Good evening, friends.
I end up "processing" all the FPAW registrations. And, no, I don't use AI (sorry, not sorry). What I do use is good ol' fashioned MS Excel and manual labor. Yes, it's a bit of a pain in the you-know-what. But, what it does give me is a really good idea of who's planning to attend our meetings, and where the registrants come from.
There are currently 131 registrants for the Fall 2026 FPAW Meeting. That's a pretty good number four weeks out. IMO, we'll end up with somewhere between 175-200 registrants for the meeting.
What's more impressive is that the In Person/Remote split is almost 50/50 right now, instead of the usual 30% In Person and 70% Remote. I attribute it to, as real estate experts are fond to state, "Location, location, location." And, I don't mean MITRE (although I'm plenty proud that my employer is hosting the meeting). Rather, I think it's all about being in the DMV (IYKYK).
And where, your inquiring minds might be wondering, are these 130+ people coming from? Well, I'm glad you asked. Here are the high level highlights.
Thirty (30, OMG!!) people with .gov email addresses (i.e., Feds) are registered, with almost half planning to attend in person (location, location, location). And it's not just the FAA and NOAA employees you'd expect - we have folks with dot.gov, gao.gov, nasa.gov and ntsb.gov email addresses on the list.
Twenty-two (22, holy cow|!) faculty and students from 12 institutions of higher learning (ERAU, OU, LU, OSU, FIT, OTU, UA-A, UGA, UM, UN-L, UND and WMU) have registered, almost half in person (you'll have to figure out the acronyms, several of which have multiple options)!
Eighteen (18, woo-hoo!!) folks who work for FFRDCs (MIT-LL, MITRE, NCAR) are planning to attend, more than half in person.
And then there are the one or two or three folks from the following alphabetically-listed organizations, half of whom are planning to attend in person: A3 Technology, ADB Safegate, ADF, Aeris, AeroWyld, AIAA, Alaska AIrlines, ALPA, Aviation Safety Technologies, AvMet Applications, Baron Weather, Bass Weather Services, BCI, Big Sky Weather Consulting, Campbell Scientific, Cisco, Continuum Dynamics, Delta Air Lines, DroneUp, E2A&B, FedEx, Five-Alpha, Flight Profiler, Garmin, Google, IBSS, Joby Aviation, Nav Canada (glad to see you!), NAWCAD, NEXA Capital Partners, Peraton, Pfizer, Runway 22, SayWeather, Southwest Airlines, Sporty's, STGC, Synoptic Data PBC, The OTUS Project, Tomorrow.io, Turbulent Aerospace, UASafe, United Air Lines, and the Vertical Flight Society.
Now there's a list of organizations interested in aviation weather!
Wouldn't it be nice, perhaps even strategically important, to be there with these folks, mingling at breaks and lunch and following the conclusion of each day's sessions? Shouldn't you be there with us? I certainly think so.
So, there you have it. Register now, preferably in person, here.
Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair