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Why Another Meeting?

Academic Center for Dentistry Amsterdam, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Louwesweg 1, 1066EA Amsterdam, the Netherlands; j.t.cate{at}acta.nl

Key Words: meetings • IADR

IADR President Greenspan, CADR President Dixon, Honored Guests, Fellow Board Members, Colleagues and Friends.

For many years, ‘IADR Toronto 2008’ was just a line on our calendar. Now our meeting is reality. In this meeting, we have again record numbers of scientific contributions and participants.

But seeing those figures, one can seriously ask several questions:

• Why do all of us want to meet during these few days?
  
• Why do we fly, collectively, over 20 million miles to be together?
  
• Is it worth spending a total of 24,000 days away from home, our patients, the laboratory bench, our institutes?
  
• One can even ask, is it worth spending thousands of gallons of fossil fuels to come here.....?
  

Let me make it clear: The IADR and all involved in organizing this meeting are very pleased that you came! But...perhaps it is worth taking a few minutes to rethink why we are here.

The meeting questionnaires that you complete inform us that you come to this World IADR meeting to present your results and to network with colleagues.

Thinking about those reasons, several questions came to my mind:

Are we here mainly to present our work, or are we prepared to enter into stimulating discussions? Personally, I have vivid memories of lively discussion periods at IADR meetings, where colleagues were prepared to share their knowledge, their doubts, were willing to speculate, to argue with colleagues, without the risk that this would be taken personally.

Some of that atmosphere seems to have been lost in recent years. Are we worried about sharing our imagination, our fascination, because our grant proposals are pending, and we fear the competition?

Another question: When we plan for this meeting, which sessions do we choose? Those topics that are in the center of our research interest, or, quite the contrary, related fields to broaden our knowledge domain?

What do we find most rewarding? Feeling re-assured that all we hear was predictable? Or are we rather amazed by all the advances that are being made in neighboring fields? And does this new information stimulate us to bridge boundaries in our research efforts?

Another question: When we plan for this meeting, do we make a long list of the colleagues we already know, the ones we need to see, or do we also allow time for new contacts? To established researchers, I would say: Do you realize how stimulating it is for young colleagues, new in the field, to talk to you and learn from your vast experience? And in those cases, can we talk without always one eye on our phones, our Blackberries, and other seemingly indispensible electronic toys?

I very well remember my first IADR meeting in London, where, as a young PhD student, I was introduced to an authority in my field. He was genuinely interested in my research project. This initial contact resulted in a long and stimulating collaboration and friendship, long into his retirement, and hopefully into mine.

The IADR is entering a period where we are reaching out to new continents. In 4 years, our World meeting will be in Rio de Janeiro. In 6 years, it will be in Cape Town. These will be great opportunities to meet with local colleagues, to learn about their problems and needs, and to learn from their achievements. Obviously, this requires an open attitude toward all those who may be attending an IADR meeting for the first time. We should provide a stimulating and rewarding congress environment for them to experience. It is my suggestion that we start and practice that already today at this meeting

Let me speak frankly: We seek to enlarge our membership in those parts of the world...not merely to increase IADR membership numbers, but to enable colleagues from around the world to present their results and experience a stimulating research environment, and to return home with many new ideas and contacts.

In the past two years, I have attended many IADR Divisional meetings around the world. It has become very clear to me that we must work hard to make the IADR even more attractive as a research organization. The membership benefits are not always that evident. Our current initiative about regional structure is part of that issue.

But our World meeting also has special ‘perks’. We have a wealth of symposia, eminent speakers for the plenary lectures, hand-on workshops, Lunch & Learning sessions, and many social events to give us opportunities to meet with colleagues.

All of this is in a good tradition that has been built over the years. So the risk is that this will be ‘just another meeting’. If I may, I challenge all of us to make this a different meeting, truly another meeting.

What would be the criteria for a truly successful meeting?—

• a meeting where you return home with new ideas in your own research line,
  
• a meeting where you have reached out to embrace new ideas, and have come into contact with colleagues whom you did not know before,
  
• a meeting where you encouraged a young colleague in his or her first research environment,
  
• but also a meeting where both long-time members and first-time participants will say, we must come back next year!
  

I am sure it is that type of meeting, that type of environment, that we can jointly create in the next days!

Journal of Dental Research, Vol. 87, No. 9, 799 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/154405910808700914


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This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Cate, J.M. t. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Cate, J.M. t. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?