PCMA Column: Speakers Speaking to Speakers

PCMA Column

SPEAKERS SPEAKING TO SPEAKERS Flip the Abstract Model at Scientific Conferences

Author: Dave Lutz, CMP, Managing Director of Velvet Chainsaw Consulting.

Many health-care and STEM conference business models are heavily dependent on participants who are able to justify their attendance in part because their oral or poster abstract has been accepted. We’ve analyzed some conferences in which the majority — as high as 80 percent — of attendees is on the scientific program. We refer to these conferences as meetings of speakers speaking to speakers.

If your conference has the “speakers speaking to speakers” model, the primary avenue for growth has been to make room for more speaking slots or add to the poster-board footprint. But increases of this kind usually only result in further diluting the quality of the conference experience.

In his research article, “Peer Review: The Current Landscape and Future Trends,” Michael Jubb writes that there are “growing opportunities for researchers to publish non-peerreviewed articles for review in an open environment”.

Many scientific journal articles cover details on research that has been

completed. Conversely, most conference abstracts cover work that is in progress.

If we apply these principles to the scientific meeting session design, these work-in-progress research projects should be more than just presented, they should be reviewed and improved in our conference settings — or to use Jubb’s term, in “open” environments.

To accomplish this, scientific meeting organisers will need to shift from expert-centered, rapid-fire, low-engagement oral abstracts to conversation sessions during which peers help shape the research project’s next steps. To accomplish this, abstracts should be available in advance so peers can come prepared to critique, much like the flipped-classroom model, in which students prepare on their own for classroom interaction.

This flipped concept to create peer critique sessions isn’t new — it really goes back to the roots of scientific meetings. We’ve lost sight of improving research through collaboration at our conferences

as we have accepted more abstracts and made decisions to give students a chance to present. Not too many years ago, researchers would openly challenge findings. Today, we are more worried about hurting feelings than improving discovery.

For your next conference, introduce a new session format designed so that research projects are improved upon, not just presented. Use a session-format term like “peer critiques” to help describe the session design and to set the expectation for constructive criticism. Make the abstracts available in advance via video, digital poster, or in written form. Encourage the attendees to come to the session with honest opinions and advice. Abstract submitters should check their egos at the door so that they are in a frame of mind to welcome and consider all feedback.

This article ran in Convene.

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All smiles at the 2nd edition of the Inter Medical Meeting! OIC Group team with Prof. Piero Volpi, Inter’s Medical Sector manager.

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PCO | May 2019

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