7th International Meeting

[Chris Town]

A recent posting states that the 7th International Arabidopsis Meeting will 
be restricted to 450 participants. To the best of my knowledge, this is the 
first time in the post-renaissance era that the size of this meeting has 
been restricted. The meeting in Madison last summer listed 639 registrants 
and there is no reason to expect that there will be any decrease in the 
number of interested parties for this next meeting. This could result in as 
many as one third of the prospective participants being denied attendance. 
This would be most unfortunate since all the past Arabidopsis meetings have 
been very open in every sense. 

It would be interesting to hear from both the International and Local 
Organizing Committees on the thinking that went into the selection and 
approval of this size-limited conference site. It might also be worth 
considering the possibility of hosting more participants by the introduction 
of concurrent sessions. Arabidopsis research will continue to grow and, 
while we all love the weed, each of us has our own areas of special 
interest. Plenary sessions certainly have their place, but so, I believe, do 
more specialized smaller sessions which could be held concurrently.

Perhaps others would like to share their thoughts on this topic.


Chris Town