For those of you who maybe attending the General Assembly for the first time, you may be wondering what it’s like from a participant’s point of view. The short piece below gives one person’s views of attending the General Assembly in 2010.
I attended EGU last year for the first time. When I arrived there the feeling was just ”WOW!”. EGU General Assembly is such a huge conference!
The first day I had to adjust to the mass of lectures and posters, to select which session to attend. But after that it was just so interesting! So many different topics, so many scientists from all over the world!
I took the opportunity to listen to lectures given on volcanoes, freak waves and on contamination of the atmosphere (just a few examples). I really liked the poster sessions. Hundreds of different research projects displayed together. There was the chance to talk to the scientists and to get information on how they did their research.
I had a poster of my own to present. At the beginning of the session I was a little nervous: would people be interested in what I did? Would they think that my work was good? Or would they just walk by and ignore me?
But when the first person stopped and started to ask me about my project, such an interesting discussion came up and it is fascinating how an outsider sees things one does not see himself/herself. I was asked many questions and I stopped feeling self-conscious. That was a great help to me. And I have to admit that I was a little bit proud to present my research in such an environment, such a big conference! This was definitely a great experience to me.
Höpke Andresen is just finishing her PhD at the Institute for Earth Sciences at the University of Heidelberg. Her research looks into heavy metals in river sediments.
