Testing, testing, is this thing on?
I told myself I'd write up a summary of each day to make a post when I got home so everyone could see my summary of Saturday first thing Sunday. Well that clearly didn't happen. To be honest, I don't know about you, but I'm still digesting everything from Saturday. I'm not sure what I was expecting from #bps2022 - this is my first time attending the meeting - but if yesterday is any indication this meeting is going to be five days of OVERLOAD. Have you noticed that at every moment there are not fewer than five awesome things you could be doing/seeing/hearing? It may feel stressful at times: scrolling through the mobile app (thanks BPS, that one is a lifesaver) trying to figure out where to go, running between rooms, "what do you mean you're out of coffee??", "why are these escalators so slow!". But amidst all the highly scheduled chaos and swirling science and meetings promise me one thing: take a deep breath, and enjoy your time here. I don't know about you, but my last in-person meeting was December 2019, over two years ago! I can't help but think how incredibly lucky we are to be here, immersed in the cutting-edge science of others. A lot changed in all of our fields these two years, and you can feel the excitement everyone has to talk about it (more on that later).
Last night I was taking the train* home and thought I'd read through all the #bps2022 posts and I wanted to share with you some highlights. People quipped about how the AlphaFold talk was standing-room-only, with people being turned away at the door. I could have predicted that one. A significant number of posts touched on people's travel with many posts being some flavor of: "on my way to BPS2022!". But, what stuck with me were actually the posts by those who are missing out. Whether it be cancelled flights, lack of child-care, travel restrictions or winding up with a pesky Covid+ test, there is an invisible group who couldn't be here with us this time (and feeling a lot of FOMO!), so let's take a moment to appreciate how lucky we are to all be here in beautiful SF for #bps2022.
(*mini gripe: local conferences are a double-edged sword. I didn't have to get on a plane to come here, but I also can't charge a hotel room to a grant since the conference is in "the same city", which happens to be almost an hour away from my house).
Without question the biggest theme was excitement. Can you feel it? I don't know about you, but to me the energy is palpable. The enthusiasm at the talks; the buzz outside the rooms. I think for many of us this is our first in-person conference in two years, and it's no secret that we're excited to be back face-to-face with our friends, collaborators and other scientists in general. For others, #bps2022 is their FIRST in-person conference; possibly the first time they're talking with scientists outside their lab/institution. Whether this is your first meeting, or you're a conference veteran, being back in-person gives us the chance to go back to building new relationships organically; something many of us found hard over Zoom. Even if you're shy, I hope you can find opportunities to reach out and meet new people over these next few days, I suspect you'll find that many people are similarly itching for connections.
Okay, I'll leave it there for now. I'll be pseudo-live-Tweeting the meeting on @jjanetzko if you want to follow along with my journey. If you don't have Twitter, or just have better things to do, I'll be putting together a few pieces over the next 3.5 days to summarize some of the exciting science on display at this meeting.
~John