From the Executive Office

By the time you read this column, the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting for 2012 will be history and the results will no doubt be bouncing around the Internet. The AAS is proud to help organize the annual meeting of the DPS when it is held in the US and support our largest Division to accomplish their goals. We have expanded and improved our support for all of our Divisions in the last several years, with what I think are very positive results. Our Divisions play a central role in our Society by bringing focus to specific areas of our diverse science. The annual meetings of our Divisions, some who meet with us, some on their own and some, occasionally, with other organizations, allow communities of specialists the time and space to share their results, build new collaborations and chart a course for exploration and discovery. If you are not a member of a Division, consider joining one. The cost is low for full AAS members and any member may join any Division. Full details are available on our web pages.

The Long Beach meeting in January is setting up to be a record-breaker. We had hundreds more abstracts submitted for this meeting than for the Austin meeting, so attendance should be higher and may break the 3000 barrier, typically only exceeded at our winter meetings in Washington, DC. This is a welcome result, as it means the community values AAS meetings. The program is carefully crafted by our Vice Presidents and organized by our talented meeting staff, but the core of our meetings is you, our members! We could not have a meeting if you did not show up, so thank you for registering and attending. If you have ideas on how to improve the meetings, just let one of your elected leaders or me know and we will take your ideas into consideration.

Our goal is to always improve, never letting “good-enough” be enough.

Annual membership renewal is under way and I want to point out that by renewing early, you save the Society considerable expense. We do not like losing members, so when people do not renew during the early part of the renewal process, we work hard to find them, communicate with them and bring them back into active membership status. Membership benefits are turned off early in the new year, so do not wait, renew today!