Case Study - Keynote PCO

INQUA 2019
20th INQUA Congress

Executive Summary

IQUA (Irish Quaternary Association) has been the very proud organiser of the 20th INQUA congress in Dublin in 2019. This is the International Congress on the Quaternary, our current geological period, and it was the largest INQUA congress to date with 2305 (56% male, 44% female) delegates from 75 countries. The international bid began in 2012 and was won for Dublin in 2015 at the preceding congress in Nagoya, Japan.

Conference Overview

The Congress was held at the Convention Centre Dublin and the professional conference organiser employed to assist with the organisation and hosting of the event was Keynote PCO Ltd, a Dublin based specialist company. There were 139 sessions convened including 1185 oral presentations and 1476 posters. In addition, there were 6 plenary lectures by invited guests and a set of lunchtime presentations given by the INQUA medal winners with a well-received special presentation on ‘Quaternary Mars’ taking place on the final day.

The flawless timetabling and organisation of this volume of presentations took a lot of care and patience by a number of people in IQUA and Keynote Ltd staff working in close collaboration in the months before and during the Congress. There was an extremely good take-up for the fieldtrip programme which ran in tandem with the Congress meeting. 585 delegates attended 22 pre-, mid- and post-Congress fieldtrips to all corners of the island of Ireland (for which the field guides can be purchased below) and several locations in Britain thanks to the excellent support of the QRA.

This level of success for the Congress could not have been achieved without the support of all our sponsors that include Science Foundation Ireland, Geological Survey Ireland, Geological Survey of Northern Ireland and Failte Ireland and many years of work by members of the Local Organising Committee, Keynote PCO Ltd, all the fieldtrip organisers and many contributors to fieldtrip success including accommodation and other services providers, the IQUA members who volunteered at the Congress and the staff of the Convention Centre Dublin.

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