Overwelming week for AZGS at the AGU Fall Meeting

The Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union drew nearly 25,000 attendees to San Francisco, which made it an major forum for AZGS projects.

The weekend prior to the regular meeting, we hosted the Steering Committee of the Belmont Forum e-Infrastructure project for a 2-day workshop on the strategic plan and recommendations to science funding agencies of 13 countries and the European Union.  We had 25+ participants from a dozen countries join us in one of the converted buildings from the old Ft. Mason on the San Francisco waterfront [top right].   Members of the U.S. delegation to the Belmont Forum joined us for lunch on Monday for a briefing and to review plans for preparing the final report.

AZGS staffed two booths in the Exhibit Hall as part of outreach elements for the Belmont Forum and EarthCube projects.   We also organized and hosted town hall meetings for those projects [right, EarthCube town hall].  The newly-elected EarthCube Demonstration Governance Leadership Council met for the first time, under the auspices of the NSF-funded AZGS project.

AZGS staff were lead authors on 3 technical posters - EarthCube, National Geothermal Data System, USGIN open data solutions - one talk on Belmont Forum, and co-authors on multiple other presentations, including OneGeology, and EarthCube building blocks.

I also had the honor of serving on a Union Session "Great Debate on Open Data" with three others.   It was an experimental format that seemed to go over well and the organizers expect to do more sessions like this next year. 

The International Geological Sample Numbering system (IGSN) celebrated its 10th anniversary at the meeting, with a board meeting and town hall.  AZGS is one of the founding members of the formal non-profit corporation and is authorized to issue numbering systems to U.S. entities.

With all those folks at the meeting, we had nearly non-stop conversations with colleagues and partners about ongoing and potentially new projects.