Dear AbGradCon participants,

Here is the latest installment of your monthly AbGradCon email updates.
This email will address the following topics:

1) Mt. St. Helens field trip
2) Poster and talk details
3) Second Life
4) Public event
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1) Mt. St. Helens field trip: Due to the overwhelming desire expressed by
most conference participants to attend the Mt. St. Helens field trip, we
have made special arrangements regarding the field trip portion of the
conference, and now ALL participants will be going to Mt. St. Helens. Due
to permit restrictions, participants will be divided into groups. Twenty
participants will enter the devastated area itself, and other groups will
travel to different destinations on the mountain. More details soon!

2) Poster and talk details: We would like to remind all participants that
posters will be due on July 10th. Please email them as a JPEG file with
the subject "ABGRADCON poster" to Frank Ireton at fireton@mac.com. The
rationale behind this is that we need to load them to the virtual
conference site and this takes a little time. Remember to please use
standard nomenclature when naming the file: AGC09(lastname).JPEG.

IMPORTANT: For both talk and poster presenters, please remember that
there will be no "introductory" talks this year, so please keep jargon to
a minimum and keep your multidisciplinary audience in mind, and be sure
to emphasize the astrobiological significance of your work.

3) Second Life: There will be a "meet 'n greet" on Second Life at the
AbGradCon Second Life event location in early July. Graphic specialists
have done a great job creating a virtual conference site for us: check
out the screen-shot at http://tinyurl.com/abgradconSL. More details soon!

4) Public event: For our public event during AbGradCon, we will have a
debate between professors Jim Kasting and Peter Ward in "The Battle of
the Goddesses: Medea vs. Gaia (A debate on the role of life on the
habitability of Planet Earth)" on Saturday evening, July 18!

As always, please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

See you in July!
Cheers,
The AbGradCon organizing committee.

Dear AbGradCon participants,

This is just a reminder that all travel receipts for those traveling
within the US are due tomorrow (May 15th). Please forward your flight
information with the subject header "TRAVEL RECEIPT" to this email
address, and we will reimburse you at the conference. Please also be sure
to send your t-shirt size to Sanjoy (sanjoy@u.washington.edu) by
tomorrow.

Thanks, and we look forward to seeing you in July!

Best,
the AbGradCon organizing committee.

Dear AbGradCon participants,

Welcome to your monthly AbGradCon email update! This email will address
the following topics:

1) Reminder on travel arrangements
2) T-shirts
3) Important poster and talk guidelines and deadlines
4) Second Life
5) Banquet speaker confirmed

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1) Travel arrangements
With the conference being two and half months away, we would like to
remind you to please submit your travel receipt by May 15 to
abgradcon09@gmail.com, with the subject heading: TRAVEL RECEIPT. You will
be reimbursed by check during the AbGradCon.

For international travelers, Please contact Mr. Young Kim
youngk@u.washington.edu by May 15, with the subject “ABGRADCON
international travel." Mr. Kim will arrange your flight.


2) T-shirts
Yes! We will have AbGradCon themed T-shirts. Please send your t-shirt
size by May 15 to Sanjoy: sanjoy@u.washington.edu.


3) Important poster and talk guidelines and deadlines
Poster Presenters:
This year, because of our efforts to stream the conference virtually in
worlds beyond the location of the conference itself, please have your
poster ready by
July 10 and email them as a JPEG file with the subject "ABGRADCON poster"
to Frank Ireton at fireton@mac.com. Dr. Ireton has kindly accepted to be
our Second Life liaison.

Also, to facilitate keeping track of your documents, please use standard
nomenclature when naming the file: AGC09(lastname).JPEG. As in all
posters, keep the text to a minimum and make text large enough to be
readable without squinting.

During the actual poster session, the poster boards will be 32 inches x
40 inches (81 cm x 102 cm), so please keep your posters within those
limits.

All poster presenters will be giving a 2 minute talk (2 minutes sharp!),
so please prepare a slide or two to present as well.

Talk presenters:
Don't forget that you will be attending an interdisciplinary astrobiology
conference. Such talks are very different than talks that you give among
your peers at specialized conferences.
As such, please keep jargon to a minimum. Remember to tie your talks to
astrobiology; this may seem an obvious statement, but we have all seen
supposed astrobiology talks that fail to do so. This year’s AbGradCon
will NOT have "Astronomy 101" or "Geology 101" presentations, so please
assume that your audience is intelligent but has little to no background
in your topic.

4) Second Life
Explore a test site for what the poster session might look like!
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lunar%20Exploration%20Island/164/95/54
This link will take you through all the steps to get a second life
account. It will take at most 5 minutes to start viewing posters in the
virtual world! See the email attachment for an image to show you how to
navigate.


5) Banquet speaker confirmed
Dr. Monika Kress of San Jose State University has kindly agreed to be our
guest speaker at the banquet. You can learn more about Monika here:
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty_and_staff/faculty_detail.jsp?id=569

As always, please feel free to contact us at this email address if you
have any questions or concerns.

See you soon!

Best,

The AbGradCon Organizing committee.