Rewards Of Careful Conference Planning Are Well Worth The Effort

The Effort Author: Ricki Lewis It's little wonder that scientific conference planners say they must begin preparations months, and even years, before the big event. Planning a scientific conference is an enormous undertaking. While arranging for a cozy gathering of a few dozen scientists can usually be handled by a professor, student helpers, and an able administrative assistant, some conferences are so huge that dozens of companies, and hundreds of individuals, become involved in planning and running the show. Massive Effort: Radiology Society executive director Delmar Stauffer runs a 60,000-attendee meeting, the "world's largest." Delmar Stauffer heads "the world's largest medical meeting." He is executive director of the Radiology Society of North America and plans its annual meeting in Chicago, which draws more than 60,000 radiologists and scientists. He must account for 370,000 square feet of exhibit space and a million square feet of meeting space, as well as deal with 600 trucking companies and 52 hotels. "The planning officially begins 18 months out," he says. Stauffer is assisted in this major undertaking by 90 permanent staff and 560 volunteers from the organization. In addition, these people "have their work augmented by contracts with consultants and vendors," he explains. Encore, Encore: Peter Verity got a standing ovation from attendees at his 1995 DOE ocean meeting. The rewards of nurturing a scientific conference can be well worth the effort, according to those who have done so. Peter Verity, a professor of oceanography at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Savannah, Ga., learned this when he hosted 70 scientists at the annual meeting of the ocean margins program of the Department of Energy Sept. 4-7, 1995-his first effort at conference planning. At the close of the meeting, attendees gave the planning team a standing ovation. "People said it was the best meeting they'd ever been to," Verity recalls. Attendees hailed the seamless organization, but they also enjoyed the unusual social events-an opening cocktail party at an aquarium and a closing oyster roast, catered by the institute staff. "This homey touch was especially appreciated by the scientists who travel a lot," Verity says. Arthur Silverstein, a professor, emeritus, of ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, studies meetings as a barometer of scientific progress. He cites conferences as one of four criteria for establishing a new subdiscipline of science. The others are a journal devoted to the area, a society, and establishment of academic departments. "Meetings are important in the development of a discipline, in introducing new ideas and defining recent progress," he says. Silverstein chose immunology as a field to use to study the importance of meetings. With Thomas Soderqvist, a professor of life science at Roskilde University in Denmark, he examined meetings in immunology from 1951 to 1972 (A. Silverstein, T. Soderqvist, Cellular Immunology, 158:1-28, 1994). This was a pivotal period in immunology, when formerly disparate interests-such as transplantation and allergies-began to come together. "You can tell when a subdiscipline joins the mainstream by meetings," Silverstein observes. He offers transplantation as an example. In the first half of the century, transplants were primarily the province of surgeons and some zoologists, who paid little attention to how the immune system might respond to transplanted tissue. That changed. "Slowly, in the 1950s, transplant scientists began to pay attention to immunology, and immunologists began to pay attention to transplant scientists," he explains. He shows in the Cellular Immunology paper how the titles of meetings chronicle this scientific exchange. Today the subjects of meetings continue to reflect new directions in life science. A coalescing similar to that in immunology was apparent at a 1994 meeting entitled "The Evolution of Animal Body Plans." The conference, which addressed how animal embryos develop parts in the right places, was hosted by the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology at Indiana University in Bloomington. "We had a diverse mix of disciplines-paleontologists, developmental biologists, and molecular biologists," recalls Rudolf Raff, a professor of biology and director of the institute, who planned this and other conferences. Increased understanding of the molecules that orchestrate animal development have united these groups in recent years. "A new synthesis for macroevolution is developing, and people were willing to make the mental stretch beyond their specialized disciplines," he adds. Hosting a conference brings prestige to an institution, notes Herbert Voigt, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and department chairman at Boston University. He and Ken Lutchen, associate professor and meeting cochairman, planned the Biomedical Engineering Society annual meeting, held Oct. 6-8, 1995. "When I became department chairman in July 1992, part of my three-year plan was to bring a national conference to BU," Voigt says. The conference was a success, drawing 800 attendees. The earliest known scientific meetings date to the 17th century, sponsored by the Royal Society of London and the Académie des Sciences in Paris, according to Silverstein. The number of meetings has exploded in this century, as is evidenced by the long lists of meeting announcements in the back pages of contemporary scientific journals, he adds. Today, scientific conferences are sponsored by government agencies, private foundations and research facilities, scientific societies, and academic institutions. Often small groups of enterprising scientists bring their ideas for a conference to these sources. Doing it For Less: William Whelan, organizer of the Bio/Technology Winter Symposia, says private companies drive up conference costs. More meetings means competition for attendees. "Ten or 20 years ago, we had little competition, and that was from not-for-profit organizations. What has happened now is that private companies have grown up who are obviously in it for the money, as reflected by their registration fees," says William J. Whelan, director of the Miami Bio/Technology Winter Symposia, sponsored by the University of Miami and Bio/Technology magazine (Nature Publishing Co. Inc., London), to be held February 10-14. For example, a conference competing with Whelan's, BioEast '96-run by Bethesda, Md.-based BioConferences International-was held in Washington January 15-18, and charged $785 for commercial attendees and $550 for academics. "Our corresponding fees are $590 and $290," Whelan says. BioConferences International is a private company that organizes and conducts meetings in the biotechnology and medical-devices fields. Most of the conference planners interviewed for this article try to do as much as they can themselves and with volunteer help. "I would never, ever subcontract anything related to conference organization-if this was not a monster meeting-to a company. There are too many, too expensive meetings. If I do things myself, I can keep the costs down and try to attract more participants," says Marcin Paprzycki, a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Texas Permian Basin in Odessa, who has managed conferences on scientific computing. But for those monster meetings, professional conference organizers, as well as companies handling specific tasks such as catering and providing audiovisual equipment, can lighten the load for scientist-planners, note Stauffer and other conference organizers. Herbert Voigt used a small company called Events Inc. of Waltham, Mass., run by an energetic woman named Kate Strauss, to pull together all the details of the conference he ran. "Kate was responsible for taking the ideas Ken Lutchen and I came up with and implementing them," explains Voigt, who also used many student helpers. "We wanted someone to make sure all was in place. She negotiated contracts with the Museum of Science, where we held the banquet; arranged for audiovisual equipment; hired the printer for the brochures; and provided staff for the days of the conference. She basically coordinated everything." Another organizing service, Barnett International-Learning Group Corp. of Aston, Pa., handles all the logistics of a conference, "everything from generating the topic, to speaker recruitment, to providing name badges and soliciting follow-up seminar evaluations," according to executive director Renee Valles. Cost varies greatly from conference to conference, she adds. Many universities have conference-planning offices. At Indiana University, Raff approves conference topics and sometimes heads planning committees, but leaves nonscientific considerations to an administrative assistant working with the university conference bureau. "She takes care of mailings, ads, financial management, organizing rooms, and arranging the conference site," he explains. Students can be enormously helpful in hosting meetings. Voigt and Lutchen worked with 100 undergraduate and graduate students, who registered attendees, ran the audiovisual equipment, made up signs, and monitored the poster sessions. "The greatest pleasure I got from the conference was watching our excellent student volunteers. They were excited about the conference being hosted by our department. Some presented their work at the scientific sessions, and got valuable feedback from leaders in biomedical engineering," says Voigt. Choosing dates for a conference is an art. Many meetings are held when universities are not in session, so that professors can attend, and also so that dormitories may be available as housing. The field of science is an important consideration in choosing a date, too. An ecology meeting, for example, would be held at a time of year when a field trip could be planned. Local events should also be considered, so that conference facilities aren't overrun with tourists. "Planning a meeting in New Orleans during Mardi Gras would be unfortunate, as would one during the Master's golf tournament in Augusta," advises Whit Gibbons, a professor of ecology at the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory in Aiken, S.C.Location is a factor to consider, too. M. Yasar Iscan, a professor and chairman of anthropology at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, reports that his university attracts interest in conferences, particularly in the winter, because of the tropical clime. "But the weather by itself doesn't bring people to meetings here-it has to be a quality meeting," he says. Speaker selection for most meetings is done by a committee of scientists who are very familiar with big names and hot topics in their field. For the Miami Bio/Technology Winter Symposia, speaker selection begins with a list generated by expert consultants. Then a planning committee fine-tunes and checks the list by consulting publication records. "We take an overall look at geography and gender, and massage the list so as to make the meeting as international as possible and to be sure that there is a good gender mix," Whelan relates. All-Inclusive: At David Stewart's Cold Spring Harbor meetings, graduate students and postdocs get a chance to give talks. While many conferences seek noted scientists as speakers, the Cold Spring Harbor Meetings and Courses-affiliated with the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y.-take a different approach. "Our meetings are quite unique. We select speakers primarily on the basis of the most interesting submitted abstracts. If you are a postdoc or even a graduate student, and you have interesting research, at most meetings you'd only be able to give a poster. Here, you may get to give a talk," David Stewart, director of meetings and a biochemist, points out. Electronic communication has streamlined meeting planning, but is unlikely to ever stand in for conferences, scientists note. "I don't believe I know of anyone who is satisfied by just being on the [World Wide] Web, rather than complementing that with meetings," says Neal Abraham, a professor of physics and scientist/educator at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. He has helped plan two dozen meetings in the fields of optics and lasers. Adds Raff: "We still need face-to-face discussions with live colleagues." Still, the Internet and electronic mail make planners' lives easier. Conference announcements and registration forms commonly appear on the Web, saving time and paper. "With growth of the use of the Internet, the correspondence and meeting registration takes less and less paperwork each year," Stauffer notes. Scientist-planners passionately insist that conferences will maintain their niche in the face of increasing electronic communication. Abraham points out that cyberspace is fine for sharing experimental results, but misses the intellectual "process" that is at the heart of a meeting. "Other things happen at conferences, deep speculative and thoughtful conversations that would never be 'posted' electronically, subtle synergistic connections in the play of ideas," he says. Stewart agrees. "The core of a Cold Spring Harbor meeting occurs when people stay late, go to a bar, and keep discussing research," he says. Electronic communication may have a greater impact on medical meetings, where teleconferencing and computer-assisted diagnosis and procedures save time for busy physicians. So far, this new technology has increased meeting attendance, because physicians go to conferences to learn about the new communication technology, says Stauffer. All sorts of groups hold meetings-cat fanciers, plumbers, sales forces. Planning a meeting for scientists may be especially challenging because of their notorious attention to detail. "Scientists are, by nature, very critical, analytical, and are perfectionists. They expect these characteristics in every aspect of their professional lives, including meetings. Little details, to scientists, are extremely important," Verity stresses. Experienced conference planners easily rattle off the details. "Balancing the oral presentations, avoiding conflicts when talks are scheduled in parallel; arranging ways for participants to share their preprints and results; ensuring that invited speakers remain long enough to interact with the participants," suggests Abraham. Adds Gibbons, jokingly, "Making sure the weather is perfect, and that everyone gets the lodging accommodations they expected." Verity urges having back-ups for everything, and testing equipment beforehand. "From overhead projectors, to the chair and table arrangements, to having enough extension cords for everyone to plug their laptop computers in, everything must be tested to be all right before the big event. The more things you catch ahead of time, the fewer problems you'll have at time zero," he says. He knows of what he speaks-it's not every conference planner who enjoys a standing ovation. Ricki Lewis is a freelance science writer and textbook author based in Scotia, N.Y. She is online at 76715.3517@compuserve.com.

Rewards Of Careful Conference Planning Are Well Worth The Effort

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