Contents:

1. Report from St Petersburg meetings and conference
2. Plans for February 25th, 2009
3. Upcoming Polar Days: People & Above The Poles
4. Call for Sessions at Oslo Science Conference June 2010

Report no. 15, July 2008
From: IPY International Programme Office
To: IPY Project Coordinators
cc: IPY Community Google Groups

1. Report from St Petersburg meetings and conference

Many members of the IPY Community are currently meeting in St Petersburg and Moscow for a range of business meetings as well as participation in the SCAR/IASC Open Science Conference. So far, the events have been a great success. We have so far participated in meetings for the IPY Joint Committee, Data Sub-Committee, Education, Outreach, and Communication (EOC) Sub-Committee, and Sustained Arctic Observing Network (SAON) as well as many IPY science project meetings. There was also an extremely successful one-day Career Development Workshop organised by the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS), and on the first day of the conference, APECS was acknowledged as the 'pre-eminent organisation for polar early career
scientists'. We now are enjoying a week filled with presentations from across the full range of IPY projects.

2. Plans for February 25th, 2009

The IPY Joint Committee, upon recommendation by the EOC Sub-Committee, has agreed to issue a 'Status of Polar Research' report to be released on February 25th at a media event to be held in Geneva. This report will also provide material for various political meetings occurring in April 2009. IPY projects and networks are encouraged to use this time period to further promote their own successes. If you are interested in developing a media or outreach plan around this time, in coordination with other national and international plans, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

3. Upcoming Polar Days: People & Above The Poles

Thanks to all who participated in the June 18th Polar Day that focussed on Land and Life. It was a great success, highlighting a wide range of science from permafrost to microbial biodiversity. Thanks to the many scientists who joined our 'Meet The Scientists' page, connected to live events, and gave local presentations. We have heard great feedback, especially from the teachers that participated in live events, and managed to engage many more education networks, especially in Africa, through participation in the UNEP Children's Conference.

The next Polar Days are as follows. Please consider getting involved.

September 24th: People; live connections using community radio and
global on-line student discussions about life in the polar regions
December 4th: Above the Poles; astronomy, meteorology, atmospheric
sciences
March 2009 (Date to be confirmed): Polar oceans

For more information, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it :

4. Call for Sessions at Oslo Science Conference (OSC) June 2010

The next large IPY Conference will occur in Oslo, June 8-12th, 2010, and the 1st IPY-OSC Circular is out. Please consider now how you would like to be involved. For more information, visit the website at http://www.ipy-osc.no/

The Steering Committee has decided to organise the conference programme with a bottom-up approach. As a first step we therefore invite proposals for sessions. The term "session" is chosen for simplicity and should not be interpreted as fixed formats.

Anyone who has a national or international polar research programme during IPY can submit proposals for sessions and later submit abstracts. For EOC projects other formats for publication and presentation will be facilitated. Participation is not limited to projects endorsed by the IPY Joint Committee.

The science programme committee will select and organise the sessions based on submitted proposals. Plenary sessions will be used to present urgent, over-arching and integrating sessions and topics.

We are aware that "sessions" at a science conference traditionally refer to a few fixed formats for publishing. In this case we certainly invite proposals within those formats, but to accommodate education, outreach and communication, young scientists, policy and science management issues, we urge the community to be creative in terms of both content and formats. Besides standard sessions, there is room for workshops, policy debates, screening of polar film or TV documentaries, bookfairs, art exhibitions and the like. Use the form to flag your intentions and ask for time and space.

You can download the full circular in PDF-format from the Downloads page of http://www.ipy-osc.no/