...we gave up on dinner to watch a car chase...

Immediately after recovering from my stomach bug (as referenced in my previous post), I went into overdrive.  The following weekend we were hosting an international workshop at our campus for the DIP (Deutsch-Israelische Projektkooperation) Stork Project.  It would be a meeting of German researchers from several cities and institutions and Israeli researchers from our lab as well as another one.  We are working on the stork project together, and the DIP is a big source of our funding.  This would be my first time meeting the whole team, and it wasn't until this meeting that I really understood how big the stork project is.  The goals of the meeting were to assess progress thus far and plan for the coming breeding season.  The three-day workshop was meant to be intensive, and just about a week before it started, while in the throes of the flu,  I found out that I was meant to give a presentation.

A large chunk of my presentation was easy.  I made a few slides with background information, highlighted my objectives, hypotheses, and predictions, and then discussed the methodology for my research.  I was also expected to present some results, though, and results were something I was lacking.  I spent the majority of the week (read 14 hours a day) making results.  I analyzed data that I had planned on saving until the spring, drew connections where I hadn't thought to draw them, and threw in a few graphs and charts.  Somehow, I pulled my presentation together, got the okay, and pulled it off!

The meeting started well.  Our Spanish counterparts chose not to come to the meeting due to the situation in Israel (although a cease-fire had been reached by that time), but everyone from Germany had arrived, we had eaten a delicious first dinner, and the first morning got off to a good start.  We had a fun "welcome" presentation, made a few introductions, and got underway.  By the time my presentation came around, some clashing opinions had begun to come out, but we'd had a lot of productive discussions and brainstorms.  I presented (within my time slot!!) and was able to answer all questions directed towards me.  My research proposal was received well (unlike some other proposed plans), and I was given the go-ahead to continue my work in the coming breeding season.

The documentary we watched.

After my presentation we heard a few more talks and then were supposed to end the day with dinner.  It was so serious and scientific and dedicated when we decided to forgo our dinner reservations and instead order in pizza so we could continue with plans for the upcoming field season.  It was so Israeli when instead of planning, we watched a documentary about one of the researchers in our group.  He and his father went on a stork chase!  They took a fully equipped car and followed a stork with a GPS transmitter through Europe and Israel on her way to Africa during the fall migration.  The documentary was hilarious even though it was in German, and a night that seemed like a loss (who gives up on dinner?!?!) turned out to be a fun one with pizza, beers and a movie.  The rest of the workshop was busy, and we fell behind schedule a bit.  We sacrificed some of the talks and presentations for the much needed planning time, but in the end we progressed well with our research plan and left as a much stronger team.  My first academic meeting was both fun and successful.  What more could I ask for?