Musings from Hynes Convention Center: The Liver Meeting

Now that we'll probably still have rights for the next four years, NRS is back! In this installment of Musings from...The General attends the conference to trump all other conferences: "The Liver Meeting." Yes that is the official name, and its location was so envy-inducing that few people even knew I was attending a conference. Take that, Long Island, China, and Colorado!

1. What are the advantages of holding a conference at Hynes Convention Center? Besides the quasi-mandatory attendance by everyone in lab, and saving lots of money on hotels and transportation, I could walk to the conference from home (more on this later)! Or from lab! Note the proximity to the Prudential Center-- Ann Taylor Loft and Gap were both having sales that the time... 


2. This was a clinical conference. There were lots of clinicians. They are different from us. When I became a trainee member of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) to get a discounted registration fee, it was very difficult to tell them "what" I was because their drop down menus didn't include graduate student as an option or any non-clinical fields of research. No, I don't do transplants, or imaging, or things I've never heard of. No, I don't know what % of time I devote to my patients. The next few points will be musings on this clinician/professional society subculture.

3. Everyone wore black suits. I somewhat tried to blend in, but it just made me sad.

4. Oh look, a workshop on a gene I study! I guess I should sign up for it. What, it costs $25 extra? What, it starts at 6:45 AM????? For the record, the sun was technically not up yet when I trekked to Hynes on a Monday morning. The workshop leader's qualifications for leading the workshop were that he is the next-door lab neighbor of the world leading expert on said gene. Right, so qualified. The extra $25 was for the 6:45 am breakfast. Which brings me to...

5. This conference had no included meals. What.

6. Perhaps the only advantage of not being a Massachusetts licensed doctor at this place and the only reprieve from hunger was the vendor show. Vendor shows at clinical conferences are much, much fancier than ones at science conferences. The difference is trying to get you to buy a new fish tank/pipettor/maybe a microscope versus getting you to prescribe their new blockbuster hepatitis C drug forever and ever or at least until the patent runs out. To do this, every major pharmaceutical company tried to one-up the others by giving out cake pops, cookies, expresso made-to-order, cupcakes, 3-D demo pictures, and yes, FRO YO. I may or may not have been to the fro yo booth three times. Good thing I can't be swayed by industry interests due to my lack of patients. 

7. Speaking of patients, one company (same company as the fro yo!) had a customize-your-own-educational-liver-poster. "It's to teach your patients about liver anatomy," they said. On a computer, I got to pick 4 different liver pictures from 8 options to design a poster with my name on it. Then they gave me a pager, like the kind given out at chain restaurants, and I waited while happily eating my vanilla-chocolate swirl for my poster to print. It was when my pager went off, I picked up my poster, and got my badge scanned, that I found out that my official status according to the AASLD is "Registered Nurse."

8. There was some science at this clinical conference. Especially being practiced by the people giving out something in a packet simply titled "Hangover Cure." Also, these (I took both. Should I try?):

9. Contrary to popular belief, real scientists talk to people at poster sessions. Questionable "scientists" at a clinical conference don't seem to do that. At the poster sesh, TWO people walked up and snapped a picture of my poster without saying a word. The first guy caught me off guard, and my PI was around, so I didn't want to make a scene. But then I checked the official conference policy and photography was definitely not allowed without permission. So when the second guy came up, I was able to tell him off, general-style. I am overestimating how many people care about my work, but if I caught TWO people snapping pictures when I was actually AT my poster and I was only standing there for <10% of the entire time the poster was up, who knows how many anti-social potential-scoopers were creeping around with cameras that day. Also spotted: the poster presenter across from me had a visitor who whipped out a tape recorder and recorded her entire poster explanation. INTENSE.

10. Liver clinicians are really good at coming up with all-encompassing buzz-word heavy titles for their talks to trick people into thinking their content will be interesting. Then this happens (more than once): a resident (MD/ no PhD) tries to give a "science" talk and obviously reads off a script because he keeps flipping pages, "we used a technique called real time quantitative p-p-polymerase chain reaction? The purpose is to look at gene expression levels? Yeah." and closes off with  "Scientific research has been a really humbling experience." Really? Really?