GA Presidency Month 8: April 2022

This is the big month for any GA President since 1976 (prior to that the GA Conference was held over the New Year and the first week of January to kick off the President's year and allow them to set out their stall.)

The first part of the month was obviously dictated by the preparations for the GA conference, and ensuring that as many people as possible were able to attend in a format which suited them. This resulted in a number of late changes to the programme - inevitable when there are so many hundreds of people involved and their circumstances change.

We were also keeping a wary eye on COVID cases rising and the need to avoid unecessary contact with others - although guidance had also changed. Some people reconsidered their plans to attend the conference.

As always, the approach to the Easter holidays meant a great deal of extra work for the team at Solly Street and building excitement with late bookings pinging in minute by minute towards the deadline for registration, which was then extended for a few more days as there was a rush of last minute bookings.

April started with me already on holiday, and there was plenty of pre-conference organisation and admin to do. It was time to complete my GA Presidential address, which I thought I had done, but kept tinkering with until a week or so before the time.

I updated my Chirpty circle diagram ready to put into my Presidential lecture, which shows the people I interact with on Twitter.

There are many elements to draw together for a conference and they all came together well. I am so grateful to everyone who took part, and particularly to Isabel Richardson, Becky Kitchen and everyone at the GA, many of whom came along in person.

I prepared my presentation for the GEOLive event, which was based around my book 'Why Study Geography'.

My Presidential lecture was also finalised, and then tweaked endlessly, and there were still things that I remembered I was going to say.

On the 10th of April, I headed over to Guildford - first long drive for a while and first time on the M25 since before the pandemic. 

I got involved in a few things:

 - Arriving on Sunday and spending four hours helping to set up the GA reception desk and stand, stuff delegate bags, prepare lanyards etc. Also finally got my GA Presidents badge.

- Meeting the team who were going to be live streaming sessions, including Maddie Duggan who I had met before

- A lovely Italian meal in Guildford the evening before everything started, up on the High Street.

April 11th-13th was the actual GA Conference. It was really wonderful.

- Talking to exhibitors and welcoming delegates - I spoke to as many people as I could

- Welcoming and chairing the Public Lecture by Professor James Cheshire

- Attending the wine reception and also the conference dinner on the first evening

- Sorting accommodation 

- Chairing a number of sessions, including Professor Ian Cook's excellent Follow the Things session, 

- Trying to speak to as many of the attendees, exhibitors and delegates as I could

- Doing my Presidential Address to a large crowd - a little down on previous years, but there were people joining online and I was very pleased with how it went - thanks to Alastair Owens for the introduction

- Chairing a discussion with the author Cal Flyn - her book 'Islands of Abandonment' was one of my favourite reads of recent years and has been nominated for (and won) a whole range of awards. It was lovely to see Cal, although there were a few technical issues on the day which meant she couldn't see us.

- Attending a number of sessions including those presented by Sharon Witt and Helen Clarke, Alan Kinder and Eleanor Rawling

- Lunch sat in the sun with my department from King's Ely Geog, who had come out in force to supprt me. Particular thanks to Claire Kyndt for stepping up and presenting a workshop on her fieldwork ideas based on the 'Dear Data' book

- Up to the Teachmeet at the end of the day, at Seasons Restaurant near the Cathedral. Some wonderful presentations, particularly the one from Iram Sammar. You can watch a recording of the Teachmeet here. Thanks to David Rogers and Richard Allaway for hosting and organising the event.

- Food at the networking and board games evening - a chat to Peter Vujakovic of the British Cartographic Society

- Down to the Beermeet - a bit of a walk - some great conversations and thanks to those who bought me a drink

- Chairing a session on Follow the Things by Professor Ian Cook

- Watching several excellent sessions, and also presenting my own session at the GEOLive event.

- Helping to take down some of the conference elements that I had helped to set up on the Sunday

- Chairing the final session of the day: the Rex Walford Lecture

A few images from the day - there are many more to come, but I haven't been given the links to view them just yet.

Delegates will be able to access copies of the recordings now.

Thanks to all the GA Solly Street HQ staff:

Copies of presentations will also be appearing on the GA Conference webpage.

Some other things I got up to this month:

- continuing to work on ERASMUS projects, including contributing to the GI Pedagogy project

- liaising with the various schools that I work with in a number of ways

- creating some materials for the MAT that I am supporting for the next term and a bit

- setting up multiplier events for ERASMUS

- pencilling in meetings at the Council of British Geographers (COBRIG) at the RGS-IBG

- working on my paper for the 100th IGU in Paris - my session has been scheduled for the Wednesday of the IGU.

- heading down for a day wandering London, visit to RGS-IBG and then an amazing conference 

- setting up a D3 multiplier event on Eventbrite

My Ordnance Survey webinar needed preparing for the end of April, and this was on the theme of fieldwork. Thanks to those who came along. The recording will be available for that soon as well.

Slides here:

Digimap for Schools - Fieldwork Webinar.pdf from GeoBlogs

Also preparing a suite of resources for a Prince's Teaching Institute event in June.

April 29th saw the GA going green...

Make sure that you start planning for the National Fieldwork Week.

I rounded off the month by sharing the news that we have a new elected Trustee vacancy and also have a new co-opted trustee who will 

I also visited Cambridge and got a copy of a number of new books, and saw some excellent art from Ai Wei Wei, and David Hockney.

As usual, here are the month's Twitter statistics - a bumper month with a quarter of a million impressions.

I'm also closing in on 7000 followers having added over 1200 in the 8 months since I made my Tweets open for my Presidential year, and 200 in the last month alone.