This week I'm in the Washington, DC area, herding cats… chairing a NASA Sample Acquisition and Handling Workshop, at NASA Goddard in Greenbelt, MD. I'm responsible for most of the invitation list, the agenda and process flow, for welcoming and smoothing and timekeeping and boundary-setting. As well as schmoozing, MC'ing, asking questions to stimulate discussion, and keeping the group's attention with bad puns and jokes during segues between sessions and events. Monday night, I hosted the workshop dinner...
It is a small meeting, only 35 people… half of what my co-chair at NASA Headquarters and I had originally planned. But the fiscal cliff and sequestration has made it very hard to get travel authorizations, and so the in-house NASA component is mostly missing, apart from a few JPL folks. Still, we have good representation from industry and academics and a couple of internationals.
Today is the third and last day, then I head home tomorrow after a week spent back East.
