You have spotted the links on social media, visited the website, seen that stunning photo of Mt. Fuji, and are now contemplating attending what promises to be an excellent scientific meeting of the International Continence Society. But is it suitable for you as a young professional?
As an early career member of ICS, this will now be my third consecutive Annual Meeting. My first meeting I was fortunate enough to attend with senior work colleagues, who helped me to navigate the sessions and made introductions within a large, well attended meeting. The organising committee have put together a comprehensive and varied programme this year and to help you work out which sessions to attend have clearly marked the programme with different disciplined tracks. To view the programme with the tracks CLICK HERE.
To get you going, let me give you a head start by sharing a few highlights of the programme.
• Early Careers Session
This takes place just before the welcome reception, and is a great way to meet other young delegates at the start of the meeting. Those with ePosters have the chance to present in front of an expert panel to get feedback to help hone their skills, and this year Mr Chris Chapple will guide us all through his tips on ‘communication skills for academic progress’.
• Welcome Reception
The official opening of the conference is always a great start to the Annual Meeting. We had samba dancers entertaining us in Rio de Janeiro, and country dancing in Montréal - I'm sure this year will be just as exciting, and gives you a chance to network with those new friends from the early careers session.
• Round tables
Round table sessions are a great way to hear updates on key areas from a variety of leading experts, which stimulates plenty of thoughts and ideas for the discussion section at the end of each session. They incorporate multi-disciplinary approaches so there truly is something for everyone. As a urology trainee, my tops picks are RT1 Post-Prostatectomy LUTS, RT4 New Technology for LUTS Management and Research, and RT10 Modulation of Bladder Sensation. Take a look at the scientific programme for other sessions.
• State of the Art Lectures
At the start of each of the three scientific days there is a 30 minute state of the art lecture covering a variety of topics. Of note, Osamu Yokoyama is going to explore the relationship between Metabolic Syndrome and LUTS on Wednesday morning – this is a developing area with lots of publications across the last few years, so I’m looking forward to this session to expanding my understanding of current knowledge and future objectives in the field.
Finally, don't forget to visit the ICS desk in the exhibition hall to meet the ICS team – they are always happy to have a chat, or help with any problems, and there will be Q&A sessions with experts in the field, letting you explore subjects in further detail. The YouTube channel ICS television broadcasts these and other highlights during the conference, and has lots of content already. To get a feel of what happens at an ICS meeting, view previous highlights and sessions here.
So, join me at ICS 2016, for what is going to be an impressive meeting. See you there!
Tracked programme at a glance