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<< back to the 2001 archive listing << Dairy, Food and Environmental Sanitation My Perspective, March 2001 We hope you will join us this August in Minneapolis for what I'm sure will
be one of the best programs IAFP has ever held Although it’s early in the year, the final program for this August’s meeting of IAFP is coming together quite well. For those of you who are not familiar with the process, let me review it for you briefly. We begin planning for the program a year in advance — at the prior year’s Annual Meeting. The Program Committee meets twice during the Annual Meeting to discuss ideas for symposia. Many of these ideas are forwarded to the Program Committee by the Professional Development Groups that meet at the Annual Meeting. The Program Committee reviews the proposals, and may suggest modifications or recommend that two groups work together to further develop similar subjects into a single symposium. Between the Annual Meeting and the January meeting of the Program Committee, organizers "flesh out" the various symposia, identifying speakers and the titles of their presentations and developing an abstract for each symposium. These are forwarded to the IAFP Program Committee Chairperson. This year’s Chairperson is Dr. Stan Bailey of USDA/ARS in Athens, Georgia. The Program Committee meets at the site of the Annual Meeting in mid- to late-January. Obviously, it takes a very dedicated group of volunteers to come together in Minneapolis in January! The Program Committee met January 19-20 and reviewed the final symposium submissions. Prior to the meeting they also reviewed all of the abstracts that were submitted for presentations. At the meeting, final decisions were reached on whether an abstract would be accepted for presentation at the Annual Meeting. The abstracts were organized into oral and poster technical sessions. Symposia were examined to determine which symposium would best fit as the general session. The remaining symposia were then organized into the various time slots available, with an attempt being made to avoid overlap of subjects. Unfortunately, it has become impossible to schedule sessions so that they are not competing for the same audience; invariably we get complaints about needing to be in two or more sessions at the same time. (We’ve already heard some of these from Program Committee members themselves!) The Program Committee also had to evaluate potential attendance at each symposium in order to assign the symposia to the available rooms based on the number of people the rooms will hold. (If we guessed wrong, people won’t be able to get into a session or the room will look empty — neither of these situations is desirable.) Once this was done, the symposia were again examined and the schedule adjusted to try and minimize any conflicts with subject matter — two HACCP sessions should not be scheduled at the same time, etc. Finally, once these were all arranged, it was necessary to determine which symposia had speakers that were also speaking in other symposia and to adjust the schedule in order to avoid conflicts for the speakers. (Hopefully we caught them all.) This entire process is a very challenging task, but the final program was organized in less than 1-1/2 days, thanks to a very efficient Program Committee. IAFP 2001 promises to have something for everyone. There will be symposia on the following topics (and more):
As you see, there will be plenty to keep attendees interested at the Annual
Meeting. The Program Committee left one slot open for a last minute "hot
topic." I urge you to go to www.foodprotection.org to check out the program.
You will also find a registration form for this year’s meeting. No need
to wait until the last moment — go ahead and sign up now (you can register
online). The meeting will be held at the Hilton Minneapolis located in the heart
of downtown and connected by the skyways to many other downtown locations. There
are lots of shops and restaurants, and it’s only a few blocks to the Mississippi
River. Our Monday Night Social will be a dinner cruise on the river. For baseball
fans, the Minnesota Twins will be playing the Kansas City Royals Saturday and
Sunday nights (you’re on your own here) and the Cleveland Indians Tuesday,
Wednesday and Thursday (IAFP has planned an excursion for the Tuesday night
game). We hope you will join us this August in Minneapolis for what I’m
sure will be one of the best programs IAFP has ever held. |