All right, good morning everyone I am at the University of
California Riverside for the North America Paleontological conference or NAPC
So I feel like when we
learn about science in schools
conferences are kind of the one thing that we leave out. When we talk about the scientific method. We do talk about communication
but we really don't talk too much about how that actually
occurs maybe on outside of
publications.
But this is another way in which scientists
Communicate with one another is by going to these large conferences so here at NAPC
We actually have a couple of high school students attending which is awesome. We also have a few amateurs
But then we have, you know, professors and museum curators and even the museum curator of the Smithsonian
so
rather big group even though it is North America Paleontological Convention
We have a lot of people internationally as well, which is fantastic
and
Also, the talks aren't just on North
American fossils there are fossils from all over the place
But it's a really good time to learn what other people are doing, to network
with other people get into contact so you can do
collaborations with people and also just catch up with
Friends and people that you know in the field as well
So it's actually date three of the conference and I've talked a lot about people giving talks and
Lectures, which I think is you know, what
a lot of people think of at least in paleont... well at least in any academic field when you talk about
conferences you're giving a presentation
PowerPoint usually about 15 minutes in front of your peers
But there are also things like
posters. Posters can convey a lot of information
Graphically
And then also people who are presenting posters
they can also help explain and answer questions during the poster sessions. A
lot of times at conferences like this one or Geological Society of America
You'll
Have things like field trips that are a possibility so you can learn a little bit about
geology and paleontology of the area
And there's also workshops, so yesterday I attended one on the Paleo
on the Paleo
biology Database the PBDB.
Which is a free resource, which we can include down in the link below
Anyway it contains a lot of data on
Published fossils and where they would have been
Geographically and so you can see where all these things were living together
spatially. So we're just gonna continue on down main event
I'm staying right here on campus. A lot of the other presenters are staying here on campus as well
Which so far the accommodations have been great here
And
yeah, we're just going to
See how this day goes. There's been a lot of good talks on paleobotany which of course is what I do
There have been talks on
Finds found on public lands, and of course yesterday I was in the the
Paleobiology database session
And so today it's going to be on
interactions between amateurs and professionals
In paleontology, that's what I'm going to be speaking on
and this is a one of a
lot of people from FOSSIL Project are going to be speaking as well
So you'll probably see their faces appear throughout this video as well
so let's continue on our way down to
the talks
Alright! So we're now back in Florida and
I didn't have a chance to kind of go over like a little bit of a recap
on everything that happening sort of my final thoughts on NAPC. So I'll do that right now
The one thing I forgot to mention first was that when you check in you get a swag bag so, let's see if I can
Hold that up right here for the camera. It's nice little nice little tote with the
NAPC logo on it
With all the pictures there and then of course
you know name tag that lets you get into the talks and also the
meals and coffee
You also get a water bottle. Sadly the logo
Rubbed off a little bit, but it's still, you know, pretty cool
looking water bottle
In terms of the conference itself, I think it was great. This was easily my
Favorite academic conference that I've been to and I think there's a couple of reasons for that. So
the first couple conferences I've been to they were botany or geology conferences and
One of the reasons, you know
I didn't really prepare for those is because I didn't one reason was probably cuz I didn't know a lot of people there and
And two because I don't really consider myself solely a geologist or solely like a botanist. I
really do consider myself more of a paleontologist than someone who does
Even though I work with plants
right now I I consider myself someone who's like interested in just
Anything anything fossil
so
that I think for me this the overall theme even there's multiple themes within the
Within the conference. I think the overall arching
theme of paleontology is a lot more interesting for me as an individual and I think a lot of people also
like this is a conference that only happens about once every four to five years and
So it's not as frequent as these other
botanical or geological
conferences
And so I think that kind of makes it all a little more special way but in a way that also like to have it
more
frequent in order to keep that sort of engagement
What else do I have to say?
It sort of feels like a sporting event in the way reminds me of being in a swim meet
You know instead of you know, waiting for your race you're waiting for your talk
And it would kind of be interesting just to kind of do a parody of you know
it's sort of like, you know the hype for the Olympics, but you know hype for
These sorts of conference talks is look out in the future, we might have something for that
What else do I have to say? I had a list of things I was going to say my only really big complaint about the
conference was the
The
logistics for the coffee lemonade cookies
I feel like those could have been planned put in different places, so it's not
everyone rushing
At the same place the same time and it got really crowded but that's really my only big complaint about that. Bye!
