, that the recent dramatic progress in observations, particularly towards the strong field regime of gravity, enables the test of modified theories. It seems to be the biggest fashion at the moment to modify gravity in any possible way, doing some basic checks and throwing it out as a new model (possibly fitting some observations here and there a little better). The interesting points I picked up:
[latexpage] When people talk about “raw data” it is in fact often highly contaminated by $\Lambda CDM$ and constructive gravity provides an interesting link between the dynamics of the matter models and the dynamics of the geometry it couples to.
On the down side there were some questionable talks admitted to the meeting, which I think is inappropriate for one of the flagship conferences of the field of gravitation.