Re: AW: HPS IRC Poster Session Announcement

[james.g.barnes@ATT.NET]

Franz, et. al.;



I agree with your observation in principal, there is no substitute for physical 

attendance. I generally try to attend the US HPS meetings at least once a year, 

and also try to attend a European or Russian conference on an annual basis.  I  

am (as you appear to be) blessed with either adequate personal, corporate, or 

grant funding to do this. Not everyone enjoys this availability of funding.



The concern then is that the presentations that appear at conferences are 

screened by an "available financing" filter; if you can't pay to attend, then 

you don't get to present.  I think this prevents a number of interesting ideas 

from receiving exposure.  While it would be great to sponsor 10 or 20 

researchers or practicioners to attend the conference to present papers, it is 

financially impossible to do so.



What CAN be done is to provide a forum for the ideas to be presented.  This is 

the basis of the IRC poster session. For a reasonable amount of money and some 

time invested, we can provide an interchange for health physicists outside of 

the US to at least present work they are doing. They, at least, can have a 

forum to initiate discussions with US health physicists. It's not a substitute 

for "face time," but it is MUCH better than non-participation or silence. Nor 

is the system perfect right now; we are still feeling our way through a very 

new concept.



To the point of hundreds of papers and no participants -- we may actually see 

that sooner than you think.  In a world with NetMeeting, DirectX, and some of 

the other remote conferencing systems that are coming on line, I wouldn't be 

surprised to see someone offer a "virtual conference" or "virtual poster 

session" in the near future. We are already seeing this trend in the corporate 

world; it's not a stretch to see it expanded more widely.



Jim Barnes, CHP

International Relations Committee

Health Physics Society

james.g.barnes@att.net

> 

> 

>  -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----

> Von: 	owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu

> [mailto:owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu]  Im Auftrag von

> james.g.barnes@ATT.NET

> Gesendet:	Donnerstag, 06. Februar 2003 20:46

> An:	RadSafe Bulletin Board

> Betreff:	HPS IRC Poster Session Announcement

> 

> Dear all,

> 

> Last month, we published an announcement for a poster session for non-US

> participants who would not be attending the upcoming annual meeting of the

> Health Physics Society.  The session is sponsored by the Society's

> International Relations Committee.

> 

> We have had a good response to the announcement.  Please be advised that the

> deadline for submittals has been extended to Wednesday, 12 February.  We

> encourage anyone who wishes to participate to submit an Abstract.

> 

> The description of the program is provided below.

> 

> Thanks,

> 

> James Barnes, CHP

> International Relations Committee; Health Physics Society

> james.g.barnes@att.net <mailto:james.g.barnes@att.net

> 



> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

> -------

> 

> One of the most important reasons why I attend conferences is the

> possibility to have personal contact with fellow scientists, to discuss

> about my own work and with my collegues about their work. Furthermore I take

> the opportunity to learn even about other fields of research. Therefore I

> cannot understand what it should be good for to send a poster to a

> conference, without attending it. It is a kind of rule applied at all

> conferences I ever have taken part or organized myself, that no papers,

> which are not personally presented by the author(s) will not be published

> for the proceedings.

> 

> If this trend goes on, we will have in the end conferences with hundreds of

> posters and no participants!

> 

> Best regards,

> 

> Franz

> 

> 

> 



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