Stockholm
So the main reason I am so far behind with *everything* is that, much earlier this summer, I went to a conference in Sweden. Stockholm to be more precise.
1 - Stockholm is lovely, and is definitely on my list of places I want to visit properly.
2 - The thing about everyone in Stockholm speaks English is a lie. Now of course, both times this happened, it was when I didn't have my Swedish pocket dictionary to hand, but the urge to say "I told you so", remains.
3 - The conference was huge, like at least as big as the biggest NMR conference I've been too, and I've been informed that it "wasn't that big". I blame the medics. I also blame the medics for the fact that it was significantly tilted toward clinical stuff (and away from sciencey stuff). According to boss, this year it was particularly medicine-based. That was, at least in part, because a bunch of big clinical trials were reporting in. Because big clinical trials *have* to have cool names, we heard from pretty much every member of the Greek pantheon. My eternal respect for the speaker who started his talk with "this trial doesn't have a good name, it has good results instead."
It was very different to NMR conferences. I don't know if that's because it was so much bigger, or because I am completely new to the field, but it felt a lot less collegiate. Despite the fact that I ran into another one of the old NMR lot there, who has also joined the dark-side.
Other things that were interesting were the lengths to which the vendors would go to get their company name out there. The company who were selling a generic version of (important drug), I could understand why they were going with racing cars as their theme, especially as they're the first to make a generic version of (important drug) and it being a difficult drug to make as a generic because it's a biologic. The much bigger company who went with a JCB digger, I am less sure about.
Also, dear one big company who wouldn't let me have a cup of tea on satellite symposium day - know that it cost you about 10 cups of coffee throughout the rest of the week. I am small, petty and had my revenge.
It was the first conference I'd been to where speakers have had to put the "conflict of interests" bit at the start of their talks. It smacks significantly of "people in power have decided they must be seen to be doing something", rather than anything effective. For those who have no idea what I am talking about, speakers now have a compulsory 10 second slide at the start of their talks listing their various honorariums.
If I see someone with none, I don't think, "my, what a clean pair of hands", I think "ah, this is an early career researcher". If I saw someone who was obviously not an early career researcher without any, I wouldn't think "my what a noble scientist, untouched by industry", I'd think "so, they've not worked on anything important."
The basic problem is that, if you're working on a cancer and company x develop a drug which might treat it, the only way they're going to be able to find out if it works is by running trials. If they're running trials, they're going to have to be giving you the drug and paying for some of your time. Everyone in the field knows this, everyone in any medical science field knows this. There is no other way that the system can work until the drug is tested and approved.
You also get glorious situations like Austrian Prof who obviously thought the declaration slide was BS and therefore said, "Obviously I run trials for x and y because their drugs are the best available," while her declaration slide was up. I don't think the people who came up with the terrible idea intended it to be an advert but ...
You also get aged profs who can't work the technology who accidentally skip backwards in their talk (twice) and therefore we have to sit looking at their COI slide for 30 actual seconds.
I completely understand the idea behind it but it isn't any better than the previous "comment at end of talk" and I don't see the point of showing them at scientific conferences where everyone is going to be a medical science person who knows what the deal is. And I do not exaggerate, the conference is ~ 350 Euro to attend so everyone that's there is there because they are in the field and need/want to be there.
4 - After the conference, we fly back on a different route (note, people flying to/from Stockholm, Broma airport is still at the tiny, barely-one-terminal stage of its development) and because we are flying via Brussels, my colleague I is introduced to the Brussels Shuffle. Of course we came in all the way at the end of one terminal and had to rush all the way round to the middle of another.
The one upside is that I got to see the Brussels Airline Smurf plane. Brussels Airline have painted 1 plane with Smurfs (aerosmurf, more details here - https://www.brusselsairlines.com/en-be/misc/meet_aerosmurf.aspx), one with Tintin characters (Rackham), one is Magritte (Magritte), one is for a Belgian music festival (Amare) and one is for the football team (Trident). Sadly I didn't manage to get a picture of it, but I did manage to get a photos of the Smurf statue in the airport.
1 - Stockholm is lovely, and is definitely on my list of places I want to visit properly.
2 - The thing about everyone in Stockholm speaks English is a lie. Now of course, both times this happened, it was when I didn't have my Swedish pocket dictionary to hand, but the urge to say "I told you so", remains.
3 - The conference was huge, like at least as big as the biggest NMR conference I've been too, and I've been informed that it "wasn't that big". I blame the medics. I also blame the medics for the fact that it was significantly tilted toward clinical stuff (and away from sciencey stuff). According to boss, this year it was particularly medicine-based. That was, at least in part, because a bunch of big clinical trials were reporting in. Because big clinical trials *have* to have cool names, we heard from pretty much every member of the Greek pantheon. My eternal respect for the speaker who started his talk with "this trial doesn't have a good name, it has good results instead."
It was very different to NMR conferences. I don't know if that's because it was so much bigger, or because I am completely new to the field, but it felt a lot less collegiate. Despite the fact that I ran into another one of the old NMR lot there, who has also joined the dark-side.
Other things that were interesting were the lengths to which the vendors would go to get their company name out there. The company who were selling a generic version of (important drug), I could understand why they were going with racing cars as their theme, especially as they're the first to make a generic version of (important drug) and it being a difficult drug to make as a generic because it's a biologic. The much bigger company who went with a JCB digger, I am less sure about.
Also, dear one big company who wouldn't let me have a cup of tea on satellite symposium day - know that it cost you about 10 cups of coffee throughout the rest of the week. I am small, petty and had my revenge.
It was the first conference I'd been to where speakers have had to put the "conflict of interests" bit at the start of their talks. It smacks significantly of "people in power have decided they must be seen to be doing something", rather than anything effective. For those who have no idea what I am talking about, speakers now have a compulsory 10 second slide at the start of their talks listing their various honorariums.
If I see someone with none, I don't think, "my, what a clean pair of hands", I think "ah, this is an early career researcher". If I saw someone who was obviously not an early career researcher without any, I wouldn't think "my what a noble scientist, untouched by industry", I'd think "so, they've not worked on anything important."
The basic problem is that, if you're working on a cancer and company x develop a drug which might treat it, the only way they're going to be able to find out if it works is by running trials. If they're running trials, they're going to have to be giving you the drug and paying for some of your time. Everyone in the field knows this, everyone in any medical science field knows this. There is no other way that the system can work until the drug is tested and approved.
You also get glorious situations like Austrian Prof who obviously thought the declaration slide was BS and therefore said, "Obviously I run trials for x and y because their drugs are the best available," while her declaration slide was up. I don't think the people who came up with the terrible idea intended it to be an advert but ...
You also get aged profs who can't work the technology who accidentally skip backwards in their talk (twice) and therefore we have to sit looking at their COI slide for 30 actual seconds.
I completely understand the idea behind it but it isn't any better than the previous "comment at end of talk" and I don't see the point of showing them at scientific conferences where everyone is going to be a medical science person who knows what the deal is. And I do not exaggerate, the conference is ~ 350 Euro to attend so everyone that's there is there because they are in the field and need/want to be there.
4 - After the conference, we fly back on a different route (note, people flying to/from Stockholm, Broma airport is still at the tiny, barely-one-terminal stage of its development) and because we are flying via Brussels, my colleague I is introduced to the Brussels Shuffle. Of course we came in all the way at the end of one terminal and had to rush all the way round to the middle of another.
The one upside is that I got to see the Brussels Airline Smurf plane. Brussels Airline have painted 1 plane with Smurfs (aerosmurf, more details here - https://www.brusselsairlines.com/en-be/misc/meet_aerosmurf.aspx), one with Tintin characters (Rackham), one is Magritte (Magritte), one is for a Belgian music festival (Amare) and one is for the football team (Trident). Sadly I didn't manage to get a picture of it, but I did manage to get a photos of the Smurf statue in the airport.