PLENARY AUA Annual Meeting Q Tokyo Motor Show Q International Auctioneers Conference
PRE CON AUA Keeps Up — and Stays Ahead
MEETING: American Urological Association (AUA) 2012 Annual Meeting, which is expected to bring 17,000 attendees, exhibitors, and other participants to the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC) in Atlanta on May 19–23.
CHALLENGES: An ongoing challenge for AUA is to keep up with the latest developments in the field. “Really what drives a lot of our attendance is what’s new in urology,” said Janet Skorepa, AUA’s associate executive director of education and scientific meetings. To stay on top of that, AUA reserves “late- breaking slots” in its plenary session, which is the Annual Meeting’s largest program, and also allows “late- breaking abstracts” to be submitted. “Our abstract submission starts in late summer, so as we get closer to our meetings, there could be some ad- ditional science that’s hot,” Skorepa said, “so we always look at that.”
INITIATIVES: This year AUA is mixing up some of its programming formats. There will be a “Residents Bowl” in the exhibit hall, with resident physicians from each of AUA’s eight member sections competing in “something of a team-style ‘Jeopardy’ event,” Skorepa said. “It should be really interesting.” AUA is also offering an entire day of live sur-
THERE’S A MEETING FOR THAT? Let the Bidding Begin
INTERNATIONAL AUCTIONEERS CONFERENCE AND SHOW:At the National Auctioneers Association’s (NAA) 2011 meeting — held at the Caribe Royal All-Suite Hotel and Convention Center in Orlando on July 12–16 — (1) attendees visited Baterbys Art Auction Gallery; (2) International Auctioneer Championship (IAC) winner JosephMast participated in the National Auctioneers Foundation’s annual Children’s Auction; (3) Kristine Fladeboe- Duininck tried to move a wagon during the IAC finals; and (4) NAA’s first female presi- dent, Christie King, presented a Presidential Clock to Past President B.Mark Rogers.
geries — seven different procedures performed at hospitals around the world and broadcast to the GWCC, with moderators in both the hos- pital surgical suites and AUA’s meeting rooms facilitating live discussion. “It’s a different way of teaching, instead of didactic sessions,” Skorepa said. “[Attendees] get to see it.” There will also be a new half-day of program-
LATE SHOW:AUA reserves “late-breaking slots” in its popular plenary session for hot topics that come up at the last minute.
ming for allied health-care professionals such as advance practice nurses and physician as- sistants, spinning off the half-day program that AUA already offers for primary-care physi- cians. Both programs are an effort to deal with a projected short- age of urologists in the near future. And, taking advantage of meeting in Atlanta, headquar- ters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), AUA is offering a research program in conjunction with CDC on “The Sci- ence of Male Health.”
So far, AUA’s numbers are looking good. “We
look at the number of abstracts that are submit- ted,” Skorepa said, “and if we have a high num- ber of abstracts that are submitted, typically our attendance will continue to increase. … We’ve had a large amount of abstracts submitted.” n — Christopher Durso