A teleconference with the participation of members of the Organizing Committee and the Scientific Organizing Committee of the SPARC General Assembly was held on 21^st July at 1 pm UTC. Fangli Qiao and Yajuan Song from the First Institute of Oceanography (host of the Asia hub), and Jose Santos and Qian Zhao from the ICPO participated in the meeting.

Stefanie Kremser (SPARC IPO) on behalf of the leads of the 3 hubs: Andrew Charlton-Perez (University of Reading, UK), Yaga Richter (NCAR/UCAR, Boulder, USA) and Jose Santos (CLIVAR, Qingdao, China) presented a brief update on where we are with the organization of the SPARC General Assembly.

Abstract submissions

The Abstract submissions are officially closed but the submission form is still open. As discussed, this will allow anyone from China who would like to submit an abstract to do so. At this stage, we have no plan of taking this down but please note, that all abstracts that are submitted now will most likely be considered as poster presentations rather than talks as we are in the process of viewing all submitted abstracts and deciding who gets a talk and who a poster. This is now required as we will need to put together a programme for the event. 

Registration

Registration for the SPARC GA is open and we have received 4 registrations for Qingdao so far. Members were encouraged to advertise the call for registration within their networks if possible. There is a poster/flyer for this purpose.

Website

The SPARC GA website is up and running and members were requested to have a look and let the leads know if there is anything that requires any changes. We would also appreciate any information that we could put on the Qingdao hub page for the delegates to find their way around or any hotel recommendations that you can provide.

Programme

We put together a very rough draft programme that outlines the slots for poster and oral session.

Technical side of things

For the SPARC GA we will use an online platform called 'Microsite' which will show the programme, list information about the speakers, show the links to Zoom etc. The Microsite has been set up and populated with some test links.

It is plan to organized another teleconference in the next few weeks. In the meantime, we request everyone involved to help with the advertising of the GA whenever possible.