AGU 2017

First impression, the New Orleans Convention Center is huge. Or at least, really long. After picking up my registration materials (a light blue lanyard), I headed for the Cryosphere talks as they are always interesting. The walk through the convention center was probably almost a mile. I would end up making that trip several more times before the day ended. The hotel is about a mile walk to the convention center but this morning, I was offered a ride by a random person in the elevator. They needed to be there by 7:30am to chair a session and had called for a cab. I must've looked like I was headed for the AGU meeting. The morning talks were interesting and focused on the accuracy of the sea ice predictions for both navigation and heat flow. The room was packed. There are about 22,000 attendees not counting vendors and media.

Around noon, I went to a talk given by journalist Dan Rather. He had a lot of good things to say about the practice of science (friendly audience) and injected some humorous stories. He also talked a bit about "fake news" and how it has been going on for years. What has changed is the speed of propagation. Dan Rather was introduced by the president of the AGU and he also mentioned that this is the first fall meeting being held outside of San Francisco. I had heard that Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, where the meeting has been held for a number of years, is undergoing renovation.

By mid-afternoon, I had walked 6.5 miles and still needed to walk back to the hotel. Right now, I managed to nab one of the few tables and chairs in the convention center. The exhibits open up at 6:00 so I had a bit of time to write this post.

Evening Update - I passed nine miles when arriving at the hotel.