On June 20th 2016, Bill Dennison, Dave Nemazie, and I traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the next stakeholder workshop to develop the Guanabara Bay Report Card. We convened the workshop on June 23rd in neighboring Niteroi, a city across the Bay from Rio de Janeiro. There were some of the same participants as our first stakeholder workshop as well as a wider group of stakeholders from additional universities and municipal government offices.

What is the definition of retreat? We all immediately think of military retreats in battle. But, there are two other definitions of retreat that relate to our annual work retreat: • a quiet or secluded place in which one can rest and relax - this is what most people intend when they go on a retreat or retreat to a vacation spot. Work retreats can be restful and relaxing because they bring you out of your day-to-day work space and provide a new creative arena to focus on.

On Friday, June 10th, Judy O’Neil and I participated in the second annual Billion Oyster Projects Curriculum and Community Enterprise for Restoration Science (BOP CCERS) - Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education (STAM) Research Symposium on Governors Island.

The week of June 6th brought strong winds to the east coast along with the 2nd annual workshop meeting of Billion Oyster Projects Curriculum and Community Enterprise for Restoration Science (BOP CCERS) project members. This was a weeklong series of events and meetings in NYC that gave project leaders both a chance to reflect on the year's achievements and to tweak project goals for the third, and final year of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project.

I attended the biennial National Water Quality Monitoring Conference in Tampa, Florida from Monday, May 2nd through Friday, May 6th. This was my first time attending the conference and by the end, I realized it was a conference I want to attend many times again. The 2016 conference was held at the Tampa Convention Center, a large complex on the waterfront, with nearby hotels and restaurants for attendees.

After our first stakeholder workshop at INEA on Monday April 25th, Bill Dennison, Dave Nemazie, and I had to prepare for our expanded workshop of 200 people on Friday April 29th, at the Museum of Tomorrow. This meeting brought together stakeholders from all around Guanabara Bay, and served to not only discuss the report card, but also to talk about governance, management, and restoration in the Bay. The team outside the Museum of Tomorrow. Participants at the workshop.

This month, the Chesapeake Bay Program Creative Team hosted a one-day symposium on all things web for an audience of friends and colleagues. Known as WebStock, the annual event was revitalized last spring as a way for the Creative Team to introduce others to the work they do and the methods they use to do it. Indeed, participants gained an understanding of how the Creative Team can help them and how they can use the team’s own tools and processes to improve their work.

The Integration and Application Network (IAN) staff recently completed teaching a new course in Science Visualization. This course was part of the Marine-Estuarine-Environmental Science (MEES) Program through the University System of Maryland. Praxis, the word that Aristotle used to mean "thoughtful, practical doing", refers to the emphasis that this course had on developing the practical skills of science visualization.

This blog is part of the Basin Report Card Initiative: a partnership between the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) In March, Simon Costanzo and I traveled to Cambodia for the third workshop in the Linked Indicators for Vital Ecosystem Services (LIVES) Project, an initiative of the Luc Hoffman Institute. This five-day workshop brought us to the province of Kratie, a five-hour drive north of the capital, Phnom Penh.

After the first EcoHealth metrics workshop for the Texas Coast pilot project, Bill Dennison and I shared a shuttle to the airport with Porfirio Alvarez, from the University of Tabasco.