Dates of Diversity and WIS breakfasts flipped

Due to the availability of speakers, we have switched the dates for the two breakfasts. The Women In Science breakfast will be on Thursday and the Diversity breakfast will be on Friday. Stay tuned for more about the guest speakers and their biographies.

If you previously RSVP’d for one but not the other breakfast and need to change your response now, please modify your registration. There are many people on the waitlist for each breakfast who’d like to take your spot! If you still want to come to the breakfast you signed up for but on the new date, no need to do anything.

Thanks,

Ajit Chaudhari, PhD

Meeting Chair

Some thoughts on thematic poster sessions

by Paul DeVita, PhD, President-Elect of ASB:

ASB will be using, “thematic poster sessions,” at the 2015 annual meeting. If you do not mind, I provide a few comments about these sessions in order to increase their chance for success. Of course there is no single definition of a thematic poster session or of how it is run. ACSM has used these extensively the past few years with their particular style and they have been generally successful but not always. ASB ran some thematic poster sessions previously and some of these were successful and some were not. Thus it is beneficial for us to develop a successful strategies for poster sessions organized under a theme.

To come directly to the point, the single aspect of thematic poster sessions that makes them successful is that they are discussions among everyone in the session; they are focused on the topic and not on the individual presentation or presenter. Therefore, thematic poster sessions are not like slide presentations in which every question is directed to the presenter. Questions are directed to and from the presenter, to and from the audience, and to and from the moderator. Audience members should ask each other questions on the topic and they might easily answer as many or more questions as does the presenter. QED, we have discussion and scientific fun.

The key element that makes the discussion successful is the skill of the moderator in enticing audience members to join the discussion. Moderators need to ask audience members questions about the data or about the previous question and answer or even about an audience member’s publications on the topic. The moderator should make this discussion-based procedure clear to the entire group at the start of the question/discussion session. In fact moderators might start the entire process by asking an audience member the first question in one or more presentations. Alternately, the presenter can ask the audience the first question in each presentation. That would be fun. Skillful moderation would also include delaying a question that is off-topic until the current topic is fully discussed and then returning to that question.

If this procedure is going to work, moderators must exert themselves a bit to pull out discussion from the group. They might for example initially, “exploit,” their audience friends to pull out some answers and discussion from them. In short, moderators must moderate with verve and energy. Discussion is fun. We all travel long distances to spend time with each other and have a meeting of the minds. Our minds can meet in thematic poster sessions if we let them and if we invite everyone to participate.

The sessions at ASB are set with a brief open period during which everyone can view the posters and then each presenter will briefly tell his or her story. This procedure should help disseminate information and serve as a basis to start the discussion. After this brief report, moderators must do their thing and lead the discussion. Thank you.

Paul