Voice of One Delegate
Sigrunn Johnsen, Francois Roure, Vlasta Dvorakova, John Brooks, Istvan Berczi and Stuart Harker, European Region.
The number of foreign members in AAPG is growing and similarly increasing the number of foreign delegates in the House. I, François Roure, from Rueil-Malmaison, France, former treasurer/secretary of the European Region, will describe my first contact with AAPG and my current role as an AAPG delegate.
I have been involved with AAPG since 1988. I became an Active member of the AAPG, in 1998, and have served as a delegate for the European Region, since 2004. For a number of years, I was a rather distant user of AAPG services, occasionally attending the annual meetings in the US, and a few international meetings. I went to conventions in Nice, Mexico, and Caracas. My involvement in AAPG increased, when David G. Howell, then at the USGS in Menlo Park, proposed that I coordinate the planning of an AAPG field seminar on the topic of “Petroleum and Tectonics in Mobile Belts”, in Piazza Armerina, Sicily. The seminar was successfully presented twice in1990 and 1992.
My involvement with these seminars as well as two post-meeting AAPG field trips, organized with Alain Villien and Michel Séguret, in the Pyrénées in 1988, and with Uk Valbona and Yzedin Sadikaj, in Albania, in 1995, gave me a better idea about how one person could serve the international community of explorationists beneath the umbrella of the AAPG. More recently, AAPG allowed me and Rudy Swennen to organize a Hedberg Conference, again in Sicily (in Mondello, near Palermo), focusing on “Fluid Flow, Tectonics, and Reservoir Appraisal in Foothills areas.”
Activity in the European region has been growing tremendously during the last few years, thanks to Sigrunn Johnsen and John Brooks, our past and current presidents. The first international meeting organized for the Region was held in Prague in 2004, organized by Vlasta Dvorakova (our current treasurer/secretary), and Juraj Francu. After another Hedberg Conference on Carbonates held in Mallorca last Spring, the European Region is quite busy again, preparing for the Athens Conference, to be held on November 18-21, 2007. We now benefit from the support of a regular Newsletter, edited by Carol Lucas, who also coordinates the evaluation of new member’s applications. It is important to mention, there is a new AAPG office at Imperial College in London. Steven Veal, Director of the London office, provides constant support for AAPG members on this side of the Atlantic.
Although my first contribution as an AAPG recruiter concerned outreach to French colleagues, I am constantly asked for information and help on “how to join AAPG,” by young colleagues from abroad that I encounter when traveling in the course of teaching or pursuing my research. These colleagues hail from many continents, including Europe, North Africa, South America, and the Middle-East. Magdalena Scheck-Wenderoth, of Task Force-6, of the International Lithosphere Program on Sedimentary Basins, and I try to promote small yearly international workshops involving young scientists as well as colleagues from the universities and companies. Our 2007 meeting will be hosted by AAPG Affiliated Society, MAPG, the Morroccan Association of Petroleum Geologists, in Marrakech, Morocco, October 28-31. This international conference, sponsored also by the African Region of the AAPG, and held during the “International Year of Planet Earth,” will surely be an excellent opportunity to recruit new members for AAPG.
- Katharine Lee Avary
- Appalachian Geological Society, Eastern Section, U.S.