Newsmaker Interview: Preparing for Vienna

The Winter Meeting in Vilamoura had 81 sessions and 400 presentations, along with posters, courses, wetlabs, and more. How do you put together such a programme? What does the Programme Committee do, and how do they do it?

The ESCRS Programme Committee is large, with 18 experienced surgeons. We usually start planning the main symposia about a year and a half before a congress or meeting. In fact, we have just now decided on the topics for the 2024 Congress. First, we look at all the main symposia we have done in the past five or ten years and brainstorm to develop the next main symposia, which are the skeleton of the Congress and our Winter Meeting. Then we start to lay out the other parts of the programme. The Education Committee, with 19 members, is also involved—they take care of the courses.

It is not only a painful process but a very long process. It takes many, many months with a lot of work from a lot of people. For the upcoming Vienna Congress, we got more than 270 applications for instructional courses, but we only have space for 110. There were a lot of good courses we couldn’t fit. Then we looked at the papers and the posters, for which we received more than 1,900 abstract submissions. All the abstracts get reviewed and graded by several reviewers. It is a very transparent process. I can’t tell you how much work that is to get all that sorted. Then we sort out the wet labs and start looking for instructors. We keep track of everything on a huge spreadsheet.

That must be anamazing spreadsheet.

It is. It has a lot of information. For example, we can tell if a course has been given already, how many attended, and how attendees rated it. Then taking care of schedule clashes is even more complex. You have all these accepted papers, posters, symposia, and videos on top of that.

Now you’ve also added the iNovation session.

The iNovation Day takes place on Friday. The idea is industry and start-up companies gather with surgeons to discuss trends and new ideas. We look at many different aspects of ophthalmology and medicine. The first one was at the Milan Congress last year. It was a great success, with many companies and sponsors and had great networking opportunities.

How has planning the conference programme changed over the years?

From our perspective, the pandemic and COVID told us we need in-person, face-to-face contact, no question. We are tired of just having virtual congresses. We did that once—out of necessity. Now we’re trying to introduce more interactivity. People come to a congress to learn, but also to see people and talk with colleagues. The things that happen outside the conference rooms are often the most important. You meet colleagues you haven’t seen in a while, get the real story.

We would like fewer of the “presenter on the podium” type of sessions, with the audience just sitting there. For example, we will have the arena, a central boxing ring stage, with pro and con presentations, which is very different from the usual setup. It will have a moderator and short presentations followed by discussion. Audience members will be able to write comments that will appear on a big screen and discussed straightaway, allowing for an exchange of ideas.

You will see many changes in the format of our Congress. For example, we’ve changed the free paper sessions. We used to have one room per session. It was frustrating at times because maybe there were only two or three presentations that you were really interested in, and you would have to change to another room to see another session. It was quite cumbersome. Now we have four free paper sessions, all in one very large room. Attendees will have headphones with four channels to easily go from one session to another.

Finally, we’ll have something quite special in Vienna, which most people have not experienced—a Viennese ball. This will be in the Hofburg Imperial Palace Saturday night. All are welcome. Men can wear white or black tie, a dark suit, or elegant national costume. Ladies wear full-length ball gowns. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for people coming to Vienna. Dancing is optional, but we will have a crash course on waltzing on Friday night in the Messe Wien.

Tags: ESCRS2023