The European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2018 took place in Vienna, Austria, from 8–13 April 2018 and brought together geoscientists from all over the world to one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences.
If you are an early career research, convening a session at the EGU General Assembly can seem intimidating, especially if you are a first-time convener. However, continued education and keeping up with academic trends is a key focus at EGU General Assembly. After a short discussion with Susanne Buiter — chair of the EGU Programme Committee — I had the opportunity of convening a session for the first time.
Initially, the session programme defined how the EGU General Assembly was organised. It consisted of sessions representing all programme groups of each Division. From there, a skeleton programme was created, based on the programme of previous years, so that each Division had a few sessions in it to kick things off. When the call for sessions was open – usually over the summer preceding the conference – I suggested a new session, by proposing a title, someone to co-convene the session and providing a session description. Once the call closed, the president of each Division evaluated the proposed sessions and decided if they should be included in the programme. They might also suggest modifications to skeleton sessions. Specifically, I indicated that I’d like my session to be co-organised with another Division. My request for a cross Division collaboration was accepted by all relevant chairs.
Meeting point at EGU
Overall, I was impressed by the fact that the EGU General Assembly continues to grow. In 2018, more than 15,000 scientists from over 100 countries participated in it. More than half of these were under the age of 35. But more importantly, the Geodynamic Division (GD) made an impact at the event not just through posters and presentations. There was ample evidence that the Division output continues to be held in very high regard by other scientists.
For me, convening a session at EGU was an important task in bringing people together for networking, starting new projects, and discussing new ideas. And I would like to continue to contribute to making that possible even in the future. The key ingredients are an idea for a session, a couple of co-conveners and a good session description.
The EGU General Assembly serves the geosciences community, through enabling networking, discussions and information sharing. Also, I believe that the meeting is very important for outreach and education as well, through short courses for examples, which are for all participants.
