September has arrived. The Hydrological Sciences (HS) community has been very active, as usual, submitting 152 sessions during the open session call, which is more than 10% of all sessions that are proposed for the entire EGU (overall 1,273 sessions were submitted, slightly more than at EGU24). This is amazing and I would like to thank all the conveners for their excellent ideas and nice work so far.
So what is happening next? The 152 sessions have been submitted but the session programme is not ready yet. These days, all Programme Group (PG) chairs (I am the one for HS) and sub-PG chairs (the Science Officers) are checking all proposed EGU sessions to assess their pertinence, suggest improvements to the conveners, adjust the sessions’ sequence, and check the diversity of the convener teams.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
As you certainly know, we strongly encourage Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), in particular also at the conveners’ level. For the attribution of the EDI logo, the system automatically checks existing profile information provided by the individuals serving as conveners (gender, career stage, and origin). If all conveners of a session have provided this profile data, the EDI logo can be assigned automatically. If not, the PG and sub-PG chairs attribute the EDI logo manually (which sometimes may not be super accurate). Please check your profile if you are a convener!
Session merging & cooperation
At this stage, PG and sub-PG chairs may ask conveners of similar sessions to merge their sessions. The merging is a delicate but important aspect. Of course all conveners want to run their proposed session. However, the conference centre (over the course of 5 days) has not enough space for all proposed sessions (around 100 for HS), and, in addition, having too similar sessions in the programme can be confusing for authors when they are submitting their abstracts. An early merging (i.e. now) makes things easier than after abstract submission.
And this isn’t all. Now is also the time in which we initiate cooperation with other Programme Groups, by selecting session co-organizations. Same thing for the co-organization of Short Courses (SC) that may be of interest to hydrologists. For sessions submitted to the Inter- and Transdisciplinary Sessions (ITS) programme with Hydrological Sciences as proposed scientific main division, the PG chair decides together with the ITS Chair on the eligibility of such proposals.
As you can see, there is still a lot to do and we will be working to finalize the session programme by October 9th. Then, the call-for-abstracts will start on October 23rd. I will write to you then for sure 🙂
