The idea of having the posters up for the whole meeting is excellent, if the
venue has the space for it. One of the good features of the old American
Society of Zoologists meetings was that the coffee breaks were usually
inside the room where the posters were up, sometimes on one side, with
commercial exhibits directly in front of the coffee, but at least in the same
room. These meetings are of course larger, and this used to fill one of
the large ballrooms in a major hotel; we really don't need quite that much
space, but we do need adequate space for posters. It may not be really
easy to decide how many posters there will be at a meeting, but I would
suggest that the Host committee go over the programs for the couple of
meetings and try to figure out if there is sort a good number to shoot for.
I agree that strictly taxonomic, one or a few species descriptions are
rarely exciting as talks (but if you have a species like the ones Greg
Rouse had in Madrid, that is not necessarily the case). I also agree that
the program officer of the host committee, rather than the whole
committee or the host himself, should contact the submittors of vague
abstracts and ask for more detail. Sometimes it is difficult to put the
detail in the abstract as early as needed, but at least the submittor can
informally tell the committee what she or he expects to find, once the
whole study is completed, and the committee can assign space or time
based on that information (which would then be confidential, sort of).
Frequency of meetings is a difficult issue: I would very much like to
know how many of us attend every meeting, how many attend only when
the meeting is reasonably close (on the same continent?) and how many
are one-timers. For those of us attending always or at least not missing
many meetings, we could plan for the every-second year schedule as
part of our life. But Jim is absolutely correct in that attending meetings is
expensive for all of us. Let us discuss this when we meet in Portland,
preferably with a piece of paper in front of us, so we have some sort of
exploration of what would likely happen if we shift frequency.
Kristian Fauchald
Kristian Fauchald, Research Zoologist
Department of Zoology
NMNH, Smithsonian Institution
P.O.Box 37012,
NHB MRC 0163
Washington, DC 20013-7012
phone: 202.633.1777
fax 202.357.3043
fax: 202.357.3043
-- ANNELIDA
Discuss = annelida at net.bio.net = talk to all members
Server = biosci-server at net.bio.net = un/subscribes
Archives = http://www.bio.net/hypermail/annelida/
Resources = http://www.annelida.net/
--
