meetings
mikethemadbiologist | May 27, 2011Whenever I attend ASM, there are always students standing next to unattended posters. It's somewhat depressing: they've cleaned and gussied themselves up, sweated over the details of their posters, and are gamely trying to not look depressed at the complete lack of attention their posters are receiving. Because I like helping, I'm going to provide some advice which might only be worth what you paid for it:
1) Your poster might actually be uninteresting. Note that I wrote uninteresting, not unimportant. Maybe your poster developed a method you plan on using during your dissertation.…
mikethemadbiologist | September 5, 2010Over the last two years, I've noticed that most of the meetings I've attended have had far too many 'grand old man' talks. These are talks where the speaker gives a broad overview of either the field or the speaker's work, with very little or no detail paid to detail.
These sorts of talks do have their uses. If the audience is primarily composed of people who know very little about the subject, these talks can be a good background to that area (An aside: This is one reason why I think science journalists and scientists can hear the same talk, and come away with very different impressions…
mikethemadbiologist | June 1, 2010So I was at the ASM meeting last week, and one of the talks I heard was by Kim Ware about Clostridium difficile infection control: how one hospital learned to contain and prevent outbreaks (Note: these are from my notes; I haven't downloaded the presentation yet). C. difficile is a bacterium that causes diarrhea and more serious intestinal conditions such as colitis. It is often associated with antibiotic therapy and stays in healthcare environments: this is primarily a 'hospital disease.' While most cases result in diarrhea (which isn't trivial if you're already very sick), eleven…
mikethemadbiologist | May 30, 2010Every year, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) has an annual meeting that covers all topics in microbiology (I'll talk about some of the science next week). It's often in pretty good locations--this year, it was held in San Diego. But attendance has been dropping: a few years ago, over 12,000 people attended (it's a big meeting), and this year, less than 9,000 people attended--which is one of the worst turnouts in memory (and San Diego is a nice place, although I still think Philly--yes, Philadelphia--was the best site they've ever chosen).
I've heard rumors that the format of the…
drorzel | March 11, 2010Lots of good suggestions as to Portland activities for my trip to the March Meeting next week. There's a second, related problem that I also need help with: What should I do at the meeting itself?
My usual conference is DAMOP, which I'll be going to in May, so while DAMOP is a participating division, and offers some cool-sounding sessions, it seems a little silly to go to the March Meeting and go to DAMOP talks. The whole point of being at the gigantic meeting is to see different stuff than usual.
The problem is, the scientific program includes forty-odd parallel sessions in each time slot,…
mikethemadbiologist | June 7, 2009I realize that the typical format for blogging is to find something that pisses you off and then rant about it, but I actually like the recent workshop report by NHGRI, "The Future of DNA Sequencing at the National Human Genome Research Institute." (pdf file) While I'll have more to say about the report overall, I liked the section about the Human Microbiome Project (the goal of the HMP is to use sequencing technologies to understand how the microbes that live on us and in us affect health and disease).
I was happy to see that NHGRI still thinks that it has a role in funding the HMP. It's…
mikethemadbiologist | May 26, 2009Having recently returned from the ASM (American Society for Microbiology) General Meeting held in Philadelphia, I'm convinced that it should be held there every year--or, at least, it should be the permanent East Coast venue.
When I go to a meeting, I want several things:
Stuff to do. Restaurants, museums, and so on.
Things need to be accessible. That means I have to be able to walk to them or take public transit (I don't want to have to rent a car just to leave the conference center).
Lodging needs to be close to the convention center (ASM is usually an 8,000-12,000 person meeting; it…