Smaller Is Often Better For Scientific Meetings, Researchers Report

Despite travel-budget cuts at many institutions and companies, as well as the growing number of gatherings on the annual calendar, attendance at many scientific meetings remains strong. But researchers are becoming choosier in deciding which conferences they will attend, more carefully weighing the expense--in both money and time spent away from the lab--against the expected scientific and career-building returns. Kenneth I. Berns, president-elect of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), says of the organization's main meeting: "I'm amazed that attendance is so good." The gathering draws about 12,000, reports Berns, R.A. Rees Pritchett Professor and chairman of the department of microbiology at Cornell University Medical Center, New York City. "I've noticed that there are a lot more meetings, and people frequently go to the more specialized meetings that are more tailored to their interests, so that the general meetings may miss those people." Specialized conferences are generally smaller, making it easier to communicate with colleagues and keeping costs lower, researchers note. Thomas Gregg, a professor of zoology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, for example, has decided this year to switch his "must-attend" meeting. After many years of faithfully going to the annual Drosophila conference--an informal event put together by researchers who work with fruit flies--he's decided not to attend. "Last year it was held in the newest hotel in Chicago, at $250 a room," he recounts. "This year it is in Atlanta, in a big, expensive hotel." Instead, he'll go to the meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution to be held in Montreal July 8-12. "It's smaller, and in places where housing is at a university, where it is relatively inexpensive," he points out. Meetings range widely in size. National meetings of the American Chemical Society (ACS) attract upward of 15,000, as does the annual Experimental Biology meeting, sponsored by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). Gatherings in the in-between range are the Keystone, Colo., symposia, which usually draw about 500 participants. And at the small end of the spectrum are the Gordon Research Conferences, with maximum attendance held to 135--organizers have to turn people away. Some scientists feel the size of the meeting itself makes a big difference. "Once a conference grows beyond a certain size, say 500 to 1,000 people, people stop going," observes Gregg. William Kidd, chairman of geological sciences at the State University of New York, Albany, adds, "The American Geophysical Union [AGU] has two meetings a year, both huge [5,000-6,000 participants]. This organization covers geology in the traditional sense, but also anybody who remotely deals with the solar system and the planet, from research on solar wind to people in seismology. It is huge and unattractive for that reason." Fortunately, he notes, AGU also runs a series of smaller get-togethers called Chapman conferences, as does the Geological Society of America with its Penrose conferences. "These meetings attract about 60 to 70 people who are all interested in the topic. It is held in some pleasant place, where they talk productively over several days," he adds. Thomas Kunz, a professor of biology at Boston University, and Gregg mention the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting as an example of one that has grown too large to be scientifically useful. Focusing on highly specific topics, however, isn't the mission of a AAAS meeting, according to Michael Spinella, director of membership and meetings at AAAS in Washington, D.C. Instead, Spinella explains, a AAAS conference--which typically attracts between 4,000 and 5,000 scientists and 500 media representatives--attempts to build bridges: "What we search for in the annual meeting are the connections between disciplines that a scientist is less likely to get at a society's meeting. We'd like to see it grow even bigger, but give it a feeling of a lot of small meetings within a large meeting." One reason that researchers continue to attend meetings, large or small, despite the expense and competing demands on their time is that scientific gatherings offer a unique opportunity for face-to-face career connections. "If you actually see somebody give a talk or you talk to somebody who's presenting a poster, then that person is much more real to you than somebody who's one of several authors on a paper that you've read," says Berns. "So, in that sense, meetings are extremely helpful. They're very good for networking. "You can raise the issue that, with all the journals that we have now, why do you need to go to a meeting? [The answer is that] it personalizes your area of science, and that's an important issue." Scientists give various reasons for choosing the meetings they attend. For researchers in specialized fields, a conference brings together far-flung colleagues, says Charles Bentley, a glaciologist and a professor of geophysics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "In my field it's important to be international, because there are so few of us working in the same area, and we need to collect data from more than one country," he observes. Bentley attends small sessions on snow and ice at the annual meetings of the International Glaciological Society and the American Geophysical Union. Uniting specialists is the impetus behind the combined International Bat Research and North American Symposium on Bat Research meeting to be held August 6-11 at Boston University. "The meeting will focus on everything about bats, from studying their ecology and behavior, to their morphology, anatomy and physiology, evolution, and genetics," according to BU's Kunz, a conference organizer. "For people working in bat ecology, it is important to understand the physiology, the genetics." The symposium, with its focus exclusively on bats, is more helpful to these researchers than larger events, where they must work to seek out other bat specialists. "Often at meetings that are not built on a taxonomic basis, such as ecology or genetics meetings, there is less cross-fertilization than we have," Kunz adds. He expects about 500 "batpeople"--or chiropterologists--to attend this year. Some meetings are also great places to get ideas for the classroom, according to scientists with a strong interest in teaching. The annual Human Anatomy and Physiology Society conference, for example, to be held May 20-25 in St. Louis, targets effective teaching tactics. "This meeting is predominantly for anatomy and physiology teachers. We get updates on what techniques and technologies are being used in the classroom," says Jackie Butler, an instructor at Grayson Community College in Denison, Texas. She also finds the annual gathering of the National Association of Biology Teachers useful. "There is a nice variety of people who teach from the elementary level up through the university level. I like to see what people are doing who send students to me, and what I need to do to get my students ready to go on to universities." More general scientific conclaves often have education sections. For example, at last August's American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) annual meeting in Knoxville, Tenn., education workshops dealt with such varied topics as incorporating writing into science courses, using fast-growing brassica plants in gene-transfer exercises, and using computer simulations of experiments. Similarly, the ACS spring meeting, held in Anaheim, Calif., April 2-6, offered a variety of poster sessions, symposia, papers, and workshops on the challenges of teaching chemistry. Participating in conferences is also considered a rite of passage in graduate school. "The AIBS annual meeting is a forum for graduate students to give papers and exchange ideas on posters. At least 25 percent of the attendees are students," says Donna Haegele, director of meetings and membership at AIBS. Thomas Kunz thinks that smaller, more focused events, such as the bat conference, are a good starting point for graduate students because they are less intimidating: "We give students an opportunity to participate. They give talks and don't feel that they have to be superpolished because they are in front of the real big shots. It is relaxed and laid back. Everybody supports everybody." As a meeting grows, it often must move from a school or other institution to a hotel or convention center in a major metropolitan area, simply to have enough space. But large cities have their pluses and minuses for scientific get-togethers. "We try to hold our conferences in big cities, so you get a lot of people going from that area," says Diana Berger, conference services manager at Nature Publishing Co. in New York, which sponsors six conferences a year in various cities. But a heavily attended meeting in a big city can end up being too dispersed. "American Chemical Society meetings are held in different places across a town, and you take a bus to get to the talks. By the time you run from place to place, you end up not seeing anything," reports Judith Stein, a staff chemist at General Electric Corp.'s Research and Development Center in Schenectady, N.Y. An ACS spokesperson, however, maintains that the only way to accommodate 6,000 presentations and exhibits is to spread the conference out. For many academic scientists, who often must foot part of the bill, the costs of cosmopolitan conferences pose problems. When asked about availability of travel funds for meetings, William Kidd responds, "What funds?" Recent budget slashing in New York state means that his department is largely restricted to providing a vehicle for travel to regional meetings, he reports. Bentley at the University of Wisconsin says a departmental endowment gives each faculty member "enough to go to one meeting with all expenses paid," with additional funding available from the graduate school for invited speakers from the university. Many researchers must write travel funds into their grants, Finer notes. An alternative to fancy hotels is to use school dormitories, a trademark of the Gordon Research Conferences. "Gordon conferences are among the least expensive scientific conferences in the world. If you live in Boston, you can spend a week in New Hampshire for $150 for room and meals and talk to the best people in the world in your area," says Carlyle B. Storm, director of the conferences. Another practical matter is "who's minding the store"--if everyone wants to attend the same meeting, does the lab close down? Not at all, maintains Mitchell Finer: "You just freeze the cells in advance. It does take a little bit of planning, but shutting the lab for one week out of the year is not really a bad idea, because people learn so much at conferences." However, it rarely happens that an entire lab group attends one conference, Finer points out. Also, support personnel, such as technicians, can carry on some of the work. "I and several of my coworkers at Cell GeneSys go to a blend of one or two big meetings, and several smaller focused meetings. We try to mix it up," he reports. Despite the pragmatic concerns of attending conferences, scientists love them--and contend that the information superhighway will never replace the camaraderie of their periodic get-togethers with associates from all over. "I love E-mail--it's a tremendous form of communication," says Berns. "But I don't think it will ever stand in for being with friends and colleagues at a conference." Ricki Lewis is a textbook author and freelance science writer based in Scotia, N.Y.

Smaller Is Often Better For Scientific Meetings, Researchers Report

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