August 29, 2016

35th International Geological Congress: Day #1

Posted by Evelyn Mervine

IGC Exhibition Hall #1.

I’ve been neglecting Georneys over the past few months, due to some travel and an extremely busy workload for my day job as an industry geologist. However, I’m attending the 35th International Geological Congress (IGC) in Cape Town, South Africa (my home city!), this week, and I think that blogging about IGC is the perfect way to revive Georneys and, hopefully, to start to blog more regularly for the rest of the year. I’ll write a little about each day of the congress.

Today was the first day of the congress. I spent the morning registering for the congress, uploading my talk for tomorrow, and checking out the exciting exhibition hall. Then in the afternoon I attended the two opening plenary talks and part of the geochronology session, where I heard two excellent overview talks about Ar-Ar and Re-Os dating. Then I attended some private meetings in the late afternoon and went out to dinner with some geological colleagues in the evening.

I really enjoyed the two hours or so that I spent in the exhibition hall today, so I thought I’d share a few pictures from some of the stalls that I visited. The stalls highlight that this truly is an international meeting, with geologists from all over the world. Today I visited the stalls of geological organizations from all over the world, including China, Korea, India, Germany, Norway, Russia, and of course South Africa!

Some of the stalls had some impressive decorations. I think my favorite stall is the one with the polar bear! That stall is run by a group of Scandinavian geological organizations.

I probably only visited a tenth of the stalls today… I definitely need to spend some more time in the exhibition hall later in the week!

Here are a few pictures showcasing some of the international stalls that I visited today:

IGC Exhibition Hall #2.

IGC Exhibition Hall #2.

IGC Exhibition Hall #3.

IGC Exhibition Hall #3.

IGC Exhibition Hall #6.

IGC Exhibition Hall #4.

IGC Exhibition Hall #4.

IGC Exhibition Hall #5.

IGC Exhibition Hall #5. My husband Jackie (also a geologist!) and I posing with the polar bear.

IGC Exhibition Hall #6. My husband Jackie (also a geologist!) and I posing with the polar bear.

IGC Exhibition Hall #7.

IGC Exhibition Hall #7. The next IGC!

IGC Exhibition Hall #8.

IGC Exhibition Hall #8.

IGC Exhibition Hall #9.

IGC Exhibition Hall #9.

That’s all for today… stay tuned for more from IGC tomorrow!