Jeff Garvin, introducing the second day of the meeting, if I remember correctly.
If any meeting deserves its own post it is the FASEB Summer Research Conference on Renal Hemodynamics. This year with the sub-title: Mechanisms to understand disease. It has been arranged every three years since 1989. This year, and mostly, it was at the boarding school Vermont Academy in Saxton's River, Vermont, USA.
The walk-way from the dorms to the dining-hall, going in the other direction you get to the auditorium. The dining-hall and auditorium were the only two air-conditioned spaces there, making them quite popular with the participants in the not-quite-100-degree Vermont summer.
As you gather from the name, it is a tightly scoped meeting that draws around 120 people to a half-a-week of 8.30am - 10.20pm scientific sessions. There is a generous lunch break for soccer, softball, paddling, basket ball or discussing papers and collaborations.
In the nicely hot weather, it was very refreshing to go swimming in the river, which was more of a creek than an actual river.
Another pass-time was walking around in the woods, not that I did much of that. This was taken on the way to bathing.
Organisers were Jeff Garvin and David Pollock who did a terrific job. The program was varied and interesting, providing more than usual space to younger investigators. This piqued some senior PIs that weren't invited and therefore stayed at home. Luckily, even they sent, or allowed, their more junior members to participate.
One of the very best part of this meeting is the poster sessions, which start when the bar opens in the evening. There were around 30 posters per session. About twice the size of a poster section at any larger meeting. There was ample time to visit all the posters and discuss science over beer. This was followed by more beer and ping-pong, fussball or billiards. Followed by late night story telling under the starry skies in Vermont, which may or may not have been abetted by the drinking of bourbon.
After a week of that, it is lucky that you can blame it all on the jet-lag when you get home.
Yours,
Michael
Wish I could have made it the meeting. Look fabulous I heard it was great. I work in Tom Coffman's lab at Duke. Several of my lab mates made it though.
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