Along with lawyers, policy wonks and consultants, the room was packed with seasoned old coppers eagerly discussing "comparative assessment tools", "turning data into insight" and "mainstreaming".
They take lots of complicated and sometimes conflicting information, then using data and insight, they find ways to communicate this in a simple, accessible, impactful and creative way.
And it seemed very fitting to talk about big data, insight acceleration and real time analytics in the very place where mass and speed of light got combined for posterity, more than a century ago.