2015 16 Excom

This year the annual APECS Excom meeting was held in Fairbanks, Alaska, immediately prior to the Arctic Science Summit Week (ASSW). We had two very productive days of discussions and we were joined by Alex, one of the National Committee coordinators, for part of these.

The last few months have seen a number of changes as a result of the organizational review recommendations and the subsequent publication of our 5-year strategic plan. During the first part of the meeting we reviewed the changes to the council structure, which we implemented in autumn. Whilst we felt that the new project group structure was working well, we recognized the need for improved reporting so that experiences and advice can be passed on to future project group members. We also prioritized a number of documents, resources and pages on the website to be updated in the coming months.

The individual National Committees do a tremendous amount of work that is often not recognized outwith the local country. We discussed ways to improve the sharing of updates and experiences between NCs and develop ‘how to’ guides for organizing the most common types of NC events.

Other topics on the agenda included the budget and renewal of MoUs with a few of our partner organizations. As a final topic we noted that APECS will be 10 years old next year and so we discussed ways in which we could mark this momentous occasion. We plan to organize events at several conferences so keep an eye out for ways to get involved!

ASSW began straight after our meeting and this gave us an unrivalled opportunity to talk in-person to many of our Arctic-orientated partners, attend their meetings and spread the word about APECS.