Organizing international conferences: What I have experienced and what are the future challenges?

Abstract

It was my dream to fly high when I was young. . Ever since I attended the first international conference while I was a Ph.D. student, I realized that my dream was to organize such a meeting by myself. After several failed attempts and game-changing learning experiences while I was a post-doc (2013–2015), I successfully organized the first International Symposium on Phytochemicals in Medicine and Food (ISPMF) in Shanghai in 2015. After the first conference, the following ISPMF series just followed through; the second ISPMF was in Fuzhou, China in 2017 and the third ISPMF was in Kunming, China in 2018. The fourth ISPMF will be held in Xi'an, China in 2020. My success, I would rather say our success, if any, is not by chance but due to a team effort from a group of persistent and passionate scientists from all over the world. No task is too big when done together by all (attributed to Hawaiian Proverb). Choosing the right conference planning team is the most important lesson that I learned from my initial failed experiences. My dream of organizing an international conference came true when I met the president of The Phytochemical Society of Europe and after receiving support from several excellent universities in China. The guaranteed sponsorship that provides financial support, space, staff (mainly from students), etc. is essential for hosting a successful conference. I have had the privilege to obtain such kind of support from excellent universities in China. Experts from all over the world who participated in the foreign organizing committees as well as those from China set the bar high for selecting invited speakers. Although most journals rejected my request to publish a special issue from the first ISPMF, editors of Phytochemistry Reviews and Food Chemistry offered the first opportunity for the publication of a special issue. Now we have offers from several journals to publish presentations from plenary and invited lectures given during recent ISPMF conferences. Over time, more challenges have been overcome and more are yet to come. For example, how do we organize a successful international meeting that actively and proactively promotes collaborations and exchange of ideas during and after each conference, and how can we bring new talent from the next-generation scientists, and in particular students and junior scientists, into the field of phytochemicals in medicine and food? These are examples of continued challenges of our future conferences. Some approaches can be implanted such as setting up a social network among all participants, allowing effective and efficient communications, assigning voluntary and enthusiastic group leaders and co-leaders for different topics who can respond to the questions/comments, setting up student support channels to allow for basic and applied science questions and answers from experts in the field, or promoting exchange of students among participants from all over the world. My new dream has silently come true, that is, to start and to continue organizing a series of international conferences whereby humans from around the world can benefit in many ways from phytochemicals in medicine and food. Let food be thy medicine and medicine be the food (attributed to Hippocrates).