We finally made it in! Just the walk back to the first meeting was fairly impressive. Most of the day, these ottomans were full of people conferring, resting, shmoozing.
Just past the elevator was this little corner for a “people’s seat.” Around the corner to the left are the big rooms for the plenary sessions.
The pavilions are fairly ornate: one woman was dancing in traditional dress in the Indonesia pavilion in the middle of the day.
This was right at 8 am, before the crowds. Much of the day, it’s all a little overwhelming and high stimulation.
Poland is pushing a “just transition” from coal to a green economy, but as with this exhibit, there seems to be more coal than green in the mix just now.
Still, Saadiq and I learned in the Food Loss and Waste side event that the apples given out freely are all “rescued” (from destruction on the basis of imperfection).
The RINGO meeting at 9 am was larger than I expected (about 100 people in the audience), and it was nicely organized and implemented. This was only about half the panel, a few minutes before the start of the session.
Yes, all the exhibits and pavilions are a lot to take in – a bit of a maze at times and sometimes hard to find something you saw before.
Have you found the meeting of the higher ed subset of the RINGOs? That felt more focused and manageable to me – the RINGO grouping itself is pretty broad.
Is there a pavilion for each country? What did they say at that session?
Not for every country: that would be 197 pavilions. Too much space! The richer countries seem to have the big pavilions I took photos of. There are also smaller booths that seem less expensive. Some countries have booths instead of pavilions. I’ll try to post a picture of some of those tomorrow.