Hello Everyone,

Our planning for the conference continues, but we still could use your input when you get a chance to reply. Here are a few decisions we are hoping to consider completed soon:

1. Conference dates:
Fan Hong and CMATC have proposed July 2 to July 6 as the week of CALMet 2007. Unless anyone sees a considerable problem with these dates, I think we should allow CMATC to hold these as final.

2. Excursion mid-week:
There has been a suggestion to hold the conference over 6 days rather than 5 (making the dates July 2 to July 7) to accomodate a full day of site seeing (required to see some more distant sites). We propose this excursion day would on Wednesday during the conference. Several of us would look forward to the opportunity to break up the long days of presentations with a day of more informal socializing and sharing. In this option, Saturday might be a full working day, or perhaps one more devoted to workshops or other activities. Vesa has also suggested that the CMATC visit might be on Saturday if we take this approach. Does anyone feel this approach would present a problem? Do you support this?

3. Conference keynote speakers:
Vesa and I proposed a first list of possible keynote speakers, but we would like to hear from you who you would like to deliver an opening talk at the start of each working day. We listed people who have a long history with the CALMet community, and who have not presented keynote speeches previously. But of course we want to ask speakers that you feel will inspire and stimulate creative thinking. This does not have to be decided immediately, but we hope you can start thinking about it.

That's all for now.

Pat

CALMet (CAL Working Group)

Hi everyone,

Fan Hong recently emailed us with this list of planning items. I'll provide my own responses for the group to consider beneath each one.

P.S. Let's start to use the Blog so the discussion is saved.

1. If it is possible I might propose a session to show what we have done in
CMA's distance education, talks plus demos, web and video conferencing.

Yes, Vesa and I already discussed this and we agree. Because we will be at CMA, it would be nice to take advantage of that and learn more about your distance education activities. How much time do you propose?

2. "Creating Activities for Learning." I am not a native English speaker, it
seems to me "creating" emphasize the action, is "creative" better in this
phrase which may mean innovative and so forth?

I agree, except I feel both words are appropriate for the acronym CAL. The workshop is both about how to take action in offering effective education and training, and also how to use creative ideas. Since we can only use one of the phrases in print material (unless we're more creative, I guess), I'm wondering which word others prefer.

3. If I am assumed to organize the opening ceremony as an honor, I might
suggest an opening ceremony chaired either by the conference chair, Pat or
Vesa, or a CMATC director general, plus opening statements by a WMO, and a
SCHOTI and a conference representative respectively, plus an CMA and/or
CMATC official depends on the situation then.

Let us discuss this more. I envisioned you, Fan Hong, as chair of this session, but Vesa and I might add some welcoming words as conference chairs. But I'm open to other ideas.

4. For the sightseeing it may take a whole day off.

This is problematic, but it is quite an attractive idea to have an entire day for siteseeing for a place as interesting as Beijing. However, participants often feel there is not enough time for the conference as it is. Can we be creative and break tradition? Could we add Saturday as a Workshop day (this was recommended in one survey) so that taking Wednesday off for siteseeing would not steal too much time for conference activities? Or could we have the siteseeing day on Sunday prior or Saturday after? Other ideas? Should we keep siteseeing to a half day but into the evening if possible, limiting what we see as a group? Do others feel 4 working days is sufficient?

5. For the visit to the CMA's national met centre, met satellite centre and
Huafeng Group of Meteorological Audio and Video Information etc, if we have
time to arrange, it will probably take half a day.

I'll let others respond. It would be nice not to lose too much conference time, but this might be a very useful learning experience.

6.A banquet/dinner offered by CMATC will be at night so will not occupy the
5 working day.

I am looking forward to this already.

Cheers,

Pat

Hi Everyone,

I'm sending this to the CALMet Blog because its time to begin discussing plans for the upcoming conference in Beijing in 2007. It's great to have that decided and exciting to have the conference in such capable hands.

Under a seperate email, I will send a planning document with some initial ideas the Vesa and I have been discussing. Your comments and suggestions are being requested. After you've had a chance to read the short document, please send comments to the blog so that we can have them archived.

I know its been a while since we've used the blog, and if you're like me, you've forgotten your password and username. Fortunately, that was easy to retreive from Blogger by giving them my email.

Cheers,

Pat and Vesa