Richard Carlson, president of Geochemical Society, and Naohiro Yoshida, president of Geochemical Society of Japan, signing MoU

Towards the end of the year, time always seems to fly by even more quickly than usual. Could it have been a week ago (on Dec. 11) that the ELSI booth at AGU had hosted a Memorandum of Understanding signing ceremony between the American, European, and Japanese geochemical societies' presidents? This event was organized by ELSI PI Naohiro Yoshida who is also the president of the Geochemical Society of Japan. I thank him for suggesting to host it at our booth as it brought a lot of attention and traffic to us.

Yoshida opened the ceremony by giving a short but wonderful speech explaining the intent behind the Memorandum of Understanding, of formalizing an already collaborative relationship between the three geochemical societies. He explained that the MoU was intentionally written in a broad way as to maximize cooperative and collaborative possibilities between the three societies for the shared goal of promoting scientific research in geochemistry. After which, first Yoshida and Richard Carlson of the Geochemical Society signed the MoU document, followed by Yoshida and Christopher Ballentine of the European Association of Geochemistry. When the signing and handshaking were done, we opened the two mini barrels of sake brought over from Japan by Yoshida to toast the event.

Carlson and Yoshida with signed MoU

We already had a crowd gathered by our booth beforehand but it is amazing what a little bit of sake will do to grow its size. Like wildlife instinctively getting a sense where food and water sources are, the ELSI booth became a watering hole for a group of people attracted to the festivities and the offer of a small cup of sake. At one point, we had a polite line of people waiting for their 80~100ml sip. The sake barrels which I left out on the booth table continued to be a source of attraction. People stopped by the booth curious about ELSI while, admittedly, eyeing the barrels. At 4pm when AGU started serving complimentary beers, I also decided to give out the left-over sake along with our other giveaway pens, keychains, and tote bags. As one person said, "Cool, I think you are the only people giving away alcohol!" I cannot say either way whether this person is a right candidate to the Research Scientist position that we were recruiting for but he left effusively promising to share the information on our institute.

I want to thank Naohiro Yoshida again for accomplishing so many things through that signing ceremony. Not only did he accomplish his immediate goal of establishing commitment for the three geochemical societies to work together, he also helped to promote ELSI's name and bring traffic to our booth where many people asked detailed questions about our institute.

Christopher Ballentine, president of European Association of Geochemistry, and Yoshida with signed MoU

Ballentine and Yoshida when announcing sake toast