Your Abstract Has Been Accepted! Now What?

Your Abstract Has Been Accepted! Now What?

Well, first of all, a belated Happy New Year to all! I hope all is well with you. The month of January is usually a pretty busy month for the Annual Meeting Program Committee members. We met to sort out the 6000+ abstracts and carefully packaged them into oral, power pitch, digital poster, and traditional poster sessions. This could not have been done without the help of our reviewers (thank you!) and the support of the Central Office (thank you!).

As in my earlier blog, the Annual Meeting will be held on site in Toronto with live broadcast of oral sessions, plenaries, and named lectures. Digital posters, traditional posters, and educational exhibits will be onsite only. There are several reasons for this, one of them being the very high economic costs of running both an onsite and an online meeting, but the most important reason is that I firmly believe in the importance of networking and interacting with our educational and scientific speakers during the meeting. We truly believe in the power of exchanging ideas and connecting with people as we bump into each other and meet new people. In Toronto, you will have several opportunities to build new friendships and start collaborations besides meeting with our industry sponsors. This is one meeting where I believe it is key for all of us to come together as ONE community. It is also the very first meeting in three years that travel restrictions due to COVID are at their minimum and that travel is safer.

Ok, so your abstract has been accepted; what’s next? The first thing is to block the calendar dates and prepare to travel. Second, prepare your work according to the presentation style.

Oral Presentation: You get six minutes to get your message out. Invert the talk: start with the objectives, present the results, and then explain the methods.

Power Pitch: Go faster and explain your project in two minutes! The most powerful messages are delivered in a couple of sentences. You will get time to discuss your project on a computer right after your oral PP.

Digital Poster: Same as before. Make sure you add the title of your project on EVERY slide! It helps the audience to tune into your talk if they join you halfway into your presentation. Make each slide less wordy and increase the number of figures. If you change your mind and would like a traditional poster, prepare both, but write to us. We will see if this is possible based on the number of requests received. Write to sally@ismrm.org.

Traditional Paper Posters and Educational Exhibits: There will be dedicated poster boards and specific instructions on format. You will get a specific QR code which will take the reader to a video abstract.

And, I am not finished. There will be special space for late-breaking abstracts this year! The call will be out in March, and you will be asked to submit within two weeks. This is very competitive because we will select only the top 15 talks!

Stay tuned!

Niv
Program Chair 2023