Discussion

From: Dianne E. Godar DEG@CDRH.FDA.GOV
Date: 12/2/97
Time: 4:49:24 PM
Remote Name: 150.148.47.70

Comments

Dear all: It is not possible to carry on a discussion of the papers submitted to this conference if the authors do not respond to comments or questions from the conference participants. I think it may be necessary for future online conferences to include all authors e-mail addresses, phone numbers and/or Fax numbers so that we may contact them via another route during the conference (some may have computer problems). I suspect that the authors only paid attention to the conference in the beginning and when no comments or questions were submitted in the first week or two became busy with other duties and ignored the conferecne thereafter. I noticed that the following papers have not responded to comments or questions as yet: p3 - first question was on 11/18 and a request for a response from the authors on 11/26 - still no answer. C26 has two comments and some questions since 11/25. p6 - comments and questions on 11/25 p38 - 11/28 and In8 - 11/30 Is there anyway for the organizers to contact these authors to let them know they now have questions pending? Submitters should be aware that we are all very busy and it takes time to read and digest their papers, let alone taking the time to comment and formulate questions. We should all check the conference site every day for new submissions, such as those recently posted at the bottom of the poster page session, questions, comments, and answers so that this conference may be a true success. These conferences are great for exchanging ideas world wide without the expense or inconvience of travel. Maybe, as someone else suggested, future confercnes could organize contributions by subject, such as those designated in P&P. For example, photomedicine (subtopic - PDT, PUVA, UVA1 phototherapy), photochemistry, UVR effects etc... and let the authors choose the topic and subtopic area, so that the organizers workload would not be increased. In addtion, two or more organizers could be responsible for each topic area. This way everyone could quickly find the topic areas that interests them. Some papers may not show up on a search. In addition, if the discussion could also be grouped by topic the participants and organizers job would be minimized, and if numerous responses were received it would be managable by all. Sometimes discussions can get out of hand - such as what happened on the Apoptosis web site. It had to be revised considerably because there were too many participants, questions, and conversations about particular areas. This may become a problem in future conferences - this is the first, the next will have even more participants once everyone learns about the success of this great on line photosciences conference.

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