Friday, July 18, 2008
How NOT to throw a virology conference
I just got back from the absolutely thrilling annual delight known as the American Society for Virology Conference. The last time I attended ASV two years past, it was in Madison, Wisconsin and was quite fun. They have a large conference hall in close proximity to both our hotel and the many bars where all the UW-Madison college kids get their drank on. I was expecting something similar this year, except minus the agonizing Northwest Airlines flight home that J-Sexy and I endured with one hour of sleep and a crushing hangover. Too bad I was very, VERY wrong. The only thing this year's ASV had in comparison to Madison was the central theme of virology; every thing else could be considered a cautionary tale about how NOT to throw a major scientific conference. I have conveniently itemized the lessons for your edification, because I know you're all contemplating getting into the virology conference organizing business, and you might want to know what NOT to do.
Everything is a million fucking miles apart. When I arrived, I received a folder saying "Cornell: More than a great resource–a SPECTACULAR setting for academic and professional events." This folder included a pamphlet noting that Cornell is a "a full-service 745 acre conference center in the heart of the beautiful Finger Lakes." What these pamphlets gloss over is that Cornell is atop a gigantic fucking hill, which means that you are always huffing and puffing up some steep-ass grade to get wherever you are going. Furthermore, the "745 acres" mentioned in the pro-Cornell material also ensure that everything is spaced at least a half-mile apart, so if I want to catch a talk about poliovirus replication and immediately after go to some talk about innate immunity in a different session, I have to hope that there is some talk I don't care about in between because transferring sessions means a 15 minute run uphill. Of course, despite the fact that there are large college lecture halls everywhere, the organizers planned all the sessions in the most disparate locations possible.
2. Ensure that the shuttle service runs as infrequently and unpredictably as possible
Given that Cornell is huge, you would think that ASV would compensate by arranging a regular shuttle service to ferry us around from nerdy talk to talk, or back down to the main part of Ithaca where all the hotels are. Instead, they chartered three decrepit old school buses with no air conditioning and semi-retarded drivers who actually asked US for directions. They also instructed said shuttles to run sporadically early in the morning and late at night, so if there was no shuttle, you had to call your hotel or take a city bus. Luckily most of the hotels (including ours) ran free shuttles, but sometimes these were in high demand and you had to either walk or catch Ithaca public transport. I live in New York City and take public transport all the time, so this would normally be no problem...except for the fact that my trusty ASV bag didn't come equipped with a bus map or schedule. It's hard to take the city bus when you don't know where to catch it, you don't know where it goes, and it doesn't run on Sundays.
3. Require use of precious drink tickets for non-alcoholic drinks
When I picked up my hot-ass "ASV 2008" bag and my $200 travel grant, I immediately dove in to find the drink tickets. When I saw there were seven of them, I thought, "BOO YAH!" This momentary elation turned quickly to horror, however, when I realized that you had to use these for water as well as beer. This was a slap in the face to those of us who rely on the generosity of the sober nerds for extra swill, because it guaranteed that those (lame) scientists who don't drink weren't willing to give up their drink tickets to their boozy colleagues as they normally would. Last time at ASV, my drunken crew managed to acquire at least fifteen extra drink tickets from kindhearted teetotalers willing to put their spare booze to good use. This time, all those drink tickets were wasted on Cornell Big Red water and apple juice by the temperance-minded set and by day 3, I was actually paying for alcohol.
4. TOO MUCH VIROLOGY
I know this is a virology conference and I shouldn't complain about hours upon hours of virology talks, but even for professionals in the field, FOURTEEN HOURS A DAY IS TOO MUCH. The conference organizers were not selective about who got to present a talk, and let everyone who wanted give one. That meant that talks went on until ten p.m., and half of them were unfinished crap that had no business wasting my twelve minutes. For every interesting talk in which I heard about "abortion storms" (gross) caused in livestock by Rift Valley fever virus, I got to hear two talks where some dumb skank elaborated on optimizing buffer conditions for some assay they just got working and thus don't have any real data from whatsoever. Thank God Cornell was at least equipped with wireless everywhere and I could spend these talks surfing the internet or simply spacing out.
5. Bad food
It's not like I expect Daniel Boulud to cater this thing, but in Madison they at least had respectable lunch and dinner pasta or taco bars at an indoor facility capable of accomodating chafing dishes. At Cornell, we were lucky to get anything besides a nasty boxed lunch, because in spite of all the empty cafeterias around, our meals were served in a fucking tent on a hill so steep we had to keep an eye on our drinks to ensure they didn't succumb to gravity and slide down the table. The first day, they served something called the "Pacific Noodle Bowl," which consisted of a bunch of horrifically overcooked noodles, shredded carrots, and about five cups of peanut oil. I didn't eat most of mine, but J-Sexy did and paid the price. She said that when she ran to the bathroom, it was full of ladies suffering similar digestive ailments. You know there's a problem when you feed a roomful of virologists something that gives everyone acute gastroenteritis. We all expected to hear a lot about noroviruses and rotaviruses, but I don't think anyone actually expected to learn about them through firsthand experience.
6. No free drinks at the banquet
We all paid $50 extra to attend the banquet "gala" on the last night of ASV. In Wisconsin, we got gift bags of free crap (ASV placemats adorned with structural representations of various virus capsids, ASV water bottles, ASV stress balls, ASV coffee mugs, ASV pencils, etc.). We also got several bottles of wine for our table. At Cornell, we got naught but some marginally edible chicken tikka masala and even had to use our (at that point, non-existent) drink tickets for hooch, as the only liquid they provided was a complimentary bottle of Cornell Big Red water at every seat. Well, we also got a live band that played the disco hits of yesteryear and a DJ who didn't kick me out when I snuck up to his computer and turned on "Nuthin' But a G Thang," the only rap on. He was even going to let me hook up my computer and play some Lil' Wayne until it occurred to him that a song about Weezy being so sweet it makes his woman wanna lick the rapper might offend some people. On the bright side, the band allowed me to singlehandedly change the tone of the banquet for the better by welcoming them back from a break with an acapella rendition of "The PCR Song." You haven't lived until you've taken the stage to drive a tentful of scientists into hysterical cheers by singing "Denaturing, annealing, and extending...well it's amazing what heating and cooling and heating will do." After that, I was high-fived by about fifty people and everyone hit the dance floor ready to party. Thank God for me watching geeky science YouTube ads for Bio-Red thermal cyclers enough times to memorize all the words, because this was the best part of the conference next to the scintillating conversation about strap-ons I had with one of my hot bisexual geek friends from Brown.
There you have it. Next time any of you consider running something like ASV, please heed my warnings and do it up right.
Labels: epidemic geekery, nerd alert, scathing indictments, science, viruses rule
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Please tell me someone snagged some video of your rendition of this song. From your description of the crowd reaction, it was likely the finest a cappella to grace the East Hill in some time.
Did you get to try either of the pizza places?
Anyhow, glad to see you got the last laugh - literally. Razzy wins again and as usual.
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Did you get to try either of the pizza places?
Anyhow, glad to see you got the last laugh - literally. Razzy wins again and as usual.
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