Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Making It All Come Together

2002; Wolters Kluwer; Volume: 24; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1097/01.cot.0000289206.24280.5d

1548-4688

Margot J. Fromer,

Thousands of people racing from session to session, backslapping, handshaking, making new acquaintances, peering at posters, asking questions, grabbing a bite on the run, slurping coffee whenever there's a chance, sitting down to dinner with old friends and new colleagues, trying not to feel frustrated by the shuttle bus waits, making a mental note to bring more comfortable shoes next time, learning new things, rethinking what seems standard and obvious but may not be—all are what you've come to expect at a major medical meeting. But how does it all come together? What are the logistics of planning, organization, and attention to the multitude of details that go into the creation of a conference? As this year's Fall meeting schedule gets underway, we asked a representative sampling of meeting organizers how they do it. Think 5 Years Ahead “We're already starting to plan our 2007 meeting, which will be held in San Antonio,” said the American Society of Hematology's Director of Meetings, Ayuko Kimura-Fay. ASH has 11,000 members and a four-day annual meeting each December. In 2000, the meeting was held in San Francisco and attracted 19,000 people. Last year in Orlando, attendance was only 16,000, probably due to the proximity to September 11, she said. “We haven't signed the contracts yet [for 2007], but the deal is almost done, and I'm just waiting for assurance that the airport will be expanded. Can you imagine 19,000 people arriving on the same day at an airport that can't accommodate that kind of crowds?” Similarly with other logistics. The city in which the meeting is to take place must have a convention center that is large enough. Orlando, New Orleans, Atlanta, and San Diego do, but Baltimore, for example does not. Chicago, on the other hand, is big enough, but has weather that is inappropriate for a December meeting; Philadelphia is too small (this year will be the last time ASH meets there); and the Society is rapidly outgrowing San Francisco, she said.FigureWashington, DC, is building a gigantic convention center that will be ready in about two years, but Ms. Kimura-Fay nixed that site right away. “Washington has the worst traffic in the country,” she observed. “We can't have busloads of meeting attendees stuck in rush-hour traffic getting to and from their hotels.” The American Society of Clinical Oncology also will not use the new Washington building but not because it isn't big enough, a spokesperson said, noting that it's a matter of an insufficient number of rooms of a certain size. In addition to a large enough convention center—having, for example, 200,000 square feet of space for the exhibits and 100,000 square feet for poster sessions, to say nothing of football stadium-size rooms for major oral and plenary sessions—a city must be able to provide sufficient hotel rooms in a variety of price ranges; have lots of good, or at least reasonable, restaurants; and some cultural attractions. “I suppose there are a number of places that are equipped to host big meetings and would theoretically be great places for a convention, but somehow they are not quite right,” observed Richard Kolodner, PhD, who served as Chairman of the Program Committee for this year's American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting. “Take Las Vegas, for example—Lots of people love to go there, but it wouldn't be right for us. In fact, I don't think it would appeal to most physicians.” First Things First “After we decide on the city, the first thing we do is contact the convention and visitors bureau and negotiate a hotel package,” continued Ms. Kimura-Fay, who works with a staff of three. The bureau sends a letter to all the hotels in the city to see if they want to participate in housing meeting attendees and are willing to commit a certain number of rooms. “We negotiate prices, do a deal with the best airlines that fly to the city, and start writing the meeting and exhibitor prospectuses.” When ASCO decides on a city for its gigantic meeting, it immediately hires a destination management company, mainly to provide shuttle bus service for all the official hotels. The management company also arranges various tours of the city and surrounding area, selling the tickets and running the actual tour. Key Elements Waun Ki Hong, MD, Immediate Past President of AACR and Chairman of the Association's Program Committee for the 1999 Annual Meeting, held in San Francisco, noted the importance of also paying attention to the differing needs of attendees. “In a meeting as large as ours, you have to realize that the attendees comprise a very wide range of people—from basic scientists to clinicians,” he explained. “So you have to take into account the expectations of all these different people, and one of the best ways to do that—in fact, an absolutely critical way—is to study the attendee evaluations from previous meetings, especially the ones held in the same city.” ASCO meeting planners use the acronym NODE to start the process: N for identification of the educational Needs of the attendees. O for establishment of Objectives. D for creating a Design to meet the objectives. E for Evaluation—i.e., assessing the success of the meeting and identifying the needs for the next one. The Right Program Chair Another key element is selection of the program chair. Dr. Hong's theory is that this person should have a background different from the organization's president. “I'm a clinician, so when I was president of AACR, I wanted a program chairman who is a super scientist, which is why we chose Richard Kolodner.” He called Dr. Kolodner, Professor of Medicine at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at the University of California San Diego, “an incredible scientist.”Figure: Waun Ki Hong, MD, known for his love of baseball, particularly the Red Sox, used a baseball analogy for the organizational elements of putting together a large meeting: “The president of the organization is the team's general manager, and the program chairman is the head coach. But you also need pitching coaches, batting coaches, and baseline coaches. These are the program co-chairs who generally select the speakers and symposium leaders.”“When it was my turn to be Program Chairman,” Dr. Hong continued, “I wanted the theme to be translational research because I am a clinician and that's where my interest lies.” You also need five or six really good co-chairs—high-quality people, he said, elaborating: They have to have scientific credibility, and they should hold a senior position at the institution where they work. They also need to be fairly personable, unselfish, and adept at delegating responsibility. Playing Ball As Dr. Hong is known to do, he used a baseball analogy for the organizational elements of putting together a large meeting: “The president of the organization is the team's general manager, and the program chairman is the head coach. But you also need pitching coaches, batting coaches, and baseline coaches. These are the program co-chairs who generally select the speakers and symposium leaders.” Jenifer Hamilton, ASH's Director of Education and Communications, noted that speakers are generally invited about a year in advance. 'Make sure you get a commitment from them by March in time for the December meeting. This gives them time to write their speech as well as a major scientific paper on the same topic, which is published in our Education Program Book. “In addition to invited speakers,” Ms. Hamilton added, “we have abstract-driven programs. We hire an abstract vendor to send out a call for abstracts in about 50 categories in late May with an August deadline.” Although four months is a relatively short time to review all the submissions, the tradeoff is that the organization wants the information to be as up to date as possible. “Also, we require that the abstracts are of unpublished work and have never been presented elsewhere,” she noted. ASCO receives about 3,200 abstracts, which are reviewed and ranked by the more than 100 members of the program committee, which is divided into 17 subcommittees. Delegate, Delegate Dr. Hong summed up the planning process for AACR: “The program chairman has to delegate. You can't micromanage everything or you'll drive yourself crazy. You also have to realize that you aren't going to have a 100% successful meeting, because you can't please everyone all the time. Life is risky—and so is putting together one of these big meetings.” All you can do, he added, is put out a good brochure, invite good speakers, include subjects in which attendees have expressed an interest in the past, and hope for the best. Physical Plant, Template Dr. Kolodner cited two key components to take into account. The first is the physical plant, he said by way of leading into the relationship between the convention center and his committee. “There were six or seven members of the program committee, all excellent.” He stressed how important it is to have the right kind of people on the committee—“a good mix who know the best professionals in the field and who can make suggestions about plenary speakers, who have good ideas about program topics, and who can get through a meeting in a businesslike manner without a lot of extraneous discussion.”Figure: Richard D. Kolodner, PhD: “I did all the scheduling of room assignments, taking into account the seating capacity of the various rooms, the size of the audience I thought would be interested in a particular session, and the purpose of the session…I also wanted to make sure that I didn't schedule the same types of subjects at the same time, and I tried to think about the people who attend only one day of the meeting—giving them a diverse range of topics.”It all comes down to people, he remarked. 'I took suggestions from all the members of the committee. Everyone got their say—but not for long! In the end, I was the one who made all the decisions, and I did all the scheduling of room assignments myself. I took into account the seating capacity of the various rooms, the size of the audience I thought would be interested in a particular session, and the purpose of the session—that is, a small seminar on a fairly esoteric topic or a large lecture on a subject of broader interest. “I also wanted to make sure that I didn't schedule the same types of subjects at the same time, and I tried to think about the people who attend only one day of the meeting—giving them a diverse range of topics that would keep them busy and interested for a full day.” The initial business of the program committee was conducted in just one day. The second component was what he referred to as a template—a huge blank chart composed of different types of presentations. “Then all I had to do was fill it in—that is, match the scientific and other sessions with the space available,” he said. “It wasn't as hard as it seems. The subjects and speakers for the plenary sessions had already been established [up to two or three years in advance], so all I had to do was pair the available space with a session that I thought would draw a crowd to fill it.” Topics & Speakers “The quality of a meeting depends almost entirely on the quality of the presentations,” said Dr. Kolodner. In a major oncology-hematology meeting, there are two types of presentations: those given by people invited to speak and those derived from submitted abstracts. “The goal of the program committee is to pick topics that people really want to know about,” said Dr. Kolodner.FigureHe added that AACR (in contrast to the situation for ASH) used to insist that all abstracts be unpublished and never presented at another meeting. “But we came across an interesting problem: No one has time to read the literature any more, so even if a paper has been previously published, it's a good bet that most of the attendees haven't seen it, so it might as well have never seen the light of day.” The Co-Chair of ASH's Education Program for last year's Annual Meeting, Michael E. Williams, MD, Professor of Hematology-Oncology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, said that the committee picks about 25 topics, which are then reviewed by the education and program committees. A chairperson is named for each of the 25 sessions, and that person is charged with developing a cutting-edge, state-of-the-art review that incorporates recent biological and clinical advances. In addition, each chairperson is responsible for identifying two or three additional speakers for their session. These speakers are chosen on the basis of their contributions to their field and because they are good speakers. “That way, although I and my co-chair don't necessarily know everyone who has been invited to speak, they are known to someone we know who can vouch for their scientific credibility and past performance,” Dr. Williams explained. Because ASH is an international meeting, all the session chairs are told to keep that in mind and try to invite one or two speakers from a country other than the US. In addition to all these responsibilities, the lead speakers as well as the session chairs are required to write a chapter for the ASH education book about the topic for which they have responsibility. “The education book is really a text, and the chapters are major contributions to the field of hematology,” he emphasized. “The book is on MEDLINE, and the original chapters are citable in a bibliography. It's a major undertaking.” Meeting Technology Technology has become one of the most important components of modern medical meetings. “We contract with an audiovisual company to take care of all the services we provide,” said Ms. Kimura-Fay of ASH. These include features now standard at large meetings such as multiple computer and message centers, e-mail pavilions, a job bank database, a PDA/ handheld computer station where attendees can plug their Palm and similar devices into a central computer to hook into the organization's Web site to download a previously created personal agenda, and Webcasts of special lectures a few days after the event—for ASH, simulcasts are in the near future, Ms. Kimura-Fay said. The company she contracts with also produces CD-ROMs, audiotapes, and videotapes for most of the sessions, and she proofreads all the slides for the CD-ROMs. Dr. Kolodner also pointed to the advances in speaker ready rooms in the last few years. “You know how everyone used to bring his or her presentation on PowerPoint with their own computer, sometimes fiddling around with the computer for five minutes or more to get the thing working correctly?,” he asked. “Now you bring your disk into a central office four hours before your talk, and they do everything. The PowerPoint presentation is fed into the session room and onto the screen automatically, and you don't have to worry about anything. It's great!” Commercial Exhibitors Commercial exhibits are an important component of a medical meeting, and the jockeying for space in the exhibit hall can be fierce. ASH uses a priority system to assign booth space, said Ms. Kimura-Fay. Companies are assigned points according to criteria such as their booth location the previous year and the size of their financial contributions to the organization. ASCO too has a point system based on types of corporate sponsorship: The more money the Society receives from an exhibitor, the greater the choice of booth location and group hotel space selection for the following annual meeting. Also taken into consideration for the total number of points accumulated is the number of tickets an exhibitor buys for the annual benefit concert for the ASCO Foundation. Most medical societies try to separate scientific presentations from corporate interests. ASH does this by sponsoring a program called Corporate Friday in which the day before the meeting is set aside for scientific presentations in which commercial sponsorship is openly acknowledged. Corporate Friday is not part of the official ASH Annual Meeting, and it is planned by the sponsoring organizations. Other than this one exception, corporate participation in educational and scientific programs is prohibited. Any giveaways must be in compliance with the AMA's Guidelines on Gifts to Physicians from Industry. An ASCO spokesperson had an amusing story to tell about freebies at this year's meeting: “One company was giving away tote bags with wheels that were so big that when I slung mine over my shoulder, it almost touched the ground. People were dragging these things around all over the convention center, and they turned into a hazard as other people tripped on them. So now I think we're going to have to approve all giveaways. Who would have thought that a tote bag would be a traffic hazard!” When It's Not a Cast of Thousands For people who don't want to or can't attend a large medical society annual meeting, there's an alternative: a smaller meeting organized and sponsored by a private company—for example, Imedex, located in Atlanta, which specializes in oncology. “We conduct proprietary meetings on a topic of our choosing after doing a thorough needs-assessment to determine what will attract participants,” explained Karla Linder, Director of Project Operations. “We have our own medical division, and we contact opinion leaders to determine topics for the 40 oncology meetings we hold every year.” Meeting topics are based on clinical need as determined by practicing oncologists, new developments in cancer treatment, and “quick updates” to reinforce larger medical society meetings, she said. The Imedex calendar for 2002–2003 includes meetings on colorectal cancer (to be held in Spain), supportive care (Boston), cancer therapy with antibodies and immunoconjugates (Princeton, NJ), and women's cancer (Germany). Ms. Linder said that Imedex has a niche: medical societies, usually of less than 3,000 members, that don't have their own meeting planning departments, as well as international medical societies that operate on more than one continent where quality and standards vary. “We can provide meetings of high quality and consistent standards, and we have non-Americans on staff as well as people who speak a number of languages,” she said. Imedex also provides medical education meetings for corporations, mostly pharmaceutical companies but also manufacturers of devices and diagnostics as well as companies that make imaging machines. These meetings range from 100 to 5,000 attendees and are held about 60% of the time in the United States, with the rest in Europe and South America.