Page 12 - i1052-5173-31-1

Letter from the GSA 2020

Connects Online General Chair

Dear attendees,

I’m sure you would have preferred to attend the meeting in person in Montréal, just as the Local
Organizing Committee and I would have loved to welcome you to our great city and showcase the
exciting geology of the region. It was clearly a disappointment to abandon the extensive planning
for an in-person conference, and the shift to an entirely online meeting presented many challenges.
Nevertheless, I would like to highlight the successes of the meeting, which included 225 technical
sessions, five Pardee Symposia, four Feed Your Brain lunchtime lectures, 17 short courses, four
virtual field trips, and 99 non-technical events. While the ongoing pandemic may have limited
participation, there were 2,798 presentations and 6,007 attendees registered for the conference.
I would like to offer our sincere appreciation to all of you for contributing to these successes
and finding the time to participate, despite the difficulties. Your patience and efforts in the face of
the logistical and technical stumbling blocks ensured that the meeting was a venue for productive
scientific exchanges and diffusion of cutting-edge science.
The Geological Society of America meeting this year offered many glimpses of the future of
virtual conferences, while also providing many lessons. It is inescapable that in the post-pandemic
world, virtual meetings will be more commonplace, not only because they allow us to significantly
reduce our carbon footprint, but also because they are more inclusive. For one, they allow people who
cannot travel to international conferences to contribute to the advancement of geosciences. The high
number of registered participants at GSA 2020 attests that this was the case this year. The reliance on
pre-recorded presentations may have caused some consternation among busy participants trying to
juggle their time and commitments, but this format also allowed all presenters the time and space to
craft their talks in advance, resulting in high-quality sessions across the board. The chats and panel-
ist discussions also democratized exchanges by allowing more people to share ideas in a respectful
way. Moreover, the Montréal meeting was exemplary in the diversity of participants and in the
number of sessions led with aplomb by early career researchers. What we all missed most, however,
was actively exchanging ideas with others. Whether they’ll be face-to-face or virtual, future meet-
ings will have to foster collaborative knowledge-building to a maximum because only by working
together will we be able to tackle the even more complex future scientific challenges. But that being
said, I do hope to see you all in person soon, perhaps next year in Portland and definitely in Montréal
for GSA Connects 2027!

Wishing you all to continue driving our science
while taking care of your health and that of others,

Félix Gervais
GSA 2020 General Chair
Associate Professor at Polytechnique Montréal

12 GSA Today | January 2021