Title: Virtually the Same? The Challenges of Online Conferences

Like everyone else on the planet, I’m turning increasingly to virtual solutions to our physical challenges in the midst of a pandemic. I give everyone credit for working to make the best of an unpredictable set of circumstances. I realize the impossibility of loading up a convention center with 10,000 surgeons and the people who want to sell them stuff. But I miss those gatherings. For event planners, there are definite advantages. No food and beverage or room block minimum to meet, no travel arrangements for speakers, said Sean Fenske, editor-in-chief of MPO. The MPO Summit, originally scheduled for October 2020 in Salt Lake City, was postponed to September 2021. Instead, in 2020, the MPO Symposium was created as a virtual event with sessions twice a week from Oct. 20 through Nov. 17. “When we said, ‘OK, we’re going to do a virtual event,’ we didn’t want to try and jam six educational sessions in one day then three more the next day,” he said. “There’s no reason to do it. So we have sessions every Tuesday and Thursday except Election Day. You register one time then pick and choose what you want to sign up for. That was a very conscious decision to not simply replicate [the originally planned Summit].” Fenske said he was able to secure all of his first-choice speakers given the flexibility of the format. But there will likely be some challenges when it comes to online discussions. “I don’t think a panel [of speakers] is as effective online. You’re not going to get that true discussion style unless you have a panel of three or four people comfortable with each other,” he said. “The information is valuable, but it’s just not as natural as you get with a face-to-face event.” Angela Silvestri, director of Regulatory Affairs for Stryker, is a member of the Meeting Planning Committee for the Orthopaedic Surgical Manufacturers Association (OSMA). Meetings that have previously been gatherings of about 70 industry regulatory representatives and roughly 50 FDA reviewers in person have morphed into online discussions with more participants.

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  • 11/4/2020

 

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