The IAU 25^th General Assembly is about to happen!

By the time you read this report, the General Assembly will be in progress. This long IAU meeting, formally hosted by the National Committee for Astronomy (NCA) (of the Australian Academy of Science) in conjunction with the Astronomical Society of Australia, will take place in the period 13 - 26 July. The venue is the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre (SCEC) in beautiful Darling Harbour. The National Organizing Committee (NOC), (with Harry Hyland of James Cook University as the other Co-Chair and a significant representation from ATNF), and its subcommittees are working very hard in conjunction with ICMS Australasia Pty Ltd to provide a successful and exciting meeting, and we now have our fingers crossed that this will happen.

To organize a successful meeting comprising six Symposia, twenty-one Joint Discussions, four Special Sessions, Invited Discourses, and Working group, division/commission and ad-hoc meetings, not to mention an Astro Exhibition, set of daily and longer tours, and Women's Networking Luncheon, is no mean feat. Add to this a spectacular evening Reception and Opening in the Opera House on 15 July and the final `Party' on the 24th. And there's more all this will be complemented by a `Festival of Astronomy' for the public (public talks, a Schools Day organized by UNSW, Astronomy on the Go, Science in the Pub, and other events).

We have been extremely concerned that, as the result of the series of recent international events - the September 11 disaster, the war in Iraq, and now SARS, many astronomers would not travel to Sydney for the General Assembly. Consequently, we have been extremely pleased with the registration figures - by 28 May a total of 1861 people had registered for the meeting. A May tally of posters came to 2700 (including duplicate submissions)!

Results in other areas have also been pleasing. Rather late in the organization we agreed to have an astronomy exhibition (`Astro Expo'), with public access for four days in the period 18 - 21 July. It will be held in Exhibition Hall 5, next to the Convention Centre in which all the meetings will take place, and will share this hall with a communal area for the General Assembly participants, poster area, Internet café, theatrette and café. This late decision (less than a year before the meeting) presented an enormous challenge. With some involvement from one or two NOC members, ICMS has worked very hard against the clock to line up exhibitors, and by the end of May had a total of some 35 exhibitors from Australia and overseas. I had hoped that the Expo would provide a good opportunity for overseas and Australian universities with astronomy/science departments to take advantage of the opportunity to gain some publicity. However, I have been quite disappointed that apart from a handful of institutes the general Australian response has been cool. Despite this, I believe that the exhibition will be very successful.

The costs associated with hiring a world-class convention and exhibition centre for such a long period are high, and this was reflected in our early-registration fee of $880 (increased 10% by Goods and Services tax). Even with this fee level, a few months ago we were concerned that we might end up in debt by several hundred thousand dollars, a rather unpleasant prospect to say the least! Fortunately, helped by the number of registrations, our financial position has improved since then. However, the General Assembly budget set in 2002 included what I regarded as a very optimistic amount of $350K in revenue from sponsorships. Towards the end of last year, with no sponsorship money in sight (!), we engaged a professional group, DVA-Navion, for six months to seek appropriate sponsors. Fortunately, this move has resulted in some success $40K from CSIRO (to match $60K which had already been provided in kind), $10K plus $20K (in kind) from Connell Wagner, and more recent grants of $50K and $100K from the Australian Federal Government's Innovation and Access Programme (International Science and Technology). ICMS took over the sponsorship search after the contract with DVA-Navion ended. One of the government grants has presented us with a further challenge, because it involves adding to our Astro Expo an `Australia Pavilion' containing exhibits showcasing Australian industry. This is now being put together by ICMS.

The bottom line

You can read all about the program on the General Assembly website. Information can also be found in the IAU Information Bulletins IB 91, 92 and 93. After reviewing all the meetings and their programs, there is no way a reader could fail to be impressed with the efforts made by many people all over the world to make this meeting one of the best. Of course, with a meeting of this complexity, there are sure to be glitches during the meeting, and I hope that they will be minor and will not detract from your enjoyment of the meeting.

In retrospect, it is unfortunate that an NOC cannot have a `dry run' at organizing a large meeting of this sort, because there occur many unforeseen problems that would not be repeated. How were we to know that our on-line registration system, at which we worked so hard to make failsafe, would overload the ICMS computing system in the final hours of early registration? Or that our great abstract review system would fail us because of long computer access times as the number of submissions increased. Or that, for one reason or another, submitted registrations would go missing. On behalf of the organizers I apologize for these problems; we were not impressed when our system failed us, and we endeavoured to put things right as quickly as possible. When this meeting is over I will write a report of the meeting, and hopefully the organizers of the next General Assembly will be able to learn from our mistakes and avoid them.

In conclusion, have a great meeting!

John Whiteoak, ATNF Honorary Fellow &
Co-Chair, National Organizing Committee
(John.Whiteoak@csiro.au)