GSOC Goes Online with Lectures and Meetups after COVID

In February and March we all thought that this coronavirus wave would burst over us and be done in a couple of months, and then we’d all go back to normal. Meanwhile GSOC President Sheila Alfsen had been conferring with the March 8 GSOC Annual Banquet speaker David Montgomery, who told her that he had been in and out of the SEATAC airport several times the week preceding the banquet and might have been exposed to the virus. They reluctantly concluded that the banquet needed to be postponed. The decision was accepted by the GSOC Board of Directors and proved to be prophetic. Within hours of the decision the University of Washington closed, and within a week it became clear that to combat this highly contagious virus homes and businesses in the Pacific Northwest were going to have to go into a quasi-quarantine state for awhile. But we still entertained hopes of returning to normal sooner than later. With great reluctance the GSOC board also decided to try meeting via this new meeting platform called Zoom. A couple of the board members had tried it and thought it might be easy enough to try for board meetings, but the consensus was that our membership would not be willing to see an online lecture, and it would be technically difficult. So, we cancelled the lecture for April and crossed our fingers.

Well, it’s the end of May now and here we all are and the coronavirus has been slowed but has not gone away. With vaccines still a long way from being available, it looks like this year is going to be a bit surreal. Things are starting to open up a bit, and strategies are being tried to get as much of the economy going as possible while minimizing widespread disease and death, but as far as public geology lectures and field trips go this year is looking like a big fizzle. But wait, what about those Zoom board meetings?

Well, the GSOC board started slowly with a practice session using Zoom in late March and then met for real in April on our usual date. The meeting was successful, and the more distant board members liked the fact that they were not having to drive for hours to attend the meeting. By then key people were getting a handle on videoconferencing and public online meetings. Our president Sheila Alfsen got up to speed using Zoom rather quickly and agreed to give an online talk on April 9 to the Tualatin Valley Gem Club entitled “Mt. St. Helens – Then and Now,” The lecture, with Zoom meeting technical improvements, was reprised for the local chapter of AWG (Association for Women Geoscientists) and is now available for viewing through a link from the GSOC website. This lecture turned out to be a success and was well attended. The next video project was an online GSOC Meetup lecture on April 18 called “Assembling Oregon’s Geology,” which Sheila presented and with our Communications Director Paul Edison-Lahm hosting the meeting for GSOC. Once again the lecture went well and was well attended.

So then it was time to try a formal GSOC Friday night lecture, and paleontologist Dr. William Orr, who has given many lectures for GSOC over the last several years and is one of our favorite speakers, agreed to speak. His topic, “Faking Fossils for Fun and Profit (The Lying Stones of Marrakech),” was presented on May 8. We hope that those of you who attended enjoyed the lecture and the Q & A session following. We hope to bring a number of these online talks to the membership this year and hope that you will attend, learn from, and enjoy them. Our June lecturer will be Dr. Scott Burns, who is also a society favorite and quite a popular lecturer in Portland and elsewhere. Dr. Orr is also planning a few more online lectures for this summer and we will announce them as the information is finalized.

Not only is GSOC working to get online, but a number of sister organizations are doing so as well. AWG, COGS (Central Oregon Geoscience Society) and IAFI (Ice Age Floods Institute) are presenting online lectures. And Nick Zentner of Central Washington University has been doing his “Nick at Home” broadcasts live on his YouTube channel since March 17.

If you’ve never attended a Zoom meeting, you can do so using a smartphone or desktop or laptop. A video camera and mic are helpful but not essential (your smartphone has all of these features embedded). You will need to load the software onto your device. Questions can be asked from your mic or the chat feature of the Zoom software, and GSOC meetings include a chat moderator who facilitates this feature for our attendees. We recommend that you practice having a meeting with someone before the lecture, so you are familiar with how to use the software.

We’re waiting to see how things work out this summer, and perhaps get a day-long field trip together if it seems safe in late summer or early fall. So…until we meet again, stay tuned!

---