Greetings, Fellow Zeugmatographers¹!

by Karla Miller, 2018 Program Chair

Greetings and salutations! It feels like only yesterday that we were together in Honolulu being stimulated and inspired by The Best Meeting Ever Yet. The summer has flown by, and incredibly we’re gearing up to do it all over again. In June 2018, the ISMRM and ESMRMB will hold a joint meeting in Paris – truly one of the great cities of the world.

Thanks to the ISMRM President, Dan Sodickson, I have the honour of serving as 2018 Program Chair. Together with John Port (2019 Chair), Doug Noll (2020 Chair), and Roberta Kravitz’s indefatigable team at the ISMRM central office, I’ll be working hard to put together A Rather Good Meeting The Best Meeting Ever. Over the next 9 months, this blog will document our progress, highlight new initiatives, and provide tricks and tips for getting the most out of your meeting in Paris. You won’t just hear from me – I’ll pull in a few of the many people involved in making the meeting a success.

The meeting has already started to take shape. We’ve visited the beautiful Porte de Versailles convention centre – so new we had to don hardhats and work boots – along with some fantastic sites for receptions and parties. The Annual Meeting Program Committee (AMPC) has already constructed an exciting offering of educational courses, plenary sessions and named lectures. And the abstract site will shortly be ready to receive your submissions.

By far the best part of being Program Chair is the opportunity to sculpt the meeting in new ways. The goal I’ve embraced as Program Chair is to create new ways for the membership – for you – to contribute to the meeting. Whether you’re a seasoned 20-year veteran or a first-year doctoral student, I want you to feel empowered to help make the meeting better. In Honolulu, as Education Chair, my pet project was The Resonarium: an informal space for early career researchers to plan and host their own content. The result was the vibrant “Secret Sessions,” which will make a triumphant return in Paris (more in a later post).

This year, I am terrifically excited to introduce another initiative aimed at enabling the broader membership to help plan our meeting: Member Initiated Symposia. Keep your eyes peeled for my next post, where I’ll describe how you can propose your very own session for the annual meeting.

Until then – happy scanning!

¹ What’s a zeugmatographer, you ask? An MR expert, just like you! He may have laid the foundation for everything we do, but Paul Lauterbur’s proposed name for his incredible invention never quite took off. And perhaps it’s just as well – the International Society for Zeugmatography in Medicine just doesn’t sound right.