Letter: Letters : By a whisker

From David Turner and Lincoln Turner

Sydney

Organising an international meeting is something a right-minded scientist
should only do once in a professional lifetime. The cost in professional time
(and private time in working across time zones) is considerable. Budgeting is
stressful and in Australia it is exacerbated by the tyranny of
distance—will anyone come?

Believing that we’d make it seductively easy for people to sign themselves up
for the 17th international meeting of the World Federation of Neurology resource
group on Huntington’s disease (phew!), one of us wrote an abstract submission
form to add to the meeting’s Web page. The abstract submission deadline was 25
April. Delegates had 12 weeks to submit their abstracts.

By 21 April we had received 12, mostly by disc which was the alternative, but
not preferred, mode of submission. Despondency set in. Would we have to cancel
the meeting? What about the money spent (aagh!) if there was to be no income?
Should we contact our lawyers?

“Just-in-time learning” on the Net has its counterpart in just-in-time
communication. 24 April: as the sun rose over Moscow, then Prague, Bochum,
Leiden, Cambridge . . . so the computer started chirruping incoming mail. By the
end of 25 April (at its westernmost point) we had exceeded the number of
abstracts presented at the 16th international meeting. A happy ending.

Is there a lesson for the conference convenor? Well, trust human
nature—when did you last send in an abstract well before the deadline? The
advent of Internet submission keeps that exquisite uncertainty lingering right
until the last minute. Literally.