While the meeting is now complete, presenters still have an opportunity to share their work!  Extended abstracts are a great way to provide additional exposure for any presentation—oral or poster.

If you plan to submit an extended abstract, please do so no later than Sunday, 9 December 2012.  New extended abstracts will be posted online in the weeks following the deadline.

Thank you for considering the submission of an extended abstract.

If you are a meeting attendee who wishes to provide feedback on this year’s annual meeting, please do so by Tuesday, November 6th.  All attendees should have received a link to the survey via e-mail during the week of October 22nd.  If you did not, please contact assist@nwas.org

We thank you in advance for your feedback.

At each annual meeting, students (undergraduate and graduate) make known their wishes to be in competition for these awards when they submit their abstracts. Members of the WAF Committee review each presentation and recommend their choices of the best to the NWA President for approval. The President awards the students with a congratulatory letter, a cash stipend, and a complimentary NWA membership for the following year.

Sam Ng, chair of the NWA WAF Committee announced the winners of the best student presentations for the 2012 NWA Annual Meeting in Madison, WI.

Best Undergraduate Student Poster Presentations:

• 1st Place: William A. LaForce, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI. Subject: Comparison of Two Forecasts for Tornadoes Associated with Cold-Core 500-mb Lows: Surprise and Bust – with Dr. Martin A. Baxter
• 2nd Place: Brian Crow, University of Missouri at Columbia, Columbia, MO. Subject: Forecast Assessment of Two Challenging Lake-Effect Snow Events in the Eastern Great Lakes Region – with Neil Laird and David Zaff
• 3rd Place: Jonathan Labriola, RSMAS University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL. Subject: Prediction of Tropical Cyclogenesis using Operational, Statistical, and Dynamical Models – with Sharanya J. Majumdar

Best Graduate Student Poster Presentations:

• 1st Place: William Line, CIMSS/SSEC/University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI. Subject: Future Improvements to Very-short-range Forecasts of the Pre-convective Environment Using Operational Geostationary Satellite Observations – with Ralph Petersen, Robert Aune and Richard Dworak
• 2nd Place: Agnes Lim, CIMSS/SSEC/University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI. Subject: Assimilation of AIRS Radiances using GSI/WRF for Short Term Regional Forecasts – with Jim Jung, Allen Huang and Steve Ackerman
• 3rd Place: Jason Apke, University of Nebraska – Lincoln, Lincoln, NE. Subject: Evaluation of the GOES-R Proving Ground Convective Initiation Nowcasting Products in the Plains – with Mark R. Anderson, Dan Nietfeld, Casey Griffin and Adam Taylor

Best Undergraduate Student Oral Presentation:

• Dawn P. Wedig, University of North Carolina – Asheville, Asheville, NC. Subject: An Evaluation of Convective Warning Utilization by the General Public – with Christopher M. Godfrey, P. Wolf, M. K. Goldsbury and J. A. Caudill

With the 37th annual meeting of the National Weather Association now complete, we must now say goodbye to Madison, but not the lessons learned and relationships developed here.  In the coming weeks, NWA members will have access to audio recordings of most presentations.  Many of the presentation files are already available, and more will become available in the coming days.

Pulling off a meeting of this magnitude is no small feat and there are a lot of people to thank.  While it is nearly impossible to highlight the contributions of all, I would like to highlight a few special volunteers.  First and foremost, Lee Cronce and Gary Wade did an amazing job as program co-chairs, helping to build this program for over two years.  Jeff Craven organized a thought-provoking town hall meeting where attendees listened to the weather information needs of our decision-making users.  Christina Crowe provided and executed a sound vision for our organization’s first ever women’s luncheon.  And Kevin Lavin and Brad Herold worked extensively collecting presentations at the speaker check-in table.  In addition, approximately a dozen student and industry volunteers helped run the Audio/Visual equipment to provide a quality meeting experience.

We hope that you can join us for the 38th annual meeting in Charleston, South Carolina.  Know that the NWA will be working in the interim to assure all members have the opportunity to attend and contribute.

Farewell from Wisconsin,

Jordan Gerth
Program Chair

The 37th annual meeting of the National Weather Association is underway and, through the steadfast support of many volunteers, has overcome the adversity that has resulted from the significantly decreased presence of the National Weather Service.

I would like to take this time to thank the meeting attendees for their patience as many of the originally scheduled talks from NWS employees have been presented remotely.  Those remote presenters have also demonstrated exceptional flexibility and commitment for adapting to the situation at hand.  The program committee would like to continue to encourage those original presenters who cannot attend in person to contact their session chairs and present remotely.

A reminder to those remote presenters to complete the speaker authorization form and submit it to the NWA following the directions on the form.

The presentations from the meeting are making their way online at the nwas.org meeting page, and recorded versions will be available to NWA members in the near future, pending authorizations.  Hopefully this will bring more exposure to the discussions we have been having in Madison.

Make no mistake — there is no substitute for the physical presence of all members of the weather enterprise, and hopefully the situation in Madison will not recur at NWA meetings in the future.  Despite advances in technology, face-to-face interaction is still a necessity for developing professional relationships and building connections across our communities.

Best,

Jordan Gerth
Program Chair

All oral presenters are advised to notify the speaker check-in table that they will present in person, at least 24 hours prior to their talk time, even if their presentation is not complete.  If this is not possible, please touch base with your session chair as soon as possible.  This is particularly important for NOAA employees.

This will assist the program committee in locating openings in the agenda.

We understand and sympathize with presenters who are unable to attend in person for circumstances not within their control.

All NOAA/NWS presenters should have received an e-mail about the contigency plan for those who cannot attend in person.

NWA 2012 is aware of the unfortunate travel authorization decision of October 5, 2012.

We are encouraging oral presenters to join via GoToMeeting to give their presentation in lieu of withdrawing.  There is no fee associated with remote presentation.

Virtual attendance will not be possible.

If you are NOAA/NWS employee who was planning to present a poster at the NWA Annual Meeting in Madison, but are no longer able to attend, we are providing this display option.

Ship your poster, so that it arrives by noon Tuesday, to:

Hilton Hotel

9 East Wilson Street

Madison, WI 53703

(608) 255-5100

Attention: Guest Steve Harned

We will display the poster for a minimum of 8 hours.

If you would like the poster returned to you, please include a completed return shipping label. The NWA is unable to pay poster shipping costs, so please include the shipping account number on the return label.

Then send an email to: nwanews@nwas.org to notify us of the shipment.

If a poster has already been shipped to a conference hotel, we would be happy to retrieve it and post it. Just let us know which of the conference hotels it is located at, and contact the hotel to give them permission to release it to Steve Harned or a NWA representative. Send an email to nwanews@nwas.org with your name, contact information and the hotel name. If you wish to have it returned to you, provide us with a shipping account number, delivery address, your name and phone number.

We appreciate the hard work and time you put into making the NWA Annual Meeting a great sharing and learning experience. We wanted to offer this option, so that you can showcase your work to those attending the meeting.

As many of you know Twitter is THE way to get the latest fastest breaking news, but did you know that Twitter is very useful and popular at conference.  This year’s NWA conference hash tag is #NWAS12.  But what good does a conference hash tag do?  Well, it lets people carry one conversations with each other while they are at the conference.  In addition many people “live tweet” a conference using the conference hashtag.  This allows people who aren’t able to attend the conference to get to see some of the highlights from some of the presenters.   In the past it was sometimes difficult to follow what what was tweeted and by whom.   This year the NWA Social Media team will try and experiement in Twitter visualization.  At the following page you will be able to see (at least) the last 1,500 tweets that have been sent with the #NWAS12 tag.  By clicking on each node of the diagram you will be able to see all the tweets from that person.  You can even click on a button and the tweets will display in the order and timeliness that they were sent.  We hope you enjoy this unique way to see your tweets.

http://hawksey.info/tagsexplorer/?key=0Agv4Epc567okdHZNUVAtMTVub1lDLTRNdzZ6YTlHWXc&sheet=oaw

Interested in the spreadsheet that populates the visualization?  You can view via this link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Agv4Epc567okdHZNUVAtMTVub1lDLTRNdzZ6YTlHWXc&single=true&gid=82&output=html

If you haven’t checked out the variety of social media links and apps available to keep you plugged in for the 2012 NWA Annual Meeting, we encourage you to do so. Shown below is the 2012 NWA Annual Meeting Social Media Guide.  If you have a smart phone, check out the agenda Bloodhound app!  Also the social media bootcamp sessions will be interactive.  If you do not already have these apps on your phone load the Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and Flickr Apps.  If you do not have an account with these sites, set one up, so you are ready to go at the conference. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask one of the social media committee members for help and advice!

Diane Cooper, Tiffany Sunday, Tim Brice, Brad Panovich, Tim Oram and David Fischer will be attending the conference.

Also if you have any questions, Please feel free to send them to us via Facebook or Twitter. For tweet your questions  and comments using the hashtags #nwas12 or #asknwa.

The NWA Social Media Committee is looking forward to seeing  everyone at the 2012 Annual Meeting!!