Meeting structure

Prepared inputs

OceanObs’09 is planned around and is firmly based on community contributions and community consensus prepared ahead of time and provided in three levels as input to the conference. Those are:

• invited Plenary talks, accompanied by Plenary Papers, drawing from community input
• Community White Papers proposed by the groups as input to the plenary talks, and
• volunteer Additional Contributions

Each of these three forms of input will be available ahead of the meeting on this web site in draft form. Plenary Papers and Community White Papers will be open for public comment, as well as receiving a review from the Program Committee.

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Conference format

The conference agenda (see details) consists primarily of Plenary Sessions with invited Plenary Talks, drawing on contributions from the Community White Papers. The conference agenda will provide these additional opportunities for discussion, feedback, and consensus-building:

• Questions and discussions to close each Plenary Session (after three to four Plenary Talks) to allow for questions from the conference participants: participants will be able to submit questions ahead of the session, as well as line up at microphones in the audience
• Poster sessions to present Community White Papers and Additional Contributions for feedback and provide time for discussion
• Roundtable discussions on cross-cutting topics: How changes in the large-scale circulation are impacting biological processes; Connecting impacts in the coastal zone to basin-scale conditions; and the Conference Outcomes
• Community Fora, run in parallel during the afternoons of Days 2 and 3. These parallel topical sessions will be led by the international research organizations, and will produce suggestions for the conference outcome statement. They will provide an opportunity for participants to debate in more detail identify common plans, or a common strategy to move forward, and to contribute to the conference outcome.
• Side meeting opportunities will be availble at lunchtime and at the end of the day, please contact the ESA Conference Bureau with any special logistical requests. Public side meetings are listed in the agenda.

Conference outcomes and output

The organizers have worked to create a conference structure that will lead to community consensus, built through the negotiation and writing of Community White Papers before the conference, and the public review of Plenary and Community White Papers. It hopes to build new corss-community connections, and broader community agreement on aspirations for the coming decade. The Plenary Papers and Community White Papers will be published in the Conference volume in final draft form, after having been revised with input from the conference itself.

There will also be a negotiated Conference Statement which maps a path forward, with firm plans where the communities are ready to move forward, and a clear outline of steps to be taken towards developing firmer plans where communities are still preparing for sustained ocean observations. This Conference Statement is available in draft form for public comment »