Summary of the 2021 annual meeting
General summary of the 2021 annual meeting of the ICG-EAC, N.P.O.The 2021 annual meeting of the ICG-EAC needed to be conducted online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was held from May 17 to 21. Despite the fact that the meeting took place online "only", 148 delegates from 16 countries, representing 60 of the 85 member organizations, registered for meeting attendance. Five out of the nine honorary members were also present. Two guests were participating and 31 persons were first-time attendees at this ICG-EAC meeting. Although the attendees couldn't meet in person, the meeting platform software (called Remo) allowed some gathering and discussion before and after the sessions around virtual tables. This was used by a considerable number of attendees throughout the week.
A total number of 52 technical contributions from 48 authors have been presented (42 oral presentations and 10 summary/poster presentations). The meeting schedule was rather special this year to accommodate the huge range of time zones of the attendees. The talks were given in six live sessions and several presentations were provided as recorded talks (as downloads). Three summary/poster sessions were held on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with ten short summary presentations "promoting" the very interesting posters. After those sessions the poster authors were available at their virtual table and answered questions from the audience. On Monday, a memorial lecture about Peter Ford, who passed away just before the meeting, was given.
The 2021 meeting was certainly a very special one, with many excellent presentations, interesting discussions, nice gatherings around the virtual tables and with a record in number of registered attendees. It was the best we could do without being able to meet "physically" and having members spread all over the planet (and in so many different time zones). Nevertheless, also the limitations of online meetings became quite obvious and showed how important it is to meet in person from time to time to maintain the "strong" network. Even though it was a good meeting, we really hope that this was our first and last online meeting and that we all can meet "physically" in 2022.
Finally, the support of the Group Leadership, organizing committee, attendees and sponsors (especially Queen's University) is gratefully acknowledged!
Links to general summaries of other meetings: