GSA Meeting Report 1

I arrived in Portland Friday night, which was a bit early, so I spent most of Saturday getting ready for the meeting: picking up my badge and free drink tokes for Sunday through Wednesday receptions, setting up my approximate meeting schedule, meeting and socializing with Kim Hannula and others near one of the Starbucks, and going to the GSA Awards reception, which had free wine, beer, and food after a series of great and moving awards.

Sunday was a day of many talks. The annual GSA meeting is a large meeting if you measure by the number of scientific talks given. On Sunday morning, 24 sessions of about 14 talks each were running simultaneously in 24 separate meeting rooms. That many sessions run simultaneously every morning and every afternoon (about 48 sessions per day not counting posters which change daily) for 4 days in a row. This gives me ample opportunity to want to be in more than two places at once, besides trying to squeeze in going to poster sessions and the exhibit hall. Sunday morning, I spent some time at the SEG talks on porphyry copper deposits and gold and copper transport in crustal fluids (1), and finding those somewhat dry, I bounced over to the detachment session (12), which was on the opposite side of the large Oregon Convention Center. There I learned about such things as 'mini-detachments' and graded sandy layers in fault zones. Then I bounced back to find out how soil samples reflect the West and East Pebble deposit at depth (well and hardly at all, respectively).

That was Sunday morning. For the afternoon, I decided to attend only one session, so stayed in the Google Earth to Geoblogs session (53), where several fellow geobloggers - and others - gave excellent and inspiring talks and demonstrations. I met several bloggers I hadn't met before, including Ron Schott, Jim Repka, Callan Bentley, and Lee Allison. I expect to meet several more, along with #geotweeters, tonight at a planned get-together.

Today, the morning seems slow to me as far as talks go. Yes, there are 24 sessions going on right now, and some very interesting talks scattered here and there through the convention center. I'm attending the exhibit hall and blogging, rather than going to morning talks. This afternoon, I get to choose between Volcanism, Impact, and Mass Extinctions (133), Geology in the National Parks (136), LIPs (138), and Virtual Globes to Geoblogs (144). I haven't yet decided!

The best part of meetings, though, is meeting people, which for me often involves seeing people I haven't seen in 10 to 20 years. If you stay in the talks all day long, you don't see anyone - wandering around the exhibits and posters and going to the evening socializing events is something I highly recommend.

I thought I'd show you a couple photos - of the convention center and exhibit hall - but I left my camera downloading cord over in the hotel.

I'll try to have another meeting update, but don't promise anything.