“A map tells you where you have been, where you are and where you’re going” – Peter Greenaway

I would add to the quote that a good conference enriches you about your past, present and future, enlightening future research pathways! The American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Conference is one of those conferences which I gained enormously. At AAG2026, I had the pleasure of presenting at my first conference presentation as a PhD researcher, on Nature-based Solutions for flood risk reduction in Hong Kong.

Standing in a room of geographers, I shared what I have been learning from my fieldwork last summer, including the interpretative variations of nature-based solutions across diverse stakeholders. I also presented evidence on governance, understanding factors leading to the evolution of the first official Hong Kong NbS Design Guideline.

Before the presentation, my Princeton PhD advisor Professor Eric Tate gave detailed feedback on my presentation, transforming my entire approach by re-focusing on #storytelling and explicitly linking findings back to research questions.

One of the best moments of the conference, however, was not in my session. I reunited with Professor Lin Hui, who led our undergrad geography field trip to Jiangxi in 2018 when I was at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Reuniting with Professor Lin, as well as fellow CUHK and Oxford researchers reminded me that academic communities are not merely institutional. Communities are made of people who appear across years and continents, often when you least expect them.

A few lighter notes, because geography is also joy. Dartmouth College remains the only Ivy League institution with a geography department. That’s why almost every year at AAG, Dartmouth hosts an me of the biggest AAG receptions! You can earn a free drink ticket by telling someone “one thing to prove you are a geographer.” I passed the test.

I left the conference grateful to the Water Resources Specialty Group (WRSG) for the session on contending the water governance gaps (especially Professor Andrew Adams, who is our session organizer and gave me valuable feedback on my abstract), to the broader geography community for their cross‑disciplinary energy, and to the Graduate Student Affinity Group (GSAG) board for the chance to serve on leadership as Vice Chair this year. Most of all, I left grateful for the ecosystem of us – building climate resilience from the ground up, one conversation at a time.