Growth of the ASB meeting

[Stephen Piazza]

Hello BIOMCH-L:

Part of my Program Chair column in the current ASB newsletter is about how the ASB meeting has grown in size over the last few years. Here is a slightly modified version of what I wrote:

I would like to bring to the attention of the membership [and others who may attend ASB in the future] some questions related to the recent growth in the submission rate. Just a few years ago 400 to 500 submissions was the norm, but in 2015 and 2016 we had around 700 submissions and this year there were 800 abstracts submitted. If the number of submissions stays at this level or continues to rise, we may need to change how the meeting is organized. Faced with 1000 submissions sometime in the near future, the Society might have to choose from the following options:

1. Maintain the usual meeting schedule while finding more room for posters (essentially the path we have taken this year in Boulder, but one that is not always available). With more posters presented in the same amount of time, there may not be sufficient time for attendees to view the posters.
2. Keep the schedule the same, but maintain the podium-to-poster ratio by adding more parallel sessions. This would be more expensive than finding more room for posters but would provide more opportunities for members to serve as session moderators and more room for symposia.
3. Reject more abstracts while keeping the schedule essentially the same. The rejection rate at ASB has historically been low, 5% to 10%. Would a higher rejection rate of 25% to 50% be right for ASB?
4. Change the schedule to make more poster sessions of longer duration while reducing the time devoted to podium and thematic poster presentations (similar to the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience).
5. Lengthen the meeting by a day. Adding programming on a fifth day would provide more room for presentations, but would make the meeting more expensive to attend due to the added lodging costs.

The ASB Executive Board welcomes comments from the membership and others who attend ASB on how to manage the growth of the annual meeting. If the recent growth in submissions is maintained or increases, how should we manage this growth when planning the meeting? Is one of the above options preferable, or are there other options we should discuss? Please consider adding your voice to this dialogue.

Stephen Piazza, PhD
Program Chair, 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Biomechanics

p.s.: I’ve chosen to post this in the General Discussion forum rather than in Events and Conferences because I’m not announcing a conference – apologies if this is in the wrong place.

[Ross Miller]

Re: Growth of the ASB meeting

Hi Steve,

Among those options I like #1 the best (more posters). I've not been to SFN or ORS but I've heard the posters are a centerpiece at those meetings; maybe folks who attend those meetings often can comment on what (if anything) they do that's different from ASB.

I've always really enjoyed the thematic poster sessions at ASB and would be in favor of having more of those and reducing the podiums to only the keynotes, submitted sessions, and awards, but I guess that wouldn't necessarily help with the meeting size issue.

Ross

[Rodger Kram]

Re: Growth of the ASB meeting

Thanks Steve
I agree with Ross, more posters, more SFN style is the way to go.
Roger Enoka told me yesterday that he feels the same way.

What would we lose in doing so? Well, we would lose the contemporaneous focussed discussion after a podium talk.
Also, the speaker would lose the opportunity to show that they have some ability and poise to teach in a classroom.

Maybe technology can replace some of those functions.
At ASB 2017, Steve Piazza has organized two Reddit Ask Me Anything AMA sessions.
I think they will be moderated. A moderated AMA where participants must be registered users could replace some of the post-podium Q&A functions.

Another idea would be a way for poster presenters to create a Youtube video in which they record themselves speaking at a podium interspersed with their slides. Youtube channels for the various topics (gait, spine, tissue etc.) could be created. Some of such videos would be deadly boring but then again so are some live podium presentations. So there would be an incentive to add a little fun and entertainment to one's Youtube video.

Will such technology lead to a decline in physical meetings? Probably. I am sure that Skype/Zoom has cut down on a lot of business travel (and expenses). Maybe multiple smaller virtual meetings will spring up.

Let's all think about the challenge of a growing ASB meeting and discuss it in Boulder in 11 days! Think about what the best parts of the Boulder meeting are and what needs to change.

Rodger Kram

[Ross Miller]

Re: Growth of the ASB meeting

This has come up before recently (I forget who came up with it sorry; not my original idea) and I think it's a good idea, of having poster awards at ASB like the Summer Bioengineering Conference does. This could help up the profile of the posters and reduce the impression that they are the "second tier" behind the podium selections (also another reason I'd be in support of more thematics and fewer podiums).

While writing this I checked on asbweb.org and I guess there is a poster award already (President's Award)! But just that one. Would be great to have more, maybe split up by career stage (e.g. BS MS Doc Postdoc) or by ASB membership category if we don't want to bias them towards academia.

Ross

[Tarkeshwar Singh]

Re: Growth of the ASB meeting

If there is an issue with people submitting multiple abstracts, one way to contain the number of submitted abstracts without affecting the number of attendees would be to allow only active ASB members to submit and restrict one submission per first (or submitting) author. Maybe ASB is already doing it that way, I haven't been to the conference in the last couple of years. SfN has it setup this way and it certainly controls the number of submitted abstracts from exploding.

Regards,
Tarkesh

[Jason R. Franz]

Re: Growth of the ASB meeting

Thanks, Steve. What a great opportunity for discussion!

It is tremendous to see this growth in the annual meeting, despite the obvious challenges that come with it. I would like to echo earlier comments from Rodger and Ross about increasing the number of posters while generally preserving the overall meeting format. That said, were that route selected, I bet many would value an increase in the poster session duration to the extent that it not add another day to the meeting.

The thematic poster sessions have become my favorite format at the meeting (an opinion I’ve heard from many colleagues). Thus, I would opt to find a way to accommodate modest increases in poster session durations without offering fewer of those.

Though, I would disagree with the recommendation that we place restrictions on who can submit abstracts and how many they can submit. We should welcome good science and trust the discretion of the Program Chair and peer reviewers.

I hope this serves as a benchmark for growing interest in biomechanics overall (and growth in the student and regular membership in the society).

Looking forward to seeing you all in Boulder.

Jason Franz
UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State University

[Gary Heise]

Re: Growth of the ASB meeting

I also support the option of more posters and could provide "data" from a previous ASB meeting that used this approach with success. The 1998 NACOB meeting had the Borelli lecture, keynotes, and award talks as podium presentations. Both ASB and CSB organized some symposia, a couple of debate sessions, and some panel discussions, but all free communications were presented as posters. I enjoyed this meeting held at the University of Waterloo and I believe there was a healthy dose of interaction among participants. Of course, an old-fashioned German-themed banquet at the end helped - I have a fuzzy memory of Stu McGilll in lederhosen.

[Wendy Murray]

Re: Growth of the ASB meeting

It seems like - at least on this thread - the idea of increased number of posters/time for posters is considered very positively. I agree that well-organized poster sessions can be spectacular and I know that the SfN meeting is very well-liked.

Expanding the poster session has been something we've experimented with in previous ASB meetings, and my experience as program chair suggests that it hasn't always been universally popular - some people express disappointment to get a poster vs. a podium, comments in meeting evaluations sometimes refer to the fact that some great studies were relegated to posters when they should have been "featured" (i.e., given a podium). Anecdotally, recent program and meeting organizers have reported increasing incidence of people withdrawing their abstracts following notifications of whether abstracts were assigned to a poster vs. a podium session.

All of this makes me curious to hear if there are any concerns, and what they are.

Are there members who would be less likely to submit an abstract/attend the conference if it became more poster-centric?

[Young-Hui Chang]

Re: Growth of the ASB meeting

Thanks for raising this issue, Steve.

It is an important one that deserves thoughtful deliberation. Related to the idea of increasing the number of poster presentations, one of the ways that Society for Neuroscience provides a more personal experience to the attendee is that there is an emphasis on grouping posters by theme area (much of this is actually self-organized during the submission process). So despite being in a hall with thousands of posters from every possible niche of neuroscience, one might spend the entire conference only within a couple of rows of posters--which leads to small groupings of like-minded scientists that can engage in discussions.

Along with the topic of how to increase the number of presentations and in what form they should take, I believe we should also consider the larger vision of the ASB and its membership goals. The SfN may not be the best model to follow in this regard. SfN generally has upwards of 30,000(!) attendees at their annual meetings, with basically no peer-review process on a 2300 character abstract. It really has no choice but to make it all about the posters to be able to accommodate that size audience. I personally prefer the smaller size and more personal nature of ASB to SfN. But, it seems inevitable that ASB will (need to) see at least some growth.

As Steve mentioned, ASB conference attendance has been steadily increasing and we will likely soon reach the 1000 attendee mark. We are at the cusp of not being able to host meetings on college campuses anymore, and we may need to move toward hotel and conference venues as a sustainable solution (e.g., recent meetings at Ohio State and NC State). Using hotels to host meetings has several benefits, but will also come at additional cost that will lead to higher registration fees. Using a hotel conference center benefits from an economy of scale, so there will be an additional incentive to keep growing the meetings to try and keep costs down per attendee. I like the idea of larger meetings and membership growth, but I think we should have very deliberate discussions about our membership and conference goals. It may be very helpful to talk with recent conference organizers or review previous conference budgets and to see what the desired attendance size for meetings should be, which will help inform the programatic decisions.

just my two pennies...

see you all Boulder!

Young-Hui

[Anahid Ebrahimi]

Re: Growth of the ASB meeting

Hello all!

To follow Dr. Chang’s comment, I recently presented a poster at the American Society for Engineering Education conference where posters were grouped by division (e.g., mechanical engineering division, student division, etc.). The poster session was 1.5 hrs long and each division had ~5 posters.

For the student division, the first hour was scheduled such that 1 to 2 mentors were assigned to a student’s poster every 20 minutes. This was great for getting feedback, as sometimes a group would assemble at a poster and it almost becomes a mini-thematic poster discussion. It also avoided the risk of a situation in which only a couple people stop by a poster over an entire session.

Part of the perceptions surrounding podiums (e.g. “featured”) and posters (e.g. “second tier”) may be due to the large variability in attention/feedback participants receive from a poster presentation. I really like the suggestions to increase exposure via youtube videos or more awards for posters! Since part of the ASB mission is "to encourage and foster the exchange of information and ideas among biomechanists working in different disciplines," perhaps a suggestion is to have poster divisions organized by a mix of career stage, membership level, and theme area (as opposed to theme area alone).

This growth in membership seems like a great opportunity to combat some existing perceptions of poster presentations (especially for students early in their career)! So exciting!

Thanks,
Ana

--
Anahid Ebrahimi
PhD Candidate, Mechanical Engineering
University of Delaware
anahide@udel.edu

[Stephen Piazza]

Re: Growth of the ASB meeting

Hello BIOMCH-L,

If I might respond to my own question (now that I am no longer Program Chair) I'd like to share my personal preferences for the meeting if it continues to grow. These are not specific recommendations for next year's meeting (or any meeting), just my thoughts on how the meeting might be run in the future as a larger meeting. Here's what I'd like to see at future ASB meetings:

Plenary sessions: The keynotes and award talks are an opportunity to bring all the attendees together and to give recognition from the group as a whole to deserving award winners. Among the highlights of the Boulder meeting for me were these sessions and especially the extended discussions between the audience and the speakers at the ends of both keynotes and the Borelli address.

Social/networking/professional development functions: These functions (including Women in Science, Diversity/Inclusivity, and student events) have been very popular at recent meetings, judging by how quickly they fill up during registration.

Expanded poster sessions: Accepting more abstracts as posters seems to me to be the way to handle the increased number of submissions. I would be against accepting fewer abstracts (by limiting submissions or a having a higher rejection rate) because I don't want to see my students' opportunities to present at ASB be diminished. Extending the meeting to fit in more podium or thematic poster (TP) sessions doesn't seem very attractive to me either because I don't think it will be easy for many people to take more than four days to attend ASB. Having additional parallel sessions on the same schedule isn't a great alternative for me because I already want to be in three sessions at once as it stands. I much prefer the extended interactions I have with authors at their posters to what can fit into 2 minutes following a talk in front of 200 people. Extending the poster sessions would also address my main complaint with them as they are now, that they are too crowded.

Symposia: In recent years at ASB, we have asked the session chairs to choose from the highest-scoring abstracts (as judged by the reviewers) to select, say, 6 podium or TP presentations from a group of 10 abstracts. The result, I think, has been sessions in which the presentations often complement one another and in which the moderators have a more vested interest in seeing the session resonate with the audience. We have also had several symposia (9 in Boulder), some invited and some competitively selected, that are "curated" to an even greater degree by the organizers. I would advocate dropping conventional podium and TP sessions altogether and replacing them with maybe 20 symposia that would be organized by members of ASB who would have the option of selecting presentations from any of those identified by reviewers as meeting minimum standards for presentation at the meeting (and not just the ones that were scored highly). Authors invited to participate in symposia would have the option of saying no and keeping their work in the poster sessions (this is actually how we handled the Teaching Symposium in Boulder). The symposium organizers could be selected competitively based on submitted proposals, or could be members of the program committee, or both. The format of a given symposium could be similar to a podium or thematic poster session - whatever the organizer feels would work best. This is important: I'd have these symposia running concurrently with the poster sessions, so they do not necessarily take attention away from the posters.

Moving to a meeting like the one I have described above would require a sea change in how posters are viewed at ASB. None of my friends who attend the Neuroscience meeting ever say that they will be presenting "just a poster", but that's what many ASB attendees would say currently. It would have to be made clear over time that there is no reason to believe that the best work would not be found in the poster sessions. Perhaps this could be emphasized by revising and adding to the current awards structure at the meeting as others in this thread have suggested.

Best regards,
Steve

--
Stephen Piazza, PhD
Penn State University

[Ajit Chaudhari]

Re: Growth of the ASB meeting

Hi everyone,

I'd like to chime in with my thoughts as a many-time attendee and former meeting chair.

First of all, is it a given that the meeting should just expand to fit everyone who wants to come? One of the things many of us love about ASB is that it isn't huge like ORS, ACSM, CSM, SfN, or many of those others, where you feel overwhelmed by the sheer size of it. I know I feel like I get to know people more and feel more comfortable asking questions or making comments when it's a more intimate group. It's hard to say at what point a meeting becomes an overwhelmingly huge meeting (2000? 3000?), and perhaps we are far enough away from that to not worry about it, but still it seems to me that this is an important component of the discussion that isn't really happening.

Second, while I have enjoyed some of the symposia because they get more senior people talking and thematically they often present a more big-picture look, I also still enjoy hearing about people's latest work. This is more efficient in a thematic poster or podium session, because even with the number of posters we have now I cannot get to very many poster presentations. The rapid podium session was a nice addition this year, because it allowed a whole bunch of people to hear a larger number of presentations all around a theme.

Third, there is no free lunch with posters. SfN may have an ocean of posters that are grouped thematically so you only really have to view a few rows, as some have mentioned. If that's what you are going to be doing, just mingling with the subgroup of people who are all in those few rows, what's the point of us all meeting in one big meeting? ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine) has taken this to its logical conclusion. They have 7 half-day poster sessions, with the entire population of posters rotating so that each poster is only up for 4 hours. Plus there are 20 concurrent other sessions simultaneously with the posters. The net result of this is that ACSM gets an incredible amount of registration revenue, tons of students get the lukewarm experience of presenting to 5 or 6 people who walk by their poster, and the quality of the posters is on average somewhat weak (though of course some great work gets accepted as posters, and finding it is like finding a needle in a haystack).

Moreover, with an ever-expanding number of posters we have no alternative but to have the meeting at large convention-center style venues. One of my main priorities as a Meeting Chair was to make sure every poster could be up for the entire meeting, so people could browse posters at other times and mark them to come back during the poster session. Another was that every presenter would get a significant amount of time in front of his/her poster so that if someone wanted to talk to the presenter about the poster they could do that. Third, all the posters needed to be in one big space with enough room to move around so it would be easy to browse the posters. As anyone who was in Omaha, Columbus or Raleigh will remember, this takes a LOT of space. Kudos to the Boulder crew for making it work with the limited space they had, but between having two spaces that were far apart and having to cram the posters in tightly and having each poster up for only a day, I didn't feel like it was the best experience either as a poster presenter or poster browser.

To address Steve's comment about not wanting to hinder his students' opportunity to present at ASB, I think the idea of only allowing each registered attendee to be first author on one limits people to submitting their best work and keeps the number of presentations that must be accommodated down a bit.

Just to throw out another idea, at the European College of Sports Sciences that have augmented the poster sessions with what they call ePoster sessions. These are essentially ultra-rapid podium sessions where the presenter stands in front of a big screen tv with their poster up and gives a 1-minute synopsis. They do this by theme, so basically 20 people are presenting in 20 minutes. And I believe all the ePosters are available at other times at interactive kiosks to look at. This is a bit tricky to do well because of the acoustic challenges of presenting this way, but I feel like it might be an idea worth exploring. At ACSM I believe they have also tried something similar to give a group of posters an opportunity to get noticed and drive traffic to the posters later.

Lastly, to improve the perception of the posters I second/third/fourth the idea of providing more poster awards, especially for students at different levels. The Summer Bioengineering Conference of ASME does this to nice effect, I think.

My two cents,
Ajit Chaudhari
The Ohio State University

Hello BIOMCH-L,

If I might respond to my own question (now that I am no longer Program Chair) I'd like to share my personal preferences for the meeting if it continues to grow. These are not specific recommendations for next year's meeting (or any meeting), just my thoughts on how the meeting might be run in the future as a larger meeting. Here's what I'd like to see at future ASB meetings:

Plenary sessions: The keynotes and award talks are an opportunity to bring all the attendees together and to give recognition from the group as a whole to deserving award winners. Among the highlights of the Boulder meeting for me were these sessions and especially the extended discussions between the audience and the speakers at the ends of both keynotes and the Borelli address.

Social/networking/professional development functions: These functions (including Women in Science, Diversity/Inclusivity, and student events) have been very popular at recent meetings, judging by how quickly they fill up during registration.

Expanded poster sessions: Accepting more abstracts as posters seems to me to be the way to handle the increased number of submissions. I would be against accepting fewer abstracts (by limiting submissions or a having a higher rejection rate) because I don't want to see my students' opportunities to present at ASB be diminished. Extending the meeting to fit in more podium or thematic poster (TP) sessions doesn't seem very attractive to me either because I don't think it will be easy for many people to take more than four days to attend ASB. Having additional parallel sessions on the same schedule isn't a great alternative for me because I already want to be in three sessions at once as it stands. I much prefer the extended interactions I have with authors at their posters to what can fit into 2 minutes following a talk in front of 200 people. Extending the poster sessions would also address my main complaint with them as they are now, that they are too crowded.

Symposia: In recent years at ASB, we have asked the session chairs to choose from the highest-scoring abstracts (as judged by the reviewers) to select, say, 6 podium or TP presentations from a group of 10 abstracts. The result, I think, has been sessions in which the presentations often complement one another and in which the moderators have a more vested interest in seeing the session resonate with the audience. We have also had several symposia (9 in Boulder), some invited and some competitively selected, that are "curated" to an even greater degree by the organizers. I would advocate dropping conventional podium and TP sessions altogether and replacing them with maybe 20 symposia that would be organized by members of ASB who would have the option of selecting presentations from any of those identified by reviewers as meeting minimum standards for presentation at the meeting (and not just the ones that were scored highly). Authors invited to participate in symposia would have the option of saying no and keeping their work in the poster sessions (this is actually how we handled the Teaching Symposium in Boulder). The symposium organizers could be selected competitively based on submitted proposals, or could be members of the program committee, or both. The format of a given symposium could be similar to a podium or thematic poster session - whatever the organizer feels would work best. This is important: I'd have these symposia running concurrently with the poster sessions, so they do not necessarily take attention away from the posters.

Moving to a meeting like the one I have described above would require a sea change in how posters are viewed at ASB. None of my friends who attend the Neuroscience meeting ever say that they will be presenting "just a poster", but that's what many ASB attendees would say currently. It would have to be made clear over time that there is no reason to believe that the best work would not be found in the poster sessions. Perhaps this could be emphasized by revising and adding to the current awards structure at the meeting as others in this thread have suggested.

Best regards,
Steve

--
Stephen Piazza, PhD
Penn State University

[Louis DiBerardino]

Re: Growth of the ASB meeting

Hi all,

I'm going to have to agree with Ajit on this one. Reading some of the earlier posts got me feeling good about emphasizing posters, and maybe having podiums only for the plenaries, awards, and curated symposia. However, Reading Ajit's response reminded me how overwhelming it was to navigate the poster sessions in Boulder, and I would fear an even larger poster session. It seems that we may have a difficult choice in either uncomfortably expanding the conference, or uncomfortably decreasing the abstract acceptance rate.

[Clare Milner]

Re: Growth of the ASB meeting

Dear All,


I'm a bit late to the table here, but just wanted to add another voice to the discussion.


I agree with the sentiments that one of the major pluses of ASB is the smaller size that makes for a friendly conference where it is easy to meet people.


I am not a fan of increasing the poster sessions ad infinitum, and agree that some way to slow growth is needed. I like Ajit's suggestion to limit people to only one submission as first author. As Ajit indicated, this will encourage submission of the author's best work and will limit the overall number of abstracts without reducing opportunities for students to present at the conference.


I am not a fan of having only symposia/ invited speakers for podium sessions. I think it is important for the current work of scientists at all levels to be exposed to large audiences for dissemination and feedback.TO this end, the rapid podium sessions were great in allowing more people to present in a session.


Best regards,
Clare


--
Clare Milner, PhD
Drexel University

[Rodger Kram]

Re: Growth of the ASB meeting

Here is a fairly radical proposal.

ASB annual meeting is currently a partial day on Tuesday, full days Wed, Thurs and about 3/4 of Friday.

If the facility permits (Boulder did not), all posters could be up the whole meeting.
Thursday could be only posters and no podium talks (well, maybe one Keynote on Thursday morning to get people out of bed?)
This plan would allow a few more podiums on Wednesday (but obviously fewer (zero) podium on Thursday).
Moreover, it would focus our attention on posters, posters, and more POSTERS on Thursday.

I also think more podium sessions should be "speed" sessions like was tried with success in Boulder.