The meeting this week makes me think back 5 years ago to when I attended the 93rd Annual Meeting of the AMS, which was also in Austin, TX. It was during my senior year of studies at Valparaiso University, right before I began my 2nd semester.
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| A meeting poster displayed at one of the entrance to the Convention Center in Austin |
I had been to meteorology conferences before, namely the Great Lakes Meteorology Conferences, sponsored by ValpU's AMS Chapter. These conferences brought in a number of great speakers discussing a variety of topics in the field about careers and latest research for the attendees, mostly ValpU meteorology students, but also a handful from Central Michigan University.
The AMS Meeting was the first time I had ever attended a larger conference for a professional organization. It was a valuable experience in helping acquaint me with what it's like to be a professional in meteorology, giving me a sense of where I was headed with all the efforts I had exerted to my studies in classes at school, not to mention all that a conference can offer. Certainly, the conference helped broaden my horizons, much as going to Texas for the first time did.
I arrived in Austin onboard Amtrak's Texas Eagle route on Friday, January 4. The next day, Saturday, I went to the Austin Convention Center for the first day of the Student Conference, which takes place before the main meeting starts.
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| Inside the conference |
It focuses on content relevant for students, including presentations on careers and graduate school, as well as a chance to mingle with professionals and fellow meteorology students. There were about 11 of us ValpU students there, and later, some of the meteorology staff came to the main conference as well. Two schools with the largest groups of students in attendance were Pennsylvania State University and the University of Oklahoma, with a total attendance at the conference of about 600 students.
One emphasis from the speakers at the conference using the conference as a way to meet people and make connections. When lunch came on Saturday, I decided to break away from the ValpU group and I randomly sat with some students from the University of North Carolina, and I enjoyed getting to know them.
The student conference had some presentations before the large group. In one memorable presentation, the speaker started by driving a force-body diagram, which made me immediately think back to physics class a couple of years before. He then talked about a criminal investigation in Indonesia, and the thought process used to uncover what happened. He then connected that to physics problems, to suggest a thought process we can use in our work.
There was also a point in the student conference when we went around to various rooms to hear from various professionals about the work they do. One person was a woman who served as a meteorologist for the state of Florida--she said that sometimes she was like the Governor's meteorologist because he signed her checks. I also met a great person named Mike Mogil, who worked for a time in the National Weather Service (NWS), and then started a consulting business, How the Weather Works.
There were panel discussions, too. At one point, we rotated around to different rooms to hear from panelists who worked in the different sectors of private firms, government agencies, and in the academic setting. There were also panel discussions before the whole conference group.
At the end of day one of the student conference, we had the chance to talk with graduate schools and meteorology employers at the career fair. There was also a poster session, and dinner of fajitas.
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| Poster for the ValpU-based AMS Chapter in the exhibit hall |
The student conference continued the next day on Sunday in the morning. It wrapped up right about noontime, after which I joined with some of my fellow ValpU for lunch at a nearby Tex-Mex place. Then, I went back to the room where we had been meeting to attend a special presentation on meteorology in the energy sector, which included a role-play scenario for determining energy usage given certain weather conditions.
Later that day was a town hall forum as a way to kickstart the conference, in a large ballroom space. It featured a conversation with oil businessman T. Boone Pickens, who shared about his life experiences. Notably, the person doing the interview decided to introduce us, the conference attendees, to Mr. Pickens.
The next morning, Monday, was the President's Town Hall Forum in the same ballroom space as before, which included some speakers on weather modeling. Before they spoke, a representative of the mayor of Austin came to offer an official welcome from the city to the conference attendees.
Later, in the evening, was a town hall forum with a panel on the Superstorm Sandy that had occurred in late October 2012. One focus in the discussions was on how to adequately communicate the situation to the public, which was unique with Sandy because right before it made landfall, it lost its tropical characteristics, becoming a general midlatitude cyclone system like most weather systems on land, but was unleashing destructive power just like when it was a hurricane. There were also some panelists who talked about how journalists and social media covered the Sandy storm, including Jason Samenow, weather journalist for The Washington Post. At the end, during Q&A, I went up to the microphone and asked a question that had been on my mind since I saw a NOVA program about Sandy the November before. I asked about the relationship between global warming and Sandy's destructive effects. One of the panelists--and I believe it was Dr. Louis Uccellini, gave an answer that seemed to cast doubt on a direct correlation.
Over the next couple of days, on Tuesday and Wednesday, I attended more presentations, which included public health response to extreme weather situations, like intense heat waves, and a series of presentations on notable extreme weather events. I had many to choose from, as I could tell from glancing at the conference program online as I planned out my schedule before going, and then as I glanced through the program book while there. Two of my professors spoke at a presentation on teaching meteorology at the college level, which I attended along with a couple of fellow students. It was interesting to hear my professors talk about how they teach, and how students respond, and then to hear questions from audience directed to us, which was a small group, since that presentation was broken into different sections of the room, each with its own speaker. I also attended a weather briefing by staff at the local NWS Office in New Braunfels, TX. Because they committed error in their forecast from the day before, they handed out candy to those in attendance.
I also spent time looking around at the exhibits. One really cool exhibit featured a globe projecting 3D data, not just about weather, but even a 24-hour display of flight patterns throughout the world (please see picture below).
The Doppler-on-Wheels was also present, with scientists who had participated in the VORTEX 2 study of severe storms and tornadoes in 2010. (This was my second time seeing the DOW--the first being at the Museum of Science and Industry during the opening weekend for the OMNIMAX film Tornado Alley, which focused on the VORTEX 2 project.)
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| One of the scientists got this picture of me by the DOW. |
I also took advantage of the opportunity to attend a meet and greet with the AMS President, who at the time was Dr. Louis Uccellini, then serving as the Director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, the government agency overseeing several computer weather models and other centers focused on forecasting specific areas related to flooding, tropical systems, and severe storms. I also met some other big names, including Rick Knabb, then director of the National Hurricane Center, and Russ Schneider, who is the director of the Storm Prediction Center. I also hob-knobbed with TV meteorologists, meteorology professors, and other people from the NWS and NOAA. I also had the chance to visit with fellow ValpU students, professors, and alumni over a Tex-Mex buffet lunch, as the Department of Geography and Meteorology typically hosts a lunch for meteorology students, staff, and alumni attending the AMS Meeting. (That was one of many instances in which I ate well at the conference, which included snacks, appetizers, breakfast treats, and the awards banquet toward the end of the conference days.)
I look back at where I am now, and recognize the value of attending professional conferences as a chance to hear about what's happening in the field currently, meet people who are making notable achievements, and make connections, which I've been able to do at subsequent conferences, especially as I engage with the field of library and information science. I'm glad I got a good start with attending the 2013 AMS Meeting: It was there that I got a stronger sense of what the field of meteorology is all about, and helped give me a push toward focusing on landing a job. It was certainly a good dose of reality, at times intimidating and exhilarating.
One major takeaway from my experience was when, at the career fair, I met someone from the group Atmospheric Science Librarians International, an encounter that gave me the idea of becoming a librarian, thereby combining my interests. While at that point in time, the focus in my career path seemed to be on being a weather forecaster, I felt myself gravitating toward applying my meteorology background in a particular direction, and I liked the idea of librarianship because I could be part of helping people doing research in meteorology, since there's so much research happening.
Indeed, another takeaway was the implications of meteorology. While it's fascinating to study and observe the weather, meteorology professionals ultimately exert the effort because they recognize weather impacts everyone and all aspects of society. That's why there are so many social science-related discussions at conferences like these--and I certainly got in on them even more so when I attended the National Weather Association conference in October 2013 in North Charleston, SC.
At the student conference, I felt something stir inside of me as I listened to the panel presentations, the part of me that was influenced by my humanities-based studies in Christ College. During a time of questions and answers, I got up before the approximately 600 attendees and asked a panel of scientists, "What aspect of your work puts you most in tune with what it means to be human?" (Someone nearby the microphone muttered, "Now we're getting to the metaphysics of things." I had a nice chat with him a few minutes later when the session ended, drawing on some of my philosophical understandings.)
I got two great answers to my question. Someone remarked how her child plays with a ball to discover how it behaves when dropped, etc., and she said we all have this internal drive to investigate how scientific principles work. Another response focused on the human factor in severe weather events, how it impacts people's lives and their communities.
Later, over lunch, one of my classmates remarked how I had asked a deep question during that Q&A. Even if the speakers might have been struck by my question, they gave great answers.
Indeed, this conference broadened my horizons about what's going on in the world, as I sought to take my place in it and make my contribution.
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