virtual meeting – The Early Career Voice

How to Engage with Content & Colleagues at a Virtual Meeting (And Like It!)

September 22, 2020September 17, 2020 Elizabeth Knight, PhD, DNP

Now that AHA20 is going virtual, you might have some questions: Is it worth it? How can I connect with my council? Will the valuable networking still happen? Will I actually learn anything? So many of our regular touchstones have been canceled in 2020, but you don’t have to give up Scientific Sessions. It won’t be the same, but with a little planning, it will be great in different ways.

I polled the AHA early career bloggers for their best virtual meeting tips, and here’s their rundown on how to make virtual meetings work for you:

Use multiple channels. While the meeting may be streaming on a designated platform, you might also find engagement using outside tools or social media platforms.
- Follow the official hashtag (#AHA20) on twitter. This is a great way to highlight key presentations, engage with other participants, and connect with experts and presenters. (If you haven’t used twitter professionally before, take the time to set up your bio, make sure your existing content is safe for work, and make your avatar a good picture of you. Or consider a dedicated profile for work. Do some legwork ahead of time to follow people and organizations you’re interested in connecting with during the conference).
- You could create a Slack Channel with others in your institution or research area to share resources and have ongoing conversations.
- You could make a Strava group to engage in a little healthy competition and give one another kudos— who got their workout in today?
Take breaks. At a face-to-face event, you spend time walking between sessions and break for meals. When everything is online, it’s easy to forget to get up, rest your eyes, and move around. Hydrate. Take bio breaks. Bonus points if you go outside and don’t take your phone.
Consider using a standing desk, or even a makeshift setup, to help you be more mobile throughout the day. Changing position frequently is one of the keys to avoiding pain from being sedentary.
Take notes! Things start to run together and a good note-taking strategy will help you remember key information. Maybe you use a good, old-fashioned paper notebook, or maybe you prefer a tool like Evernote. Up to you.
Use the interactive tools to ask questions. Especially if you haven’t gotten up the gumption to stand up and ask questions at a live session, you might find the online format more accessible.
Connect with colleagues before the meeting starts, and schedule times to debrief and share key takeaways. This helps to keep momentum and excitement going.
Constant on-screen interaction can be very taxing. If available, try the on-demand option to give yourself more flexibility. Also consider taking a break from being on camera and just listen.
Let yourself be immersed. When you travel to a meeting or conference, you may arrange child care, get someone to cover your clinical or teaching duties, and put up your out-of-office message. While it might be tempting to squeeze conference sessions around your regular responsibilities, you’ll miss the value that the immersion experience provides.

And remember, the virtual conference is accessible to all– if you might ordinarily be limited by difficulty traveling or cost, this is could be your year.

Share other tips (@AHAmeetings and #AHAEarlyCareerBlogger on twitter), connect with the Early Career Community, and grow your network!

And register for sessions: https://professional.heart.org/en/meetings/scientific-sessions

My Experience at BCVS20

August 12, 2020August 12, 2020 Sasha Prisco, MD, PhD

Thank you to the organizers for putting together a vibrant and informative fully virtual AHA Basic Cardiovascular Sciences Scientific Sessions 2020 (BCVS20) conference this year!

While I have attended many meetings and classes virtually this year, BCVS20 was the first major scientific conference that I attended virtually and I did not know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised by the many benefits of participating in the meeting virtually but there were many things that I missed about attending meetings in person.

I enjoyed the convenience of being able to work in specific sessions into my usual work week of attending clinic, doing lab experiments, and attending classes and into my personal life. Additionally, I liked being able to watch some sessions in the comfort of my home, sitting next to my dog. Similar to fellow AHA blogger, Dr. Mo Al-Khalaf, I also appreciated being able to easily jump between many live sessions without having to run across a large convention center. Moreover, I felt that it was sometimes easier to pay attention to certain talks without the distraction of being in a crowded area with many simultaneous presentations. I was impressed by the quality of the presenters’ talks and efforts by the participants to stimulate lively discussions.

I did not take time off to attend the meeting and I felt that the week of BCVS20 was extremely busy for me. Although I appreciate the convenience of having a fully virtual meeting, I miss being able to take a short reprieve from some of my usual responsibilities to give my undivided attention to specific sessions. Furthermore, due to my other obligations, I was unable to attend some of the very valuable, live early career sessions. However, the ability to rewatch the BCVS20 sessions (which are available for 90 days after the meeting) will allow me to catch up on many of the sessions that I missed!

While there are many benefits to attending in-person meetings, not least of which is being able to see your friends and colleagues in person, having a virtual meeting allows people throughout the world to conveniently participate in and attend a meeting. I hope that conferences in the future will continue to be a hybrid in-person and virtual format to accommodate everyone’s busy schedules.

For those of you who attended the BCVS20 meeting, don’t forget to provide your feedback on the meeting via the link emailed to you. If you missed registering for the meeting, it is not too late to get access to the recorded sessions. I hope to continue seeing many of you either virtually or in-person during future AHA meetings!

“The views, opinions and positions expressed within this blog are those of the author(s) alone and do not represent those of the American Heart Association. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them. The Early Career Voice blog is not intended to provide medical advice or treatment. Only your healthcare provider can provide that. The American Heart Association recommends that you consult your healthcare provider regarding your personal health matters. If you think you are having a heart attack, stroke or another emergency, please call 911 immediately.”

Virtual #QCOR20 and the future of cardiology academic meetings

June 12, 2020June 12, 2020 Aaysha Cader, MD, MRCP

Much like many recent academic cardiology meetings, the American Heart Association (AHA)’s Quality of Care & Outcomes Research 2020 (#QCOR20) meeting took place virtually as well, owing to limitations posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Having attended AHA Scientific Sessions 2019 as an international delegate, this was both my first time attending QCOR as well as my first virtual QCOR. There was a wide range of content encompassing cardiovascular outcomes research, abstract presentations, plenary sessions and also an online interactive early career session via zoom.

So, as I logged into HeartHub (https://www.hearthubs.org/qcor ) for the sessions, in the comfort of my pajamas in a time zone a dozen hours apart, I found that the platform was rather unique, convenient and user-friendly. Talks were pre-recorded in good quality, but what really stood about the #QCOR20 format was the chat function that ran simultaneously with the ongoing talks. Completely flattening all medical hierarchies, this allowed for extensive, insightful and interactive discussions in an informal manner between speakers and attendees, irrespective of where they stood in the totem pole of medicine. This also served to obviate some of the conventional barriers of Q&A sessions at large meetings, allowing for more questions as well as the active engagement of more junior delegates.

Additionally, Virtual QCOR registration came with on-demand access to recorded lectures as well as other available conference materials including handouts for until three months after sessions, allowing one to catch up on sessions that might have been missed.

This was particularly useful, because, that very weekend SCAI also hosted their annual scientific sessions virtually. In a parallel world, I wouldn’t have dreamed of testing my efficiency with two parallel meetings. But the effort to attending both was significantly less than usual, including financially, involved no flights, commutes or time off work, and conveniently, I could switch between windows to “pop in” to the sessions of my interest at either meeting.

Despite some of these conveniences, I found myself missing the buzz of in-person meetings: the anticipation of results of late-breaking clinical trials, discussions of live cases, interaction and camaraderie of meeting colleagues face to face from the around the world, seeing new technology in the exhibit calls and especially, coming to think of it, the downtime off work and the absolute joy of travel.

Basically, the nerd, the wanderlust, and the human in me didn’t quite agree entirely with this virtual format. But that’s personal. And while we can agree that the science and education will certainly find its way to clinicians, many of the other goals and expectations of such annual academic conferences hinges on in-person meetings. These include small-group practical education, meeting and networking with peers, sharing of experiences, and potential collaborations borne thereof, none of which can be effectively achieved by a virtual meeting. From the perspective of scientific associations, building agendas, policy-making, professional skills development, and interactions with industry are all far better achieved with face-to-face interactions.

With restrictions to air travel, dwindling economies, social distancing measures and the varying commitments of the global medical community facing different phases of the pandemic in their respective countries, there has been much discussion on the future of medical conferences. Given the current climate, delegates (especially international) may re-evaluate priorities, with considerations of finances and if in-person presence was in fact, absolutely necessary.

And as many more international cardiology meetings are successfully converted into virtual events, and many more physicians adapt to this convenient method of education, it begs the question if this indeed will be the default arrangement for the foreseeable future? Further, into the future, academic societies ought to consider the possibility of combining the best of both worlds, so to speak, with a “hybrid” format, offering the in-person meeting as well as the virtual format, thus giving delegates who might prefer it, the option of attending sessions live from the comfort of their homes.

Also, while large global meetings with thousands of delegates might survive the pandemic and transition into hybrid conferences, what of the smaller meetings? Some of these are dedicated to niche specialties for smaller audiences, offering opportunities for hands-on learning and more intimate networking with experts and mentors. Only time will tell if such smaller meetings will indeed prevail.

Virtual meetings may have sufficiently filled the void of medical education and academic discourse that occurred as a result of cancellations of in-person conferences. Part of this void has also been filled by increased interactions between peers on social media platforms, particularly twitter, with renewed importance of the role of social media ambassadors. In more ways than one, virtual meetings may even have brought the world closer, with many of us logging in at the same time from different time zones. But let’s be real: We can dissect a trial on twitter all we like, but it will never be the same as the standing room only attendance at late-breaking clinical trial sessions. Also, let us seriously spare a thought for the principal investigator presenting his/her pioneering research to a computer screen: that is nowhere near the real thing.

The impact of COVID-19 on the course of major professional meetings has been huge. While Science will always find a way to reach us, meetings are so much more than just science. The whole world is adapting to a new normal and it will be interesting to see how this pans out for the medical community.