On Thursday and Friday (8/27-28) there was online conference for cancer chemoprevention, organized by NCI (National Cancer Institute).
As COVID19 shows little sign of dying down in the US as a whole, at least in the near future online conference will be mainstream method for scientific meeting. Apparently, format for online conference has not been finalized and the meeting organizers are still experimenting how to do it.
For example, we saw different screen configurations in Thursday and Friday. There were about 20 panel/presenters plus 4-5 organizers, and uncertain numbers of attendees. Most people's mike and video were off. Questions by attendees are sent by chat to session chair/organizer, and handled. What we saw was presentation screen and attendees' name-only small screens.
It was not with Zoom, but with Cisco Webex. The use was intuitive enough at least for just attending. For presenters, there were a few occasions the presentation did not take off smoothly on day 1, but by day 2 organizers figured it out and it was mostly fixed.
Just like in real conference, I was on and off the conference presentations, listening to presentation of particular interest. Overall it was very good learning and catching up opportunity for the latest topics of cancer chemoprevention studies in the US.
A large segment was dedicated to immunoprevention and cancer vaccines, showing current trend. "Cancer and inflammation" relation is already a common sense topic among cancer chemoprevention researchers, but translating it to clinic is ongoing. Organ-wise, lung, colon, and pancreas seem to be presented most.
I do not know if online conference is going to replace conventional meetings or not. It seems online conference cuts a lot of human interactions and opportunities to know colleagues, and it is a shame.
Well, we will see.
On Friday evening, there came a news of the death of Chadwick Boseman, best known as Black Panther actor. He died of colon cancer at age of 43.
I rented 4K UHD version of Black Panther (2018) and watched it, for a tribute to the actor.
My obvious response; "I cannot believe this guy would be dead in 3 years".(The movie was filmed in 2017).
It was another cancer death. It was a sobering reminder of how fragile life can be even in his early 40's. We never know what kind of fight a person is fighting, even for an actor in glorified superhero movies.
RIP.
PS Also on Friday our new paper was published. I'll write about it later.
