The three 2012 General Assembly photo competition winners are:
1st Prize (214 votes): Melt Stream, Greenland by Ian Joughin, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
2nd Prize (142 votes): Burst by Melissa Bukovsky, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
3rd Prize (135 votes): Icy Landscape by Lucien von Gunten, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
The selection committee received close to 300 photos for this year’s EGU Photo Competition, in most areas covered by Union’s activities. The ten stunning finalist photos are below. Do you have a favourite? Vote for it! The photos are exhibited in Hall X (basement, Blue Level) of the Austria Center Vienna, where you will also find voting terminals. The results will be announced on Friday 27 April during the lunch break.
Water or new iridescent fluid? by Alessandro Arato, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
Burst, by Melissa Bukovsky, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
Nacreous clouds in Husavik, by Sigurjon Jonsson, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
Icy landscape by Lucien von Gunten, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
Terraced rice field, Yunnan, China by Samiksha Volvaiker, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
Russell Fjord (detail) by Jean-Daniel Champagnac, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
The beauty of ice by Romain Schläppy, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
Nevada landscape near Las Vegas by Norbert Krupp, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
Melt stream, Greenland by Ian Joughin, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
Flat in the mountains by Olivier Galland, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
If you cannot make it to Vienna this year, you can still watch Union Medal Lectures (ML0–ML3), the two Great Debates, and all press conferences at the 2012 General Assembly live on the conference website. To watch a session, simply click on the link that appears next to its entry on the full webstreaming schedule available here. Videos will also be available on demand after the Assembly. If you’d like to watch past year’s sessions, you can do so via the EGU TV website.
If you are a journalist or a freelance writer interested in watching press conferences via webstreaming, you may ask questions to panelists using Skype. For more information, please check the Webstreaming page on the EGU 2012 Media portal.
This year’s General Assembly features a special photo exhibition documenting the devastation left behind by last year’s earthquake and tsunami off the coast of Japan. “A Catfish Sleeps – Tohoku, photographs in Japan 2009-2011: before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake” shows how, in only a few days, entire communities and landscapes were swept away as seawater enveloped parts of Japan’s eastern coastline. The exhibition will take place from Monday to Friday in the Blue Level (basement) of the Austria Center Vienna, near Rooms 10 and 11. Make sure you don’t miss the talk by Stephen Vaughan, the photographer, on Wednesday at 17:30-19:00 in Room 11!
Kuwagasaki, Miyako, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, 2011 by Stephen Vaughan. This photo is part of the collection 'A Catfish Sleeps'.
The Austria Center Vienna (ACV), the Assembly venue, is located centrally and can easily be reached from the airport and central train station.
The ACV is located next to the Kaisermühlen/Vienna Int. Centre metro station
The ACV is located next to the Kaisermühlen/Vienna Int. Centre metro station (U1 line, direction Leopoldau from the city centre). Wiener Linien, Vienna’s public transport agency, provides a travel planner on their website, including information about getting to the city centre from the airport by train.
A regular bus service also connects the airport with the city – bus 1183 (stop 4, Wien Kaisermühlen VIC – Wagramer Straße) stops just outside the ACV.
Further travel information – including about where to find taxis at the airport – can also be found on the airport’s website. Additional information about Vienna’s public transportation system, including about fares and how to buy tickets, can be found here.
The General Assembly can be an excellent source of information for those of you looking for jobs or doctoral positions. Apart from the regularly updated online job postings, the Jobs & Education Market (Hall X, basement) provides a forum for young scientists to meet and chat with potential employers, and to get informed about available positions posted on the nearby notice boards.
The Jobs & Education Market area will also play host to a variety of presentations on work and study related topics.
Further, the EGU website has a newly launched jobs portal, which you may browse for jobs or doctoral positions. Employers may submit their job announcements free of charge here.
Panoramic view of the Austria Vienna Centre (source: Wikimedia)
Will this be your first time at an EGU General Assembly? With over 10,000 participants in a massive venue, the GA can be a confusing and, at times, overwhelming place. To help you find your way, Jennifer Holden, former EGU Science Communications Fellow and a regular attendee of the meeting, prepared an introductory handbook filled with history, useful presentation pointers, and tips about Vienna and its surroundings. Download it from here!
Empty poster hall at the EGU General Assembly.
Oral Presentations
The guidelines for oral presentations are online. The link also specifies the equipment available in each room (laptop, beamer, microphone, laser pointer, ability to hook up your own laptop, etc.). Oral presentations this year are in four 90-minute time blocks, with each talk being about 12 minutes long with 3 minutes for questions. Please be in the presentation room approximately 30 minutes before your time block starts, so your presentation can be uploaded to the provided laptop or so you can connect your laptop to the system.
Austria Center Vienna by night during last year's General Assembly
Posters
Guidelines for poster presentations are also online. Importantly, the required dimensions of poster boards are 197 cm x 100 cm (landscape). Posters should be hung between 08:00 and 08:30 in the morning using tape available from roaming student assistants. By the start of the Assembly, EGU will have sent your poster location (e.g. XY0439) by email. Locations are also listed online in the programme. You can find the exact location of your poster using the online floor plans. At the end of each day, the student assistants will carefully remove posters and place them in storage bins in the poster halls, labeled by day.
The Authors in Attendance Time will also have been sent to you. Note that some sessions may have a poster walk-through (in some cases this will be noted in the session details), where authors are asked to summarise their poster with other members of their session in attendance. Other sessions will comprise scheduled poster summaries and discussion.
A list of the equipment in PSD (Poster Summaries & Discussions) rooms is on the EGU GA website, as are guidelines for converners.
Time Blocks
Timetabling at the General Assembly is in four time blocks as follows:
TB1 08:30–10:00
TB2 10:30–12:00
TB3 13:30–15:00
TB4 15:30–17:00
There is free tea and coffee available in the poster halls in the breaks between TB1 & TB2 and TB3 & TB4.
No-shows
Including your abstract in the conference programme obliges you, or one of your co-authors, to present your contribution at the time and in the mode indicated. If you already know that your oral will not be presented, you are kindly requested to withdraw your corresponding abstract as soon as possible.
How to get to Vienna and things to do when you’re there.
Travel
Vienna’s International Airport is served by many of the major European airlines. If you are considering overland transport, see the bottom of the Transportation page on the EGU General Assembly 2012 website.
Accommodation
The best place to start looking for accommodation in Vienna is the Accommodation page of the EGU GA 2012 website. From there, you’ll be able to book hotel rooms through the Mondial Hotel Reservation Home Page. You will also find links to websites, such as http://www.jugendherberge.at or http://www.hostel.com, were you can book budget accommodation.
For apartment bookings, you can either use the websites listed in the Accommodation page, including http://www.apartmentnetzwerk.at and http://www.viennacityflats.at, or you can search on http://bedandbreakfast.de or Airbnb. Note that in the latter option, you would be booking an apartment, house, or room in a private accommodation.
Vienna from the Danube River (source: Wikimedia)
Things to do in Vienna
The Vienna Tourist Board has information about sightseeing, shows, shopping, dining and other information about the city, while the Tour My Country webpage for Austria has a comprehensive list of the museums and other tourist attractions. For more on Vienna, please check the Arrivals Hall of Vienna’s International Airport or the Tourist Information Centre (Vienna 1) at Albertinaplatz / Maysedergasse, behind the Vienna State Opera (open daily 9:00 am – 7:00 pm). Brochures can be ordered in advance from your local Austrian Tourist Office.
If you have good ideas for things to do while in Vienna, please feel free to suggest them in the comments.
The EGU General Assembly 2012 programme is available here.
The scientific programme of the General Assembly 2012 includes Union Symposia, Interdivision Sessions, Educational and Outreach Symposia, as well as oral and poster sessions on disciplinary and interdisciplinary topics covering the full spectrum of the geosciences and the space and planetary sciences. Furthermore, Keynote and Medal Lectures, Great Debates in the Geosciences,Short Courses, Townhall Meetings, and Splinter Meetings complete the overall programme.
Since 2005, the General Assembly has taken place in Vienna (source: Wikimedia)
There are different approaches to access the programme in your preferred way:
We look forward to seeing you in Vienna for the General Assembly 22-27 April 2012!
