The preparation for the first program meeting that occurs in mid-to-late October was quite straightforward. You just make sure that you advertise the meeting broadly. I had agreed with two separate conveners at the Joint AGU-EGS Meeting in Nice during April that they should propose sessions. For the October meeting we had about 13 proposed sessions. Of these, 3 others I helped stimulate ideas for. One on Time-Variable Gravity and GRACE, another on Global Plate Motions, and another related Chandler Wobble Physics to Attenuation Mechanisms. The later was proposed, but was an abysmal failure. The former two were quite successful, the first being turned into a Union session in the end. For the October meeting we had a total of 12 proposed Geodesy sessions. So about 7 of the 12 were proposed without any independent discussions. At the October meeting one session fell by the wayside, as it was too close to the topics of another two. Other wise all proposed sessions went ahead (including the failed Chandler Wobble session - it was doomed by a Chandler wobble workshop held in April in Luxembourg!).

The work load for preparing for the October Meeting was very light, and consisted of aiding Proposers in selecting Co-conveners, letting them know of other proposals. This really amounted to no more than about 20 e-mails a week (maximum) during preparation for the October Meeting at AGU HQ. I would also add that Jeanne Sauber (Geodesy Committee for the Joint AGU-EGS) was extremely helpful in providing "heads up" a number of issues, like the very poor numbers that Geodesy was showing at the Spring Meeting.

Between the end of the October HQ Meeting and date of advertising the sessions (just before the Fall Meeting), the amount of work dropped significantly, down to responding to one or two e-mails per day, if that. The Conveners have to be working at finding invited speakers, advertising the session, and polishing up their session descriptions.

February 9th was the deadline for Program Committee members to approve invited speakers and February 19th was the deadline for Abstract Submissions. Between these two dates the work starts to ramp up (almost from nothing between Jan. 1 and Feb. 9.) A lot of e-mails will be questions about rules, poster vs. oral, time allotted to invited speakers, that kind of thing. You may also get requests for preferred time slotting - like MUST be in the first two days of the meeting - or, MUST be in the last two days of the meeting. (I actually got these two requests earlier on -and they are deadly as far as having flexibility for trading times/rooms at the March "big" meeting where the schedule is finalized.) I strongly recommend that you respond to time slotting requests with "Your request is noted and will be taken under consideration". Between Feb. 12 and 19 there was a lot of e-mail, characterized more by the importance of certain correspondences that by sheer volume, although some days could be as high as 20 e-mails. At this point, we had about 12 sessions, with one being negotiated into a Union session. The later absorbed a lot of time, as we had a failed proposal for Union Session by one of the overall Meeting Chairpersons (not Scott) involving geodesy, so much effort was exhausted on something that just was not meant to be! Another lesson learned.

Plan on getting your own abstract in early, since there will be considerable demand on your time in the days leading up to the abstract deadline date.

After the deadline date, the level of e-mails with conveners stays pretty steady, and you have to make some tough decisions about the viability of weakly performing sessions - for example I had one Antarctic Geodesy session that we nicely worked into a PGR-ice related session. I recall they had 5-6 papers. The ones that have 6-10, can be the tough ones. In Montreal we had the luxury of having abundant rooms for oral presentations, so everything worked out. You will spend some time explaining how the session scheduler works. The online scheduler is really nice! You may want to cherry pick some tectonics and even seismology sessions early - for the Spring Meeting tectonics is really marginal, and a stark contrast to the numbers for the Fall Meeting. My records show 111 geodesy papers (not counting Union) going into the March 10-12 2004 Meeting at AGU HQ. So scale work activity - up or down appropriately. There is a fair amount of attention that has to be paid to both instructions coming from AGU HQ and questions that only you can answer for conveners. So between Abstract Deadline and the 'big' HQ meeting that finalizes the schedule, don't plan on a field trip to some remote island in the Philippines that has no internet connections (Tim knows what I refer to) during this period..., or at least make very careful provisions for it, as AGU will really be getting the work out of you at this time. After the 'big' meeting, things are pretty much done.

Erik Ivins
2004 Joint Assembly (CGU, AGU, SEG and EEGS)
Program Committee Member