Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend the
European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2014 which was held in the beautiful city of Vienna, Austria. For those of you who are not entirely familiar with the meeting, it is one of the biggest annual gathering of geoscientists in Europe. These scientists come together every year to discuss the latest research in their respective fields, which includes everything from the understanding the dynamics of the core, to behaviour of the Earth's atmosphere, and beyond. How big is it you may ask? It's big, really big. Over the course of 5 days, 568 sessions were attended by 12,437 researchers from 106 countries, 4892 presentations were watched, 9538 posters were scrutinised, and 483
PICOs were played with on giant touchscreens. Of course, this pales in comparison with the annual
American Geosciences Union Fall meeting which clocked in over 22,000 attendees last December. However, considering the fact the largest conference I had been to before last week had just over 200 people, EGU was still a humongous step-up in scale for me!
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| The view of the entrance to the Austria Centre Vienna, where the EGU General Assembly is held every year. |
So what did I make of the whole experience? If I was to sum it up in a few words it would be this: tiring, yet somewhat energizing. Spending five days inside a gigantic building watching seemingly endless presentations and walking around never-ending corridors of posters was a lot more tiring than I thought, I certainly slept through most of the bumpy flight out of Vienna! Multiple cups of coffee certainly helped me get through each day. However, at the end of the week I still felt energized by the whole experience. Mostly because I had witnessed some of the best research that geosciences in Europe and further had to offer, some of which could become hugely important in the future. This included the
latest from the
Met Office on their efforts to model a future
Laki-style eruption which could have
very serious effects across the northern hemisphere. For me, seeing how other researchers are going about solving their problems certainly inspired me to consider the importance of my own project and give me new ideas that I will use in the near-future.
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| Presenting my giant poster on my latest results from Mt St Helens and Mt Unzen. If you would like a copy, feel free to ask! |
One of the best aspects of the whole experience was the chance to see old friends, as well as meet new ones. Before the conference began I was told that if I see someone I know, that would the best time to speak to them as the chances are you will not see them again for the rest of the week. That little piece of advice was definitely appreciated and it was great to catch up with friends I had not seen for a while. When you're sharing a building with 12,000 other geoscientists it would be hard to not meet new friends, and that is inevitably what happened. Overall, EGU 2014 was a fantastic experience and I would heartily recommend it to other new PhD students. Fingers crossed I will be able to come to EGU 2015 and meet everyone again!
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