Conference Facilities Research Articles

Ewolucja tradycyjnych funkcji muzeum w narracyjne muzea multimedialne na przykładzie muzeum Fabryka Emalia Oskara Schindlera

Cracow is a tourism centre both on a regional and national scale; it welcomes several million tourists annually, and the number increases each year. In 2010, the number of visitors to Cracow exceeded 8 million. The city is very well prepared to receive vast numbers of tourists, both national and foreign, from the perspective of the development of tourist infrastructure. The gastronomy, accommodation and entertainment base, as well as the ever - growing conference and congress facilities, make Cracow a city that satisfies the needs of tourists of varied preferences and motivations. A vital question is also the price diversity when it comes to tourist services, which makes the city available also to visitors with lower incomes. Cracow is, furthermore, a great center of museums. Numerous monuments of magnificent historical and architectural value attract an immense number of tourists, and tourist routes that have been created in the city facilitate the visiting process. The goal of this article is to present Cracow’s Historical Museum - Schindler’s Factory. The article will describe the significance of the museum in the 21st century, as well as its promotional and informative activities. The results of a survey carried out on a group of one hundred visitors to the museum will also be presented. The goal of the survey was to learn what the main reasons for their visit were, as well as their opinions, on how the city promotes and encourages tourists to visit this particular museum.

Ecology, Ontology, and Pedagogy at Camp Coorong

Ecology, Ontology, and Pedagogy at Camp Coorong

10th International Conference of ACOS, June 13-15 2012

10th International Conference of the Asian Clinical Oncology Society (ACOS) was held in conjunction with 38th Annual Meeting of the Korean Cancer Association during the period of June 13-15, 2012 in COEX, which is the flagship conference facility of Korea located in the city of Seoul. Four sessions were allocated for gynecologic oncology in total. Four special lectures, four educational lectures, six oral presentations, and twenty-two poster presentations were delivered. The theme of educational lectures for gynecologic oncology was 'New Concepts in Epithelial Ovarian Cancer' encompassing the debate of adopting upfront surgery or chemotherapy for advanced ovarian cancer. In this context, individual lectures covered neoadjuvant chemotherapy, upper abdominal surgery, secondary cytoreduction, and new chemotherapy options. Choosing initial treatment modality depends largely on the tumor burden of given patient and building a prediction model for resectability of ovarian cancer might be warranted as Sokbom Kang suggested. Kimio Ushijima summarized recent trial results of chemotherapy for recurrent ovarian cancer dedicating large part to the molecular targeting agents such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) inhibitors, Ang1 and 2 receptor inhibitors, and PARP inhibitors. Bevacizumab, which is anti-VEGF and one of the most vigorously tested targeting agent, showed the promising results by GOG 218 and ICON7, again recently turned out to improve response rate and extend progression-free survival when combined with gemcitabine and carboplatin in platinum sensitive recurrent ovarian cancer on OCEANS trial. Four special lectures were given under the theme of 'Unresolved Issues in Endometrial Cancer'. Fertility preservation is widely advocated in recent years because the prognosis is excellent when diagnosed in early endometrial cancer even if the prevalence is relatively low (2.1-14.4%) in women under the age of 40. Still, the selection of patient, assessment of myometrial invasion, concurrent ovarian cancer, the formulation, dosage, duration of progestin-base regimen, monitoring response to progestin therapy, management for maintenance of complete response, and so forth are some of those awaits consensus formation. The Chang Gung Memorial Hospital group from Taiwan summarized the recent issues regarding fertility saving in early endometrial cancer along with presentation of their own data. Another aspect of conservative management of endometrial cancer being issued is whether to perform systemic lymph node dissection. While the risk evaluation by imaging modalities and histological typing/grading serves pivotal role in determining nodal metastasis, recent randomized controlled trials failed to demonstrate survival benefits in low risk patients. Thus Karen Chan concluded that a systemic lymphadenectomy can be safely avoided in the majority of low risk endometrial cancer patients. In contrast, widely accepted consensus about the adjuvant therapy in intermediate- or high-risk endometrial carcinoma is still far from established, although the role of chemotherapy is recently more recognized in adjuvant setting. The gestational trophoblastic neoplasia is a big health threat in many Asian countries in spite of dramatic decrease of prevalence in selected area for the last two decades. After reviewing intensively four randomized controlled trials and four case control studies, Taek-Sang Lee concluded that pulsed dactinomycin might be superior to weekly parenteral methotrexate warranting rigorously designed randomized trials. Six gynecologic cancer topics were presented orally. Notably, Ju-Won Roh presented 'clinical significance of EZH2 expression and therapeutic effect of its silencing in endometrial cancer', leading to receiving Merit Award. EZH2, which is a member of Polycomb-group (PcG) family acting mainly as a gene silencer, is a surrogate target for therapy because it is overexpressed in a number of malignancies and the relevancy with endometrial cancer has not been elucidated. She examined therapeutic effect of in vivo EZH2 silencing alone using siRNA or combined with chemotherapy and showed that EZH2 silencing enhanced cytotoxicity of paclitaxel, docetaxel and cisplatin in endometrial cells and suppressed tumor growth. 10th International Conference of ACOS was crowded with 1,450 delegates from 30 countries. The organizing committee declared it was the most successful one ever among the ACOS conferences so far and vowed to keep the momentum of international exchange.

The Public Health Dimensions of the Global Ecological Integrity Group (GEIG) Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, July 9-16, 2011

The Global Ecological Integrity Group (GEIG) held its 1 9th annual conference at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, July 11-16, 2011. The conference was graciously hosted by Prof. Vladimir Bencko of the Charles University's First Faculty of Medicine in Prague, who, along with Professors Laura Westra and Colin Soskolne of Canada also co -organised the event. John Quinn provided invaluable support to all delegates throughout the conference. Delegates numbered 55, from 15 countries. Kind sponsors included the First Faculty of Medicine of Charles University in Prague which provided magnificent conference facilities as well as refreshments throughout the 5 -day event. The support provided by Sanofi-Pasteur in hosting our welcome reception in the historic Faust's House will go down as GEIG' s best-ever such welcome event. And, not to forget all of the memorable experiences that come with being in one of the worlds great, historic, and intact cities that combine history with modernity; the boat and walking tours were highlights for the delegates, providing keen opportunities for immersion in over 1,000 years of history. This 19th GEIG conference was particularly significant because the topic Human Rights and Duties: Supporting Biological Integrity for Public has been one of the major themes that GEIG has studied and discussed during the course of its 19-year history. However, this theme has been a main focus of our annual conferences only once before, in 1 998, when a World Health Organization (WHO) Workshop at the European Centre for Environment and Health of the WHO in Rome, Italy, was co-organized by Colin Soskolne and Roberto Bertollini, the Centre's then Director. That Workshop included several of the founding members of GEIG. The influence of GEIG, under the leadership of Laura Westra, extended unexpectedly far in that the 1998 WHO Workshop resulted in a 1999 WHO Discussion Document, which turned out to be the most accessed document on the WHO-EURO website for the succeeding three years. It is believed to have had a rather profound advocacy role, and it can be retrieved at the following link: http : //www. colinso skolne . com/documents/WHO- 1 9 99_Discussion_Document . pdf Our latest thinking on these matters as reflected through the Prague conference will be published as the 20th anniversary collection of GEIG' s collective work, sharing the focus on public health from the 1999 WHO Discussion Document. The book is expected to be published by Earthscan (an offprint of Taylor and Francis, U.K.) for launch at the GEIG conference to take place June 18-23, 2012, La Rochelle, France. …

Budapest, Bratislava and Vienna conference facilities, comparative analysis

The aim of this study is to give an overview of conference facilities in three capital cities in the Central European area, along the Danube, analyse and compare their possibilities and venues. The utilized data within the study was collected from different sources, like websites of the Hungarian, Slovakian and Austrian Convention Bureaus, books dealing with convention and event management and statistics, ICCA publications. Budapest is highly ranked between cities transacting conferences for years. There are 146 different conference facilities with a total capacity for 114.000 participants. The 7 conference centres and all four- and five-star hotels suit all requirements of the different professional organizations. Budapest hosted many megaconferences; out of these the ASTA yearly session and the vein-surgery conference can be excelled. From the conference capacity of Budapest only one conference facility is missing which could host more than 5.000 participants. After analysing the conference capacities of the three Danube-band capitals – Budapest, Vienna, Bratislava, – it can be seen what kind of similarities and differences are characterizing the cities. At the end of this study the writer makes recommendations for the place of the mega-conference centre, the development of a modern and up-to-date conference database, as well as for the cooperation of the three capitals in connection with managing mega-conferences.

La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwest City (review)

Reviewed by: La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwest City Adam Schwartz La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwest City. The University of Arizona Press, 2010. By Lydia R. Otero. In his analysis across feature films that stray from casting professional actors, film theorist Siegfried Kracauer writes of the “documentary touch.” Citing international classics such as The Bicycle Thief and Los olvidados, he remarks: “In all of them the emphasis is on the world about us; their protagonists are not so much particular individuals as types representative of whole groups of people. These narratives serve to dramatize social conditions in general” (98). In short, our voices, livelihoods, and daily existence are validated through the stories film reveals: “When history is made in the streets, the streets tend to move onto the screen” (98). What happens when the streets—those where this history is made—literally disappear? To where do “real life” protagonists turn, off screen? By whom are their voices heard, and stories re-told? In the case of Lydia Otero’s La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwest City, those streets—and the cultural and historical value ascribed to them by generations of Mexican American (and most of the area’s Asian and African American) residents—were once found in downtown Tucson, Arizona. The Pueblo Center Redevelopment Project, approved in 1966 by the city’s predominantly white property-owning voting base that did not occupy or patronize the region, “targeted the most densely populated eighty acres in [the state]” (2). Within five years, city officials had successfully demolished adobe homes and bilingual community theatres, relocated churches and the remains of central plazas, paving over any dusty, Latino remains of a corazón tucsonsense with “modern” building materials. In an effort to appeal to local white, monolingual wealth and visitors that identified with such cultural comforts, Downtown Tucson had been repackaged in glass and concrete. A brand new cityscape accommodated new government offices, a conference facility, concert hall, a hotel, outdoor shopping mall and an imposing concrete pavilion known today as the Tucson Convention Center (TCC). By 1971, Governor Jack Williams welcomed over 7,000 to the Ice Capades, the first performance at TCC. With the homes of tucsonenses like Alva Torres and Guadalupe Castillo buried somewhere under his feet, Williams, flanked by red, white and blue décor, assured spectators that TCC “belong to ‘the people’ and that it represented ‘tomorrow’” (125). Although cinematic in scope, this very eerie turn of events may not turn into a Buñuellian-style feature anytime soon. However, this exciting volume from The University of Arizona Associate Professor of Mexican American Studies offers a needed “documentary touch” to broadcast her interviews with Torres, Castillo and the once vibrant La Calle. The latter translates literally to “street” in Spanish, yet pragmatically conveys much more: flexible spaces familiar with tucsonense families for generations that extended immediately outside of private domains within the downtown area and inclusive of the “city’s commercial heart” (28). Only pages into Otero’s book does it become sharply apparent that narratives from La Calle today symbolize an extermination of Tucson’s original bilingual cultural and social core, an event in the not-so-distant past that quickly went forgotten and for many remains unnoticed by the greater region’s monolingual, White inhabitants. And yet this research arrives at a time when the livelihoods and voices of tucsonenses and Arizonans are in danger of cultural extermination in new forms: Mexicano, bilingual and Chican@ agency and vitality risk institutional erasure through renewed Anti-English legislation, Anti-immigrant policing and fervor over ethnic studies curricula. Regardless of one’s personal, political or geographic connection to Tucson, I have for the past year insisted that La Calle be read across audiences. All readers, for one, are likely to catch themselves engrossed in a tale complemented by stunning collection of source materials—including photographs, maps, advertisements and newspaper clippings, often getting lost in their [End Page 223] detail for minutes each. As a scholastic piece, the book’s significance is incredibly wide reaching. La Calle introduces key conceptual frames that can be dissected and re-situated...

An Application of Hedonic Pricing Analysis to the Case of Hotel Rooms in Taipei

This study investigates the impact of a variety of attributes or ‘characteristics’ on the rates charged for hotel rooms in Taipei. The authors employ a ‘hedonic pricing’ method and use data obtained for 73 hotels from an Internet travel agent. The results show that hotel location, the availability of LED TV and the presence of conference facilities have significant effects on both weekday and weekend room rates. By contrast, Internet access and the presence of a fitness centre have significant effects on weekday rates only, while room size has a significant effect on weekend rates only. Of particular interest, given the results obtained in earlier work, is that in Taipei there is a negative relationship between proximity to the city centre and room rates, both on weekdays and at weekends.

Networked interactive whiteboards: Rationale, affordances and new pedagogies for regional Australian higher education

<span>This article presents an argument for the use of networked interactive whiteboards (NIWBs) in regional Australian higher education and identifies new pedagogies for this context. Most Australian universities operate multiple campuses, and many use video conference facilities to deliver courses across these sites. For students at remote video conference sites, their classroom experience is often one of isolation and limited student to student contact. In this article, NIWBs are proposed as a tool to enhance this mode of delivery and exploratory research into the additional affordances they provide is presented. By using networking with IWBs, annotation and gesture can be shared across distances. Emerging possibilities from the integration of NIWBs with video conference, web conference and lecture capture systems are also explored. Three new pedagogies for regional Australian higher education are proposed based on these new capabilities.</span>

An Exploratory Study of Local Organizations' Conference Choice Factors

This study empirically investigates the choice factors used by local organizations in selecting a conference facility for meetings and/or events. The sample consisted of 105 local organizations that belong to a regional chamber of commerce in Central Virginia. Of 12 choice criterion items, 4 major factors were identified in an exploratory factor analysis. Facility quality was determined to be the most important choice factor for local organizations. Based on the findings, marketing implications and recommendations for future research are provided.

Sector Differences in Conference Facility Refurbishment

What influences the probability that a conference facility will refurbish? This is an important question as such information can inform conference organisers when selecting a venue. This paper presents an econometric analysis of the probability of conference venue refurbishment with a particular focus on the sector differences (purpose-built, educational establishments, visitor attractions and hotels) and time since previous refurbishment. We test the hypotheses that there are scale and growth effects and whether the presence of disabled facilities influences the probability that a conference venue will refurbish.

Top three reasons to come to Kobe for the 14th International Congress of Immunology

Top three reasons to come to Kobe for the 14th International Congress of Immunology

Western Europe: Last Holdout in the Worldwide Acceptance of Clinical Legal Education

I have come to believe, over the last two decades of my consulting work outside of the United States, that the origins, growth and acceptance of clinical legal education throughout the world is the greatest single innovation in law school pedagogy – and certainly in student learning – since the “science” of the Socratic, case method was brought to Harvard by Christopher Columbus Langdell. I remember distinctly when I came to this conclusion. It was around the time of a conference held at beautiful Arrowhead Lake, in California, hosted by UCLA Law School and the University of London at the university's conference facility in the mountains of San Bernardino County, startlingly close to Los Angeles. The event was the Sixth International Clinical Conference, held in October of 2005, and it was the first truly international event in that series. Yes, it was an “international” clinical conference, and prior events had provided participants with something of an international flavor, and the event was sponsored by British and American law schools. This, however, was something new, something different.

New Structures for Exhibition Buildings

In Summer 2007 the “BMW-World” in Munich, Germany was opened. It is a centre for entertainment for the public and for delivery of new cars to new customers. The whole building is a 90 by 180m wide cloud-like roof covering a big open space that serves as a kind of market place. The roof is a complex steel structure resting on the interior buildings used as restaurants and conference facilities. A significant steel tower shaped like a double-cone is also used as a support for the roof. This paper describes the difficulties and the solutions the planners had to face during planning and construction. The design of the building was developed during an architectural competition by the Vienna based architects COOP Himmelb(l)au Wolf Prix, Dieter Dreibholz and Partner accompanied by the Frankfurt based structural engineers Bollinger and Grohmann. The same team also won the competition for the new Science-Museum in Lyon, France. The museum is located right between the confluence of the river Saône into the river Rhône. That is where the name “Musée des Confluences” is derived from. The building has two parts: The transparent entrance and the opaque museum building being elevated above ground. Construction work for Musée des confluences started at the end of 2006 and completion should be in 2009.

ISMB/ECCB 2009 Stockholm

The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB; http://www.iscb.org) presents the Seventeenth Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), organized jointly with the Eighth Annual European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB; http://bioinf.mpi-inf.mpg.de/conferences/eccb/eccb.htm), in Stockholm, Sweden, 27 June to 2 July 2009. The organizers are putting the finishing touches on the year's premier computational biology conference, with an expected attendance of 1400 computer scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, biologists and scientists from other disciplines related to and reliant on this multi-disciplinary science. ISMB/ECCB 2009 (http://www.iscb.org/ismbeccb2009/) follows the framework introduced at the ISMB/ECCB 2007 (http://www.iscb.org/ismbeccb2007/) in Vienna, and further refined at the ISMB 2008 (http://www.iscb.org/ismb2008/) in Toronto; a framework developed to specifically encourage increased participation from often under-represented disciplines at conferences on computational biology. During the main ISMB conference dates of 29 June to 2 July, keynote talks from highly regarded scientists, including ISCB Award winners, are the featured presentations that bring all attendees together twice a day. The remainder of each day offers a carefully balanced selection of parallel sessions to choose from: proceedings papers, special sessions on emerging topics, highlights of the past year's published research, special interest group meetings, technology demonstrations, workshops and several unique sessions of value to the broad audience of students, faculty and industry researchers. Several hundred posters displayed for the duration of the conference has become a standard of the ISMB and ECCB conference series, and an extensive commercial exhibition showcases the latest bioinformatics publications, software, hardware and services available on the market today. The main conference is preceded by 2 days of Special Interest Group (SIG) and Satellite meetings running in parallel to the fifth Student Council Symposium on 27 June, and in parallel to Tutorials on 28 June. All scientific sessions take place at the Stockholmsmässan/Stockholm International Fairs conference and exposition facility.Contact: bj@iscb.org

Why and How UK Visitor Attractions Diversify Their Product to Offer Conference and Event Facilities

Conference and event organizers are becoming increasingly competitive in choosing venues that are designed to make an impression. Visitor attractions are, therefore, no longer as much of an unconventional choice as they once were. In light of this realization, such venues have marketed themselves not only on the provision of cultural/entertainment facilities, but also conference and event facilities. Drawn from a wider survey population undertaken in 2001, this research is based upon a postal questionnaire of 75 visitor attractions from across the UK. The survey results identify that many visitor attractions first entered the market place to diversify their revenue base and did not invest heavily into providing a complete conference and event product. Indeed, the research identifies that cosmetic changes remain the most common refurbishment activities undertaken in order to initially create such facilities offered by many visitor attractions. However, the results highlight that since opening, visitor attractions have changed their strategies and are now willing to invest in their product. Such venues are increasingly aware of the intense competition within the market place and the need for investment to maintain a place in the ever-growing competitive environment and to be able to supply a unique product. As such, the extent of structural changes involving the conversion and/or extension of the physical building increased in popularity once the conference facilities had opened. Exponential smoothing identifies that between the decades 1990–1999 and 2010–2019, there is predicted growth in visitor attraction offering conference facilities of 76%.

Euroanalysis XIV The European Conference on Analytical Chemistry

The 14th European Conference on Analytical Chemistry, Euroanalysis XIV, took place in the historical city centre of Antwerp, Belgium from 9 to 14 September 2007. This meeting was jointly organized by the Centre of Micro and Trace Analysis of the University of Antwerp and the Royal Flemish Chemical Society (KVCV—Koninklijke Vlaamse Chemische Vereniging) with assistance from the Institute of Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM) of the European Commission. One of the aims of the conference was to highlight The Role of Analytical Chemistry in the Preservation of Mankind’s Cultural and Natural Environment. The response to the conference theme was quite substantial: out of a total of ca 800 abstracts received, 34 oral and 124 poster presentations dealt with the use of analytical chemistry or of analytical methods to study environmental problems. Prior to the conference, the Division of Analytical Chemistry (DAC) of the European Association of Chemical and Molecular Sciences (EuCheMS) had its annual meeting and a decision was reached to hold the 16th Euroanalysis conference in Belgrade, Serbia in 2011, under the responsibility of the Serbian Chemical Society and Slavica Razic. On the Sunday before the conference, a number of halfday or full-day courses on different topics related to analytical chemistry were offered by well-known scientists. These included introductions to “Mass Spectrometric Analysis for Endocrine Disruptors and Pharmaceutical Products in the Environment” (D. Barcelo, Barcelona, Spain), “Chemical Metrology”, (E. Bulska et al., Warsaw, Poland), “Experimental Design” (P. Goos, Antwerp, Belgium), “Analysis by Laser Ablation” (B. Hattendorf, Zurich, Switzerland), and “Vibrational Spectroscopy” (B. Lendl, Vienna, Austria); these courses were attended by ca. 100 conference participants. The scientific programme of the conference was spread out over eight half-days. All lectures took place in the Aula Rector Dhanis, a modern conference facility adjacent to a number of the historic buildings of the City Campus of the University of Antwerp. The programme comprised 12 plenary lectures, 18 keynote lectures, 13 invited lectures next to 76 contributed and four vendor lectures. With the exception of the plenary lectures, the oral program was organized in four parallel streams. All topical sessions were chaired by two conveners. The social program involved a welcoming reception at, and guided tour of, the Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts on Sunday evening, an organ concert in Antwerp Cathedral on Tuesday evening and a number of guided city walks on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday evening the conference dinner took place in the Marble Hall of Antwerp Zoo, adjacent to the central station. In total, about 700 delegates from 49 different countries attended the conference. The best-represented country was Spain with almost 100 participants. In addition to delegates from other European countries (including Germany, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Poland, Great Britain, France, Austria, Serbia, and Belgium, to name just a few), delegates frommore distant nations such as Thailand, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Taiwan, South Korea, and The Philippines also participated in the meeting, giving it a truly global character. The conference organizers were able to make available 100 bursaries in order to facilitate the participation of young scientists in the meeting. A number of these scholarships could be made available thanks to the support Anal Bioanal Chem (2008) 391:1107–1108 DOI 10.1007/s00216-008-2114-9

Science without borders

Quantum information is a hot subject around the world, and many Iranian scientists and students are active or interested in the field; however, their mobility is constrained by financial and political considerations such as difficulties in obtaining visas. With those concerns in mind, Vahid Karimipour of Sharif University of Technology and I decided to plan a major international conference in Iran, capped at 100 participants, with a significant fraction of them coming from other countries. The first International Iran Conference on Quantum Information (IICQI) was held 7–10 September 2007. A successful international conference requires a local base of respected experts in the field, an effective local organizing committee, excellent conference facilities, financial support, and a critical mass of students and faculty in the region who would attend. Those basic requirements were met by having an enthusiastic, energetic team of organizers, but a conference in Iran posed unique challenges—preconceptions and politics—that also had to be faced. In the West, Iran is constantly in the news because of its nuclear program, the 2006 Iran-hosted conference that questioned the Holocaust, and the Iranian seizure of British sailors and marines shortly before the conference deadline, not to mention the seething insurgencies in the neighboring countries of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. In addition, Iran and the US do not have diplomatic relations, although Americans can obtain visas to go to Iran. Despite those problems, Iran has hosted successful physics conferences—for example, one on strings and another on cosmology, both held last year. Also last year Iran was the host for the highly successful 38th International Physics Olympiad. Thus we were optimistic that our proposed conference would be successful. In my view, the complicated politics between Iran and the West is a compelling reason to support conferences in that country. Science is driven by a shared desire to discover the laws and nature of the universe in a way that transcends politics, local culture, race, creed, and gender. In a world divided, a scientific conference reminds us through our shared discourse that we are all human and all fundamentally the same on our journey of discovery. A scientific conference provides the opportunity for local participants to learn from, and be inspired by, foreign scientists who share their time and insights to globalize the scientific endeavor. My views are not universally shared, however. Science and technology are separated by a nebulous boundary. Some would argue that scientific discourse, at least in strategically important fields such as nuclear physics, quantum information, and nanotechnology, should be constrained so as not to support technological advancement in unfriendly nations and to prevent the export of intellectual capital. I believe, however, that the majority of physicists would accept sharing knowledge that is or will be published in openly available peer-reviewed scientific journals and proceedings; a scientific conference dedicated to discussing such openly available knowledge really should not be controversial. With those considerations in mind, Vahid and I planned the conference, greatly assisted by his student Laleh Memarzadeh Esfahani and a postdoctoral fellow in my group in Calgary, Ali Tayefeh Rezakhani, and with indispensable support and guidance from numerous other individuals. To minimize visa complications and to maximize the appeal of the location, the conference was held at Kish University on beautiful Kish Island in the Persian Gulf. The island is a “free zone,” which means that it does not require visitors to have visas issued in advance. Kish Island is easily reached via several daily

From molecular interactions to tissue organization—Diversity of evolving cytometric approaches from a Hungarian perspective

From molecular interactions to tissue organization—Diversity of evolving cytometric approaches from a Hungarian perspective

The Canaries: an important biogeographical meeting place

The Canaries: an important biogeographical meeting place

The blog as a high‐impact institutional communication tool

PurposeThe considerable cost of sending staff to a conference is often not matched by the benefits that the library then gains. The aim of this paper was to maximise the institutional impact of the authors' attendance at the ALIA Click06 conference in Perth, Western Australia by providing a blog of the event and encouraging interaction with colleagues during the conference itself.Design/methodology/approachThe University of Sydney's “Blogs dot Usyd” service provided the platform for the blog, using WordPress software and holding the blog within the usyd.edu.au domain. Prior to the conference postings were done occasionally in order to build up interest in the blog. During the conference, postings were done several times each day using conference or hotel wifi facilities and internet cafes. Pictures were also posted to Flickr. Posts were a mix of informal/contextual and formal/informational.FindingsThe response from colleagues was very positive. Usage statistics show that a high proportion of the target audience read the blog with many of them using RSS. Some posts also attracted a number of comments, which often produced results that added value to our original posts. The authors were also surprised to find a high level of interest from the wider library community. In particular, Australian bloggers seem to be forming a strong community bond based around the librariesinteract.info communal blog. Producing the blog enabled the authors to meet with a number of peers, thereby increasing the benefits from the conference activity.Practical implicationsThe further use of blogs as staff communication tools during conferences and similar events should be encouraged. This could be linked with staff development activities such as training in blogging and RSS.Originality/valueThe blog differed from most institutional blogs in that it had a tightly defined target audience, a predetermined period of existence and a very tight focus on a single event.