{"id":10226,"date":"2021-10-12T15:54:47","date_gmt":"2021-10-12T19:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/?p=10226"},"modified":"2021-10-12T21:24:10","modified_gmt":"2021-10-13T01:24:10","slug":"a-few-thoughts-on-attending-virtual-meetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/a-few-thoughts-on-attending-virtual-meetings\/2021\/10\/12\/","title":{"rendered":"A Few Thoughts on “Attending” Virtual Meetings"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ouistiti (marmoset), from Buffon and de S\u00e8ve\u2019s Quadrupeds (1754). Apparently the French say “ouistiti” instead of “cheese” before a photo — perhaps somebody who’s actually from France can confirm or refute.<\/p><\/div>\n

Once upon a time, long, long ago, before SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, many of us in academic medicine attended in-person scientific meetings that took place annually around the world.<\/p>\n

I was one such person — usually 2-3 times a year. My primary charge at each of these meetings was to assemble the best, or most interesting, or most controversial clinical science and summarize it. Usually, I did this the weekend after the meeting, writing it shortly after walking my dog Louie on Sunday.<\/p>\n

He was a very helpful editor.<\/p>\n

I called them Really Rapid Reviews\u00a9, posted them here, and sent a stern letter to the US copyright and patent offices saying that under no circumstance could anyone copy them and sell them for profit. My crack legal team would be all over violators with the full force of the law.<\/p>\n

While that last part (the copyright-patent-legal part) might not be true, the rest of the above narrative is 100% verifiable in these archives<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But then COVID-19 happened. Virtual meetings replaced the in-person scientific ones. I was so overwhelmed after Virtual CROI 2020 — through no fault of the conference, hey it was March 2020 — that I barely remember any of the content, though I did manage to cover one very important study.<\/a><\/p>\n

Fast-forward roughly 18 months to now. Yes, many of us still “attend” (note the quotes) these virtual meetings — which means for most of us that you go to work as usual and try to snatch some free time to watch pre-recorded presentations on things that sound interesting.<\/p>\n

Or you don’t. “Many sessions are like articles I’ve put aside and never get around to reading,” says Dr. Neil Clancy, offering up a perfect analogy. The problem? “Virtual really doesn\u2019t help me disengage from clinic or other duties,” says Dr. Woc-Colburn. Exactly.<\/em><\/p>\n

If this isn’t enough of a struggle — and believe me, it is — each meeting’s website has a different format, fraught with perilous glitches, sign-in pages that forget who you are, distracting “rooms” and “avatars”, and search function dead-ends. Don’t they know by now that the search function is the #1 key feature<\/em> in all of these virtual meetings?<\/p>\n

Plus, what about the non-meeting activity that happens at meetings? Says Dr. Neil Stone, “Nothing quite replaces the interpersonal connections made at conferences. The conversations you have over a drink at the end of the day are often far more important than sitting listening to the talks, the content of which you often know of in advance.” Indeed this is true!<\/p>\n

Grrrr. You can tell I’m not a huge fan of the virtual format — it’s wearing me out.<\/p>\n

But for the sake of argument, let me take the side of the virtual meeting proponents.<\/p>\n