The final of AAPG Imperial Barrel Award (IBA) was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, on 17 – 19 May 2013. The Asia Pacific Region team was represented by the team of Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) from Indonesia. Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the U.S. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the city is known as “The Steel City” and “The City of Bridges”. The final presentation took place in David L. Lawrence Convention Center coincidentally with AAPG Annual Convention & Exibition (ACE) 2013 program.

The journey was started from 15 May as we departed from Soekarno–Hatta International Airport (CGK) at 5.45 am, transited on Singapore (SIN) – Seoul (ICN) – San Fransico (SFO) and landed to Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT). It took for about 28 hours of a long trip. We arrived at 11.58 pm, picked up by the Super Shuttle, and checked in Hampton Inn & Suites Pittsburgh-Downtown. The next morning, we were going for a walk around the downtown of Pittsburgh, looking around the landmarks and skyscrapers of the city. At 5.00 pm, we came to David L. Lawrence Convention Center for check in to Mike Mlynek and for all team “meet and greet” program to review the presentation schedule, IBA pins distribution, welcome greeting by IBA Committee (especially Mike Mlynek and Chuck Caughey), and meet the other IBA teams. Our schedule of presentation fell on Saturday, 18 May 2013, so we could rest for a while due to our jet lag. However, on the next day we take this chance to practice our presentation more.

On Saturday, May 18th, at 07.00 am we practiced for an hour before our presentation in room 408/409. Our turn had come at 8.00 am, and we kind of a little bit nervous at first but our advisor, Prof. Benyamin Sapiie, had encouraged us before entering room 403/404/405. There was a panel in the room with 9 judges and about 20 audiences. Our presentation took place through about less than 45 minutes interval, with 25 minutes presentation, less than 10 minutes of questions, and time slot for change over teams. We were doing our best yet we still need evaluation and learning from the presentation and the question session. However we were glad that the session going success over all. After the session done we visited Carnegie Science Center, the most visited museum in Pittsburgh, located in the Chateau neighborhood.

The next day on May 19th, there are IBA Course at the morning in room 306/307 and IBA Awards Ceremony at 3.00 pm which held in Spirit of Pittsburgh Ballroom at the Convention center followed then by the AAPG ACE Opening Session and Awards Ceremony with the convention started at 5.00 pm. The winners of IBA 2013 are University of Utah (The First Place), University of Oklahoma (The Second Place), and Sultan Qaboos University, Oman (The Third Place). The convention and exhibition were going on until Wednesday, May 22nd. We had Asia Pacific Region Meeting on Thursday, May 21th in Westin Convention Center which held by Peter Baillie. In the end, on May 23rd we checked out at 8.45 am, departed at 11.42 am from PIT then transited to Houston (IAH) – Moscow (DME) – Singapore (SIN), and arrived in Jakarta (CGK) at 8.25 am.

After all, it was such a great experiences for our team to participate the competition and convention in Pittsburgh. Thanks to our advisors, Benyamin Sapiie and Dwi Harso Nugroho, Adrienne Pereira, Peter Baillie, Mike Mlynek and Ginny Fern for the main help and support. Hopefully, the upcoming finalist of Asia Pacific Region will continue to fight and success to get our region become one of the winners.