Page 13 - ANZCP Gazette April 2021

37TH ANNUAL SCIENTIFIC MEETING
The First ANZCP Virtual Annual Scientific Meeting— 37th Annual Scientific Meeting. 12–13 November 2020.
COVID-19 has impacted the logistics of organising the majority of social and professional events recently, and our ASM was no exception. Rather than cancel the
ASM entirely, our ANZCP Executive was keen to find
an alternative platform to be able to deliver scientific presentations to our Perfusion community, so an organising committee was formed to develop a feasible solution. Initially we looked into a service provider to run the event online for us, however given that the quotes were in the order of $20K, we worked towards finding an approach with which we could be confident that we could run the meeting ourselves.
Given that we had never run a virtual ASM before, confidence was not one of our strongpoints to begin with. However, where there is a will there is a way, and since most of us have had some exposure to Zoom meetings associated with the Covid experience, we looked into Zoom webinars as a potential solution. Although a
steep (but short) learning curve is required to master
the configuration and running of the webinar, we were quickly on our way towards having the technical side of the logistics sorted. As for the content, we decided that having the meeting run over two days (Thursday–Friday) from 12:30–15:30 Melbourne time would allow for optimal participation, as it follows the usual format of
the traditional ASM. It was shortened, since we were not certain how many submitted abstracts we would receive, and we also felt that a whole day for a virtual meeting
was way too much screen time! Zoom also provides the ability to record the meeting, this being a solution for the objective that we considered vital to running the meeting in this format – that the meeting could be provided to members that were not able to attend due to clinical commitments. Furthermore, this timeslot allowed us to invite presenters from the USA since it was evening in the US.
We planned for three invited speaker sessions, two submitted abstract sessions for students and fellows,
and, in lieu of having a trade display area, we asked our corporate sponsors to submit a video presentation. Invited and submitted presenters were asked to record their presentations using MS Powerpoint and to be available to answer questions at the end of their allocated presentation timeslot. This approach worked well as the technical and audio-visual difficulties sometimes associated with live presentations were sorted out before the meeting, which was a real advantage compared with the traditional ASM. Although it was a fairly daunting experience initially
in running the meeting live on day 1, everything went
to plan and Zoom worked seamlessly throughout the sessions. The trick was to have two screens set up so that the presentations could be shared on one screen as the
live to air view, with the second screen used to access the presentation files and run the Zoom interface, in particular the question and answer display. To keep things simple, we did not include video of the speakers or moderators, which was probably wise for our first attempt given that at one point when we gave it a go it created an issue with the screen sharing. Apart from that minor hiccup, everything else seemed to run smoothly and having Rob Baker in the room next door, providing confirmation that the live to air view was all ok, was reassuring.
It was great to receive an amazing amount of positive feedback from the community about the first virtual ASM, so we look forward to being able to consider how we can utilise this platform as a tool for continuing education for the ANZCP into the future. It was very encouraging to have such a high standard of submitted presentations from both students and fellows and that they were so willing and able to embrace the technical requirements involved. A big ‘thankyou’ to our invited speakers Cory Alwardt, James Reagor, Kenneth Shann and Al Stammers for their professionalism, our corporate partners Spectrum Medical, Medtronic, Getinge, LivaNova and Terumo for their
loyal support, Andrea Hunt for both her administrative and technical support with organising and running the meeting, my colleagues on the ASM planning committee and to all of you that took part.
Richard Newland – on behalf of the organising committee; Andrea Hunt, Rob Baker, Killian O’Shaughnessy & Emerson Sgammotta.
Richard Newland CCP, FANZCP
APRIL 2021 | www.anzcp.org 10