One Week Until the Abstract Deadline!

Greetings and Aloha!

Undoubtedly, many of you are furiously working on last minute experiments, analyses and writing your abstracts in preparation for the ISMRM abstract deadline next week (November 9th at midnight Eastern Time), and so I will keep this month’s blog short.

So far all is going smoothly with the HTML submission process, and we have already received a large number of abstracts. Undoubtedly we will receive many more, right down to the deadline. Be sure to login to the abstract submission website before the deadline to set up your author information . Best of luck to all of you. We look forward to reading the amazing scientific and clinical work that you will be sharing with the ISMRM.

The “Power Pitch” is my favourite presentation format at the ISMRM Annual Meeting. First introduced by Derek Jones in Milan 2014, Power Pitches have been enormously popular with the membership. During the first hour, 15 speakers provide a two-minute synopsis of their work in rapid-fire fashion. In the second hour, each presenter gathers next to a large screen monitor outside the Power Pitch Theatre to provide face-to-face discussion of his or her scientific work. I love watching the condensed summaries in a handful of slides. The presenters do a masterful job of communicating the main points of their work in 3 or 4 slides, and the presentations are excellent and well rehearsed. The face-to-face discussions let the audience dive more deeply into those abstracts of greatest interest to them. This is where the real action happens, the human friction that embodies the real purpose of flying from around the world to converge in one place to meet and talk science.

Power Pitches have been so popular that this year the AMPC has decided to double the number of Power Pitches in Honolulu. The Honolulu Convention Center trade floor is sufficiently large to allow for two Power Pitch Theatres, one on each end of the hall. It’s very exciting that we are able to enhance and grow this important way of presenting some of the best scientific work members of the Society have to offer. Can’t wait!

Good luck this week on submitting your abstracts!

Scott