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Concluding Remarks
GA: I just want to take a moment to just make a couple of quick remarks, because we’ve just— If you’re like me, you must be exhausted. We crammed as much as we possibly could into an evening and two days. Deprived you of caffeine. (Laughter) Didn’t allow you to get up and use a restroom. All so that we could fit as many things as we did into this event. I want to start by just acknowledging that we’re so appreciative for all of the presenters—all of the people who came from all over to engage in this exercise with us. We had an idea that it was the right time, and that we wanted to do something kind of different and original. And all of us are aware of what your schedules are like, because they’re like ours—and there never seems to be time to do these kinds of things. And, yet, I think it’s so important, and I always end up learning an enormous amount. Two things I learned that were very striking today was—one of the things—when Judy Blake spoke about developing this common language, to be able to speak about genomics and what we’re learning in these widely different species, struck me as something that will probably be enormously important to all of us. And, yet, it was just part of so much that we were learning. Another thing that I learned today was that farmers like to be called "producers." (Laughter) It really struck me. You know, the only producers I know work for the "CBS Morning Show," and I never— You know, I’ll never look at them in the same way. (Laughter) But, in all seriousness, I learned a great deal from hearing, you know, what people had to say—how they viewed their different disciplines; how they viewed what their contributions are to conservation. Two things strike me. One is, really, in a sense, how humble conservation geneticists are. Because every one of them started their presentations, or their work, by acknowledging that, you know, this was a small component, or it wasn’t the most important thing in conservation, or the only thing in conservation. Of course, what I’m trying to do is really wrap that around the fact that constantly pacing outside my office every day are legions of field biologists waiting for us to work on their projects. So there seems to be something of a disconnect. I would, once again, just like to say I hope that the audience—and I hope that my fellow presenters—got as much out of this exercise as I did. And one of the things we’re going to try to do is really capture that in the edited volume that will result from this work. And if we can capture just a small bit of, I think, what happened here over the last couple of days, it will be a very valuable contribution to the field of conservation genetics. With that said, I’d like to invite Eleanor Sterling up, to provide the thank-yous. (Applause) ES: C’mon, George. You can stand up here—it’s not very long. The other thing I wanted to say about capturing the essence of what we’ve done today. The Center, with the symposium series, actually tries to take the information that we gather—and the energy we get from these specialists—and bring it as far afield as possible. So not only are we doing an edited volume afterwards, but we have this Web forum—which I hope many people have visited the URL’s in your program. But we’re going to continue to try to take this information to a broader public. And if anybody has any more suggestions for how we can do that-—Traditionally, in the past, we’ve worked with selected professional groups—especially teachers—to have them gain access to this information, in a form that’s of use to them. So I have all these thank-yous. And, again, as with Rob, I really hope I don’t forget anybody. One of the things I really wanted to highlight here was, I’d like to thank you all for coming and for sticking it through—you in the audience. There are some people in the audience who, in fact, made it here all the way from Uzbekistan, China, Pakistan. They came, specifically, for this. Which is a little bit of a testament to Fiona Brady’s organizational skills—in getting the information out about the conference, and then dealing with all of the logistics of you all, plus visas for people like the folks that came from afar. The entire staff from the Center was phenomenal. Everything that you see, that seems to be working like clockwork, is, in fact, not. It’s a bunch of mice running fast—in the middle of the night, a lot. All the technical expertise that Tony brings to us is phenomenal. I’d like, also, to take a moment to thank Eric and Janet in the AV booth. They got a lot of flak today, and they were, in fact, the ones that were constantly—(applause)—making things run smoothly. The Wildlife Conservation and The American Museum of Natural History development staff were very instrumental, as well as the administration in this, and staff of The Science Resource Center. The Web forum was, in fact, designed, and written, and edited, and put up, by three hardworking graduates and postdocs—Mary Egan, Cathy Lehn and Daniella Calcagnoro—and we’d like to thank them, as well. Did I forget anybody? GA: No. ES: All right. Don’t forget your coats on the way out. Definitely take your coats with you if you try to walk around the Museum and get your coat later on. Somebody will have sold it by then. So thank you very much for coming. We very much appreciate it, and we look forward to you coming next year, to our marine symposium. (Applause) # # # # |