Traditionally, annual international meetings are events to attend: a place to share a poster presentation or give an oral presentation, moderate a session, or simply to learn something new over multiple days. Preparation for the meeting includes planning the journey and choosing the most interesting lectures to attend. In recent years, it has also become easier to follow international meetings remotely, with improving availability of content online. The Radiological Society of North America and European Society of Radiology meetings, for example, allow online streaming of almost all the lectures, to help spread knowledge while increasing the visibility of the meeting worldwide.
Social media can also be a very useful tool; with the large availability of smartphones and tablets, many attendees now shares “live” snapshots of the meetings. Of the numerous types of social media services, Twitter is often the best suited for these purposes as it allows for live “micro-blogging” of events. For example, searching for the hashtag #ASNR18 allowed live following of many lectures during the last ASNR meeting, with numerous important take-home messages posted from multiple simultaneous talks.
Going deeper, one of the most tweeted lectures was “Review of Modern Classification and Nomenclature of Vasoformative Lesions” by Deborah R. Shatzkes, with near 110 tweets in almost 2 hours, including many pictures of the slides. The visibility of that lecture, and the whole session, got over the limits of the attending audience, reaching people worldwide (this author was actually enjoying the lecture from Italy).
Furthermore, Periscope, a Twitter spin-off app, allows live recording of a session, as during the Keynote lecture by Andy De Lao about the role of the Neuroradiologist in the 21st century.
Such sharing of content is an opportunity for all involved: the meeting organizers and the speaker can increase their visibility (and thereby their reputation) while those following from home can catch some of the highlights of the lectures (though not the entirety of the lectures – that’s almost impossible and not the purpose of the tweeting).
A potential concern is that some speakers may request to not be photographed or recorded, in which case the hosting organization could highlight such requests. As for concerns about losing physical audience attendance, it is unlikely that any technology can replace the complete on-site experience of attending a meeting in person.
Though there are undoubtedly limitations, social media can be a useful tool to remotely follow international meetings and provides a useful opportunity for the many who cannot attend in person.
The author would like to thank Dr. Amy L. Kotsenas for her support in creating this post.
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