{"id":42502,"date":"2014-03-30T11:44:22","date_gmt":"2014-03-30T15:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=fellowship-training&p=42502"},"modified":"2014-03-30T13:16:06","modified_gmt":"2014-03-30T17:16:06","slug":"it-was-a-day-that-the-weather-gods-played-spoilsport-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2014\/03\/30\/it-was-a-day-that-the-weather-gods-played-spoilsport-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Digital Conferences the Way of the Future?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several Cardiology fellows who are attending ACC.14 in Washington, D.C. this week are blogging for CardioExchange. The fellows include\u00a0Kumar Dharmarajan<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0Seth Martin<\/strong><\/a>, and\u00a0Saurav Chatterjee<\/strong><\/a>. For more of our ACC.14 coverage of late-breaking clinical trials, interviews with the authors of the most important research, and blogs from our fellows on the most interesting presentations at the meeting, check out our\u00a0ACC.14 Headquarters<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The weather gods were acting like a spoilsport again while cutting-edge research was being presented on the inaugural\u00a0day of the ACC 2014 Annual Scientific Sessions. As I rushed to D.C. after\u00a0being on overnight call in order to present my poster on time,\u00a0the overcast skies reflected my mood while I seethed at the occasional\u00a0rain-induced traffic snarl. Reflecting back to another recent meeting in\u00a0Florida, where a mid-January snowstorm in the northeast had upset travel plans, I remembered how my Chief of Cardiology had used a Skype video\u00a0call to make his presentation – and with great effect.<\/p>\n

This got me thinking if that\u00a0was indeed how meetings of the future may be conducted – transcending\u00a0all time and space barriers, allowing one to participate in presentations from the comfort of his or her own\u00a0study! In this era of cost-consciousness and cost-benefit analyses, it’s only a matter of time before someone shows that to be a viable, even\u00a0preferable option, even if it purely comes from an economic standpoint.<\/p>\n

Even today the ACC\u00a0offers “iScience meeting on demand” to help one catch up with the\u00a0different concurrent sessions that would otherwise have to be\u00a0foregone. Starting this year the ACC has also introduced options for\u00a0streaming live sessions on CardioSource for its members, as well as the\u00a0opportunity to transmit live tweets from selected sessions. So it may not be long before the long waits at bus stations, train stations, and airports, the discomfiture of travel, the\u00a0need for re-arranging of schedules, and the obvious expenses associated with travel becomes a thing the past.<\/p>\n

Then, as I reached the convention center, I met an ex-graduate from my\u00a0fellowship program who greeted me with a warm handshake, and we chatted\u00a0about our common friends and who among them were attending the\u00a0conference. Soon thereafter, I attended a media session where one of my research\u00a0posters was discussed, and I received extremely valuable advice from a stellar\u00a0panel of discussants on ways to improve my paper for submission to an impactful journal. This was followed by one-on-one sessions with Dr. Franz\u00a0Messerli (who has co-authored the editorial for the SYMPLICITY HTN-3 trial\u00a0in the NEJM) in order to hear his take on renal denervation and its future; mentors who\u00a0dispensed advice on initiation, tribulations and tips for success in\u00a0academic cardiology; strategies to respond to reviewers for a recent\u00a0journal submission involving authors from multiple centers; and finally, a\u00a0nice dinner with friends and mentors.<\/p>\n

Can this experience be matched with\u00a0structured webinars? Maybe the future, in my humble opinion, is not\u00a0ready for prime time just yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fellow reflects on how technology may impact meetings in the years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2171],"class_list":["post-42502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-acc-14"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}