The first November APECS Virtual Poster Session focusing on “Permafrost” was held on November 7th at 19 GMT. The call was coordinated by Cordula Teschner and Inga May.

We had two keynote presentations:

• Prof. Dr. Wilfried Haeberli, Department of Geography, University of Zurich-Irchel'Alpine Permafrost - recent state and future

• Dr. Goncalo Vieira,University of Lisbon'Permafrost in polar regions - challenges caused by climate change’

• And one poster presentation:

• Ruth I Mugford Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge  ‘Validation of the GEOtop Model in a Continuous Permafrost Basin in the Arctic’

Thank you again to all three  presenters!

For those of you who missed the live session, you can view the recording of the session here.

The next VPS will be in late November will be on "Microbiology", so stay tuned for more information on that!

It's really easy!

Here are the steps in the process to help you get started:

1)Contact the VPS Chairs to find a good month for your proposed VPS call: Mariette Wheeler:. It is further helpful for the chairs if you cc them in emails you send regarding the VPS call you organize, so they know what is going on and what is done already, or left to do :)

2) Find Presenters: The call organizers can choose and contact either people that submitted their poster to the VPS or ask people that would fit well to submit their poster to the VPS and participate in the call. Presenters can be Students, Teachers, Professors, NGOs, other agencies… whatever makes most sense in regards to the topic and goal of the call. Having 3 presenter si ideal, and maximum should be 4 presenters, making sure to stay in the timeline (of 1 hour) and provides time for discussion at the end.

3) Standard Date: VPS presentation calls are organized once a month. All VPS calls should be ideally held on a Thursday, either the 3rd or the 4th week during the month. Definately VPS webinars are not to overlap with seminars taking place Tuesdays and are to be carried out during the middle of the week.

4)Schedule Date and Time: Please select the time appropriate for you and your presenters. As soon as you know date & time, contact the VPS Chairs Mariette and Ella, and make sure they can join the call at that time and date as well. They then will book Adobe Connect for this time and day. All times we refer to are mentioned in GMT, to avoid confusion.

5) Call system: Adobe Connect. If you never participated in an Adobe Connect call before, make sure you are familiar with the system. The VPS chairs know how to use it and will walk you through the process - just ask :). http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect.html

Short summary of steps to organize a VPS call:

1) Date and Time: Agree with all presenters and organizers on date and time

2) Adobe Connect: Confirm Adobe Connect is booked for the right day and time with the VPS chairs before sending any advertisements!

3)Posters online: Make sure that all posters are submitted ot the VPS through the webpage and are online.

4) Advertisement: When 1 and 2 is ready (3 would be good, but if short on time it is ok to advertise without the online links), you can use a template of previous APECS announcements and adjust it to your call. Include the VPS specific links for each poster from the APECS webpage. Then you can send it to Geli or Allen to send as an APECS mass announcement + to ArcticInfo. VPS chairs have a draft announcement form for you to use.

Please additionally advertise also to some other list serves that are more specific to your discipline.

5)Send pdf versions of the posters to be presented to the VPS chairs, who can help with transferring the pdfs into the adobe connect format (swf) and with uploading them into the webinar system.

Additional notes for Presenters: It happened now a couple of times that presenters had issues connecting to Adobe Connect due to local firewall settings from their site. So please try to log on to the Adobe Session using the provided link a few days before the call to know if you have trouble connecting. If the login works, you see a page with an attendees list (where your name is in), a notes box and a chat box at least. If you need further help or have any questions, ask the VPS chairs anytime!

We had two keynote presentations:

• Stephen Ackley: Antarctic Sea Ice: International Polar Year Cruise-Results from the SIMBA Field Campaign (Sept-Oct 2007)
• Rolf Gradinger: Aspects of the Biology of Sea Ice

And three poster presentations:

• Steve Reeves: Sea Ice Detection with Advanced Scatterometer
• Joel Heath:Arctic Sea Ice (ASI) Educational Package and his new film, "People of a Feather."

Thank you again to all four presenters!

For those of you who missed the live session, you can view the recording of the session here.

The next VPS will be in October on "Permafrost", so stay tuned for more information on that!

The July APECS Virtual Poster Session focusing on “Glaciology” was held on July 28th at 18 GMT. The call was coordinated by Oliver Marsh (APECS Glaciology Working Group) and Allen Pope (APECS President 2010-11) and chaired by Oliver Marsh.

We had two keynote presentations:

• Martin Sharp: Glacier contributions to changing sea-level: Arctic Canada awakes
• Richard Alley: West Antarctic (in)stability: Going or not?

And three poster presentations:

• Fiona Seifert: Origin of surface undulations at the Kamb Ice Stream grounding line, West Antarctica
• Torre Hatterman: Ice shelf basal mass balance from borehole thermometry
• Oliver Marsh: Mass balance in the grounding zone of the Beardmore Glacier, Antarctica: satellite and ground based remote sensing measurements

Thank you again to all five presenters!

For those of you who missed the live session, you can view the recording of the session here.

The next VPS will be in September on "Sea Ice", so stay tuned for more information on that!

Sometimes joining an online 'webinar' can be a bit intimating if you haven't done it before. So to help show you what its like to sign in to an APECS Virtual Poster Session and to show you a few of the controls you can use as a presenter, we have created a short video to walk you through the process. Its quite simple and only requires an internet connection and works with any browser that has adobe flash player installed. We use Adobe Connect Pro thanks to in-kind support from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. If you have any questions, just email us.

If you have participated in the virtual poster session, we really need your feedback to improve this project.  Please take 5 minutes to fill out a simple survey to see how what you thought of your experience.

All VPS Live Sessions are set up with a system called Adobe Connect Pro. Below we provide some basic instructions on how to join our sessions as participants, presenters and chairs, in order to make VPS calls more transparent and clear.  Instructions are made by Daniela Liggett and VPS WG members.

Download instructions

The June APECS Virtual Poster Session focusing on “Social Sciences” was held on June 30 at 12 GMT. The call was coordinated by Yulia Zaika (APECS Organizational Development Committee Chair 2010-2011) and Luís Guilherme de Assis (APECS correspondent for Social Sciences in the Antarctic) and chaired by Gerlis Fugmann (APECS Executive Committee Member 2010-2011), all members of June Social Sciences Working Group.

We had four great presentations:

• Peter Schweitzer: Presentation on the IASC (International Arctic Science Committee) Social Sciences Working Group
• Daniela Liggett: Presentation on the SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) Social Sciences Action Group
• Nelson Soto: Dynamics of human occupation in Antarctica
• Morgan Ip: Architecture and Healing: Collaborative Design in Cape Dorset, Nunavut

Thank you again to all four presenters and to Luis for translating!

For those of you who missed the live session, you can view the recording of the session here!

The next VPS will be in July on Glaciology, so stay tuned for more information on that!

the April APECS Virtual Poster Session on "Arctic Pollution Transport" was held on Thursday, 28 April 2011 at 7:00 p.m. GMT. The call was chaired by the Atmoshere and Climate Science Coordinators Jiulia Schmale and Jenny Fisher, and two early career scientists presented.

To view the recording, please go to: http://connect.canterbury.ac.nz/p14562346/.

Boris Quennehen from the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Physique at the Universite Blaise Pascal, presented on "Pollution transported to the Arctic during the POLARCAT-France spring and summer campaigns: source regions and aerosol properties". To view this poster, please go to:
http://apecs.is/virtual-poster-session/atmospheric-systems.

Julia Schmale from the Max Blanck-Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, presented on "Source Identification and Airborne Chamical Characterisation of Aeroslo Pollution from long-range Transport over Greenland".

The next VPS call in May will be on Social Sciences! Stay tuned!

The APECS VPS Working Group

The March VPS call on was a full success. This month, we had the  APECS Working Group (WG) on Sediment Budgets in Cold Environments set up the Virtual Poster Session. The call was chaired by Mateusz Strzelecki, the APECS chair of the Sediment Budgets in Cold Environments WG, and APECS Poland representative with the Council. Invited were two mentors as presenters:

Professor Achim A. Beylich (Chair of SEDIBUD - International Association of Geomorphologists Working Group on Sediment Budgets in Cold Environments) with the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU), and the Department of Geography, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. He introduced us to the achievements and future goals of the SEDIBUD Network and explained his research on cold region sediment budgets in Norway.

Dr. Armelle Decaulne (Clermont-Ferrand, France) presented her research projects in Iceland and talked about career development opportunities for APECS to one of the most successful cold region geomorphology initiatives SEDIBUD.

The APECS VPS Working Group

The 2011 ‘APECS Virtual Poster Sessions’ started out with a “Get to know APECS” session in January, which took place on Thursday the 27th of January at 16 GMT.

ExCom member Angelika Renner introduces the APECS governance and recent updates; Penelope Wagner (Discipline Coordinator for Geophysics and Sea Ice) guides through the APECS webpage, and shows important features including research activities. Sílvia Lourenço talks about the National Committees, what they do and opportunities to get involved on the example of APECS Portugal. Alexey Pavlov (Discipline Coordinator for Oceanography) informs about advantages helping with APECS and how to combine being involved in regards to time constrains and lack of funding. Jennifer Provencher (APECS Education and Outreach) explains what is going on in the APECS E&O field and how to get involved in Education and Outreach opportunities through APECS; and Kim Jochum (Research Activities Committee chair) deeper explains who and what APECS actually is.

For all that missed this great oppotunity, the link to the recording: http://connect.canterbury.ac.nz/p93014992/

The Virtual Poster Session (VPS) Working Group

On the 30th of November a Virtual Poster Session call focussing on Romanian Polar Research took place. Four presenters, based in Romania shareed their work ranging form General Cryosphere to Permafrost Research:

1. Dr Teodor Gh. Negoita -  "ERICON Aurora Borealis, the bigest icebreaker in the world".

2. Niculita Mihai -  "Soils from a toposecuence in Bjørdalen, Spitsbergen Archipelago".

3. Catrinescu Alina - " The Necessity of Integrated Research of Polar Permafrost Crust and Soils ".

4. Magdalin Andreia - " Romanian Polar Research Museum ".

In case you missed this great event, you can listen to the recording here!

The next VPS call will be in January. Stay informed and join us for great presentation again then!

For those not familiar with the APECS Virtual Poster Session, you can find more information under: www.apecs.is/virtual-poster-session - This effort focuses on bringing the concept of the poster presentation beyond the four walls of the conference hall and creates an online database of polar research poster publications. This project allows members with similar goals and interests to exchange information and assures a platform for the exchange of Arctic, Antarctic and Cryospheric research, policy, and education activities that are Shaping the Future of Polar Research - and our calls let you share your research *LIVE* with people around the world!