I recently registered to attend the International Geological Congress, a big geological conference that is held every four years in different locations around the globe. Next year, the 35th International Geological Congress is being held in Cape Town, South Africa, the beautiful city that I currently call home! The conference is being held August 27th to September 4th 2016, and there are a number of exciting field trips being held before and afterwards. For example, you can ride a train from Cape Town to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, stopping to see all sorts of geological wonders along the way. Or, if you prefer, you can spend a week travelling down the Orange River by canoe, paddling past 2 billion years of geological history. Or, if you’d like to learn a little about the geology that I study for my day job working as an industry geologist for De Beers, you can participate in a diamond field trip in South Africa or in a second diamond field trip up in Namibia. If you can’t attend one of the longer field trips, there are also a number of shorter field trips. For example, you can attend a day field trip to the West Coast Fossil Park, which I featured in this week’s “Monday Geology Picture” post.
I’m very excited to be attending the congress next year, and I hope that some of my local and overseas geological colleagues will consider attending. You can register for the conference any time between now and the day it begins. If you want to present a talk or a poster, the abstracts are due at the end of January. If you happen to be a friend of mine (that is, I know you in person, from graduate school or something like that), I might even be able to provide you with accommodation. Our house is a short drive from the conference venue, and we have two guest rooms and a couple of sofas that could accommodate visitors… and we have a swimming pool in the front yard! First come, first serve… although you have to like cats since we have three! At the very least, my geologist husband and I hope to host a couple of geological parties at our house for friends attending the conference.
I’m excited about this conference, for a number of reasons. First, I think it’s wonderful that geologists from all over the world will be coming to Cape Town and that I’ll be able to spend a week listening to all sorts of geological talks. Second, I haven’t attended a scientific conference since I started working in industry. It will good to attend an old fashioned academic conference again… and it sounds as if the International Geological Congress is going to be a good one! Last but not least, I have permission from my superiors to give a talk on some research that I’ve been working on recently. I can’t share the details yet since my abstract needs to go through various approvals first, but I’m looking forward to being able to share a little about some of the research that I carry out as an industry geologist. I’ll be sure to post a link to the abstract once it’s available on-line a few months from now.
And if all that doesn’t convince you to attend the 35th International Geological Congress, below are a few pictures of gorgeous Cape Town. Come and visit!
Georneys 