We are all desperate to reconnect and talk about bone – join us and catch up with your friends and colleagues in the interactive experience that is the Digital ECTS Marseille 2020 Live Prime Time Congress. And it does not end there – we also offer you a broad scientific programme live or on-demand in the ECTS@Home meeting series.
As President of the ECTS it is my pleasure to welcome you to the upcoming ECTS 2020 meeting, the online opportunity for sharing your research findings, reconnect with colleagues, play an active part in state-of-the-art update sessions and engage with the best of basic, translational and clinical bone researchers with an interest in European calcified tissue research.
For the ECTS 2020 Live Prime Time Conference, the ECTS have worked hard with our congress partners to deliver an interactive conference experience. The ability for you to engage with all presenters including ePoster presenters has been a top priority in the process and there will be a number of ways in which you can reconnect with fellow researchers through chat channels, virtual coffee shops and searchable participant lists. It is the first time we do this but we have made the reconnect and engage opportunity a key priority since we know that we all miss the chance to network and catch up informally.
Two questions that you may want to ask are these: Why isn’t it free? What is the difference between the Digitial ECTS 2020 Conference and the ECTS@Home initiative. Let me explain.
The ECTS Board is absolutely aware that most people have to fund ECTS membership out of their own pocket and circumstances are difficult in academia in most countries. We want membership fees for ECTS members to remain very affordable so it would not be possible to cover the costs of the online conference through membership dues and industry support alone. I do believe that most of those who submitted abstracts to the ECTS will have planned the costs of poster printing, hotel bookings, travel and other expenses in addition to the usual, higher conference fee. If this could have been covered by grants or institutions then this should be able to cover the reduced conference fee for the online conference while freeing up funds for future meeting attendance. We will also reduce your membership fee for 2021 by half in appreciation for your being a part of the 2020 ECTS Digital Congress.
Also a brief explanation of what the ECTS@Home sessions from October to December 2020 are all about. First, with registration to the Digital Congress you obviously will have on-demand access to all the recorded sessions in case you miss some of the live presentations. That is not what the ECTS@Home Programme does. Instead, the ECTS@Home programme is an ongoing series of scientific events of the type that would have taken place in the pre-congress programme and the educational/ancillary ECTS programme. We are aware that it is not feasible for anyone to follow sessions online for four or five days running, so instead the working group sessions, meet the professor sessions, AHP sessions and other ancillary events will continue for the rest of 2020 as weekly online web based sessions. In other words, this will be a running educational programme with options for participating in the session Q&As live or catching up on the recorded sessions at a convenient time.
I want to thank you for your support for the ECTS 2020 activities and looking very much forward to meeting you digitally in Marseille.
Bo Abrahamsen
ECTS President