ELSI Blog
38 ELSI @ AGU
I am reporting from the ELSI booth at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, held over 9-13 December in San Francisco. Of course ELSI members have been participating in AGU for many years but this is the first time in which we have rented a booth for PR and recruitment purposes.
AGU is expected to be attended by more than 22,000 people over the five day period. There are too many sessions, too many talks for me to attempt to highlight but it is the biggest group of backpack and poster tube-carrying crowd that I have ever seen walking around a few city blocks. I found out that there will be approximately 2 miles in length of posters being presented in the 2500 poster board spaces daily!
The ELSI booth (#1314 in case you have the ability to stop by) is in the Exhibitor Hall D, one among the approximately 320 booths there. Although the "Academic Showcase" section is off to the side, I am very happy with the amount of attention and interest we have received in these two days. Part of the interest comes from being a newcomer, an unrecognized name. Part of it comes from the shiny red bottle-opener key chain printed with ELSI name that we were giving away (thank you Christine Houser for the idea, great pick!) Part of it is due to the word-of-mouth efforts of ELSI members sending people to the booth. And lastly, a part of it is undoubtably due to PI Naohiro Yoshida who stopped by many times to help promote ELSI and Tokyo Tech in his expert way. Tomorrow (Wed. 12:30 SF time) he has arranged a Memorandum of Understanding signing party at our booth , bringing together the presidents of Geochemical Society of Japan (Yoshida himself), Geochemical Society, and European Association of Chemistry.
Naohiro Yoshida and John Hernlund promoting ELSI
I must say that this is the best way to work, speaking for scientists as well as myself: to have fun while doing what you enjoy. I will be heading back to Tokyo tomorrow but Hanako Ricciardi will stay to promote and recruit. The following ELSI members -John Hernlund, Christine Houser, Jun Kimura, Joe Kirschvink, Shige Maruyama, Ken Takai, Renata Wentzcovitch, and Naohiro Yoshida should still be there for the rest of the week.
