Tomorrow marks the first full day of sessions for the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. AAAS (“triple A S”) is one of the world’s most influential science organizations, and publisher of the most widel- read research journal, Science. This year, the big AAAS shindig is in downtown Washington, DC, which means that yours truly will be there, covering as much of it as I can, on Facebook, Twitter and right here. The talks go from 8:00 to 6:00pm Friday to Monday, but might not make it through all of them: this is my first attempt at live tweeting/blogging a conference. Wish me luck – and fully-charged laptop batteries.

There are a ridiculous number of sessions to choose from covering everything from cutting-edge physics to brain science, climate change to communication. Since it is impossible to be in more than one place at a time (damn!), the only way to survive a conference like this is to prioritize. If you’ve been following this blog or @Danielle_Meitiv on Twitter, you won’t be surprised to hear that my top two priorities will be climate change and ocean issues (followed by science communication).

The AAAS meeting site has a scheduler where you can highlight the sessions I plan to attend, saving me from having to mark up and flip through the program book they give out at registration. (I’ll probably do that anyway, but it’s a start). Here are some of the sessions I’m looking forward to:

• Climate Change: Altering the Physics, Ecology, and Socioeconomics of Fisheries
• Science Without Borders and Media Unbounded: What Comes Next?
• The Science of Comedy: Communicating with Humor
• Cross-Border Responses to Global Challenges: Can Everybody Win?
• Science and Policy for Environmental Security in the Asia-Pacific Region
• Comparing National Responses to Climate Change: Networks of Debate and Contention
• Communicating Diversity in Science: Implications for Climate Change Denial
• Adapting to a Clear and Present Danger: Climate Change and Ocean Ecosystems
• In Hot Water: Rising Public Health Concerns from Changing Ocean Conditions
• If a Culture of Growth Is Unsustainable, What Should Change?
• Where Ocean Meets Land: Dynamic Shorelines in a Warming World

And those are just from the first two days…

Many of these sessions will overlap, so while I will no doubt be running from one end of the DC Convention Center to the other regularly, I won’t be able to get to all of them I’ll send regular updates to Facebook and Twitter, so if you’re not already following me in those two venues, get to it! Facebook: Danielle Meitiv, and Author Danielle Meitiv, @Danielle_Meitiv on Twitter.

If you’re attending AAAS, send me a tweet, or a note via Facebook, so we can meet!

Next week I’ll weigh in with a blog post with highlights from the conference. Stay tuned!

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