Content:

1. IPO Update
2. The Canadian IPY Secretariat
3. Polar Weeks
4. Upcoming IPY meetings
5. Update from APECS
6. Update from Oslo 2010 Planning Process
7. Call for new stories and blogs for www.ipy.org
8. Submit your metadata, win a trip
9. Archiving IPY materials


Report no. 27, July 2009
From: IPY International Programme Office
To: IPY Project Coordinators
cc: IPY Community Google Groups

1. IPO Update

Please join us in welcoming Melissa Deets as interim administrative assistant who will join the IPO team July 13th. Melissa will be answering IPO inquiries through This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Please note that Karen Edwards will remain point of contact for EOC activities: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

2. The Canadian IPY Secretariat

Much of the background work of IPY has occurred through National Committees and particularly through several national secretariats. These groups (occasionally individuals!) have brought ideas and energy to IPY and have carried the full and occasionally overwhelming workload of national and international coordination. They have in every case become friends and valued partners to the IPO. We wish to recognize the Canadian IPY Secretariat, which ended its activities this week, for great friendship and great partnership - thanks David and Karen! (Of course, we in IPO must also say thank to Karen for continuing to work with us!)

3. Polar Weeks

As the IPY research program moves toward analysis and results and as IPY participants plan for a large international conference in Oslo in June 2010, the IPO plans two Polar Weeks, in October 2009 and March 2010, with the theme: What Happens at the Poles Affects Us All.

These Polar Weeks have four goals:
• To expand the IPY global networks of motivated and enthused educators;
• To raise the visibility of polar issues and polar organizations;
• To enhance the development of polar science educational materials; and
• To develop long-term education and outreach partnerships for polar science.

In October (October 5th through 9th) the IPY Polar Week will focus on recruiting new individual and institutional partners, will stimulate increased engagement by polar partners, and will highlight classroom activities developed for the new IPY Polar Resource Book. In March 2010 the Polar Week will focus on local community-building activities, will connect new and existing partners in science outreach, and will stimulate global enthusiasm for June on-line and on-site events. Both polar weeks will feature fresh accessible science, live web events, fun classroom activities, virtual balloon launches and spontaneous global inter-connections - activities that have made IPY Polar Days effective and enjoyable.

For more information please visit the IPY website at: http://ipy.arcticportal.org/index.php?option=com_k2&id=1113&view=item&Itemid=10
4. Upcoming IPY meetings

October 2 to 5, 2009: Communities of Change - Building an IPY Legacy, 9th ACUNS International Student Conference on Northern Studies and Polar Regions, Yukon College - Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. See http://www.communitiesofchange.ca/

September 29 - October 1: International IPY Data Management meeting in Ottawa, Ontario (CANADA) to allow data managers / coordinators to report and assess what has been achieved over the last two years and to discuss challenges and opportunities regarding the stewardship of data collected during the International Polar Year. For more information see: http://ipy.arcticportal.org/index.php?option=com_k2&id=2218&view=item or contact Scott Tomlinson ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) or Mark Parsons ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

October 26-28: IPY EOC Committee will meet in Canada to review and stimulate progress on the new Polar Resource Book, to plan for the March Polar Week and Oslo 2010, and to develop long-term plans and partnerships for polar EOC activities. Contact Karen Edwards ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) or Dave Carlson ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) for more details.

December 14 to 18, 2009:AGU Fall Meeting - Together with several partners, the IPO has proposed Union sessions for IPY science and for IPY education and outreach. We will need many abstracts for each session, to ensure that we get favorable scheduling and as much oral presentation time as possible. Please consider joining us as we highlight IPY activities.

5. Update from APECS

APECS together with UNIS, IPY Norway, and UArctic have finished a very successful interdisciplinary polar field school on Svalbard that brought together 24 undergraduate/masters students from 11 countries (out of the 297 people who applied for this field school!). If you are interested in seeing exactly what field schools are like, daily blogs from the field school are being posted on the home page of the IPO website (http://www.ipy.org/index.php). APECS was mentioned in a great article about Spanish IPY projects in the Spanish National Geographic. In other news APECS member Michele Koppes has been asked to represent our organization in the ICSU Earth Science Visioning Group and Jose Xavier has joined ICED as the first APECS representative. We are currently working on getting our Virtual Poster Session live as well as the new Polar Literature Discussion Forum. For more information, and the latest July newsletter, please visit www.apecs.is.

6. Update from Oslo 2010 Planning Process

Together with the Oslo 2010 Secretariat, the Olso 2010 Steering Committee thanks all of you again very much for your interest in proposing a session for the IPY Oslo Science Conference. A large number of proposals were received, and the six committees responsible for the five scientific themes and the EOC programme have worked very hard to sort through these to make a total programme that would fit the available space and time of the conference. The Steering Committee has given guiding criteria for the science sessions which have included:

o Keep the number of sessions under each theme relatively low in order to meet our conference goal of no more than 15 parallel sessions.

o Integrate and combine as much as possible into broad sessions. In particular, we encouraged the thematic groups to combine similar Arctic and Antarctic topics where appropriate and to broaden or combine session proposals devoted to single specific IPY projects.

o That the overall programme and specific session titles should clearly invite and stimulate participation by all IPY projects.

o Sessions should be planned to include early career scientists as convenors.

You will find the draft programme at http://www.ipy-osc.no/. There you can also find the names of the members of the six committees. You will receive communication from the appropriate committee chair of their considerations in such cases where proposals have been merged or in other ways changed. Because of the immediate approach of northern hemisphere summer holidays you may however, not get such information until after the holidays. We apologise for delays, but we felt it was important that the initial information on sessions was published now, as soon as it was available from the committees.

If you see errors or gaps, or have any other comments to improve the programme, we would very much appreciate hearing from you. We can guarantee that there will be much activity in developing the programme and the conference over the coming months!

7. Call for new stories and blogs for www.ipy.org

On www.ipy.org, we continue to track on-going IPY research activities and to feature stories on past, current and future polar issues. If you have IPY research or outreach program underway, or have an IPY story to share, please contact Dave Carlson ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) or Karen Edwards ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

8. Submit your metadata, win a trip

In cooperation with the Oslo 2010 conference, the IPY Data Management Sub-committee will soon announce an incentive programme to encourage IPY participants to submit their metadata. Each month for the next 6 to 8 months we will select at random the name of a person who has submitted IPY metadata. That person will win an Oslo stipend - free accommodation and reduced registration fees for the Oslo 2010 Science Conference. In March we will select from all the IPY metadata submitted one grand prize winner, in that case a full-expense (travel, accommodation and registration fees) trip to the OSC. Please watch www.ipy.org for more details.

9. Archiving materials

Please consider saving IPY documents, media, presentations, videos, emails, and other digital materials. The IPO with the Canadian IPY Legacy Office at the University of Alberta and Scott Polar Research Institute have developed a system for storing all these materials. The system supports item-by-item or batch uploads or submissions with an easy catalog process; it now needs contributions! We hope that many individuals and institutions will find this process useful and helpful! To contribute, or for more information, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

More details at:
http://ipy.arcticportal.org/index.php?option=com_k2&id=2090&view=item