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My experience at Xgen conference in San Diego, CA March 2011
Hi all. Since this a forum dedicated to people interested Next Gen sequencing technology and applications, people may also be interested in events on this topic. I attended such a meeting called the Xgen congress organized by Cambridge Healthtech and would like to share my views. I hope some of you would find it useful.
I am an early career researcher interested in sequencing data analysis and I went in with the expectation to learn about that, and the people in the field. Please consider the statements below are just my personal opinion which may be biased due to what I was expecting from the conference. Feel free to respond comment and make your own additions.
1. I think it was overpriced, hefty $1145 for academics and $2745 for the industry, and this is just the registration.
2. It was located in a resort which is kind of in isolated surroundings so you are kind of restricted to spend for food and other needs there, which was overly priced. The resort as such was nothing special, just your regular hotel rooms because you pay for everything else if you want to use. Parking was $25 for each day + tax, so not many people opted for that option, especially younger people who are dependent on their PI's grant support.
3. it all started when the lady who declared the commencement of meeting, she spend less than a minute to do so and the mic was not working. Since I was sitting in first row, i could hear she was welcoming all participants. The attitude of the organizers was very unwelcoming, it was more like they already got the money so it was going through the motions as they say in America.
4. Organization of the program was very poor. They did not have the timing there till last moment, and they had four sub-sessions which was quite unclear why. The end results, they had parallel sessions going on for chip-seq and RNA-seq, both of which i wanted to attend. Later on they had plant sequencing and some company product demo in parallel which was both uninteresting for me. I understand it can be hard to cater to everybody's needs, but you must be kidding if you think chip-seq and RNA-seq should be run in parallel. Either they didn't want to put time and thought, or they just didn't know any better.
5. Speaker were generally good when it came to general topics, some big and really bright people in the field. Speaker were also good for specific technical talks. The only complaint I have is the talks could have been more educations : like a tutorial on library preparation steps, may be a data analytical overview. All we heard was people telling us about their own research, like any other conference. May be I am being harsh here but i was expecting something along those lines. I saw one such talk in the program, but i came to know that i should pay addition 400 dollars to register for that one talk, despite having the highest premium package registration which should allow me to attend everything.
The other thing is some of the speaker were very young researchers, and some were not very proficient in english. I overheard someone that did not understand even a single word in one of the talks. It could have been better planned. I hope they payed good compensation to those at least for the talks, or were they saving moolah and inviting just about anyone to speak who would do it for free. No offense to any of the speakers though, they were probably just doing what they were asked. It is for organizers to select good speakers. I have met lot of very very talented people who are not great speakers. I will again concede that i am not a very proficient speaker myself, but again I don't Charge people 2800 dollars to come listen to me.
6. Food and refreshment were a big disappointment. On risk of being labeled stingy, I concede that food is an important factor for me especially if you are spending one week at some place and you have not many options around you. Not a single warm meal was served, lunch was mostly cold sandwiches and chips, which we all ate in extremely uncomfortable manner on our seat listening to some talk. Except for first few rows, we did not even have a table to keep these things on. Why can't they have had lunch break, I will tell you why, since they did not book any space for that. Many times people did not even get lunch, i saw one organizer scolding a participant when he asked for lunch coupon because it was all over and she plainly said you should have get it first. Poor fellow, either he misses the talk and goes out to eat at resort's overpriced restaurant, or stay their hungry listening to other people crack the rock hard potato chips. He chose the latter option. Welcome reception meant drinks and few snacks near the poster session at around 6 PM.
They had some breakfast sort of thing in the morning, which is worse than what my car dealership routinely serves. At time, there was no coffee, can u imagine. The organizers ofter used to be at the door of the breakfast room to steer people away from there towards the conference.
7. Lot of us got the feeling that they were not very forthcoming. It was more like as I said earlier, we have your money already so why we bother serving anymore. There is no list of attendees anywhere for any of their conferences, probably for the fear of people sharing the experience with future participants. there is a web resource intronet for participants, that too is you can just find affiliation and not the names, seems too much a hassle to reach someone. It felt like a corporate event meant for money making. Have some big names to attract audience, and then invite people to present posters and give talks, to fill the blanks. In return, award them a 50 dollar discount in registration. They had a contest in which you should fill a review of the conference and one lucky winner will get iPOD. that how they got all good reviews from attendees as a legal proof against any possible outburst (like my comments here
). When it came to announce the winner, the lady said It is not required for winner to be present to receive the prize. the next moment she announced a name which no one knew even attended the conference. She made sure to slip in how nice would it have been to see the face of the winner, but guess what, there was no iPAD to be seen anywhere. You think somethings fishy ....
First conference I attended where no conference bag was given to anyone.
No abstract book was published for posters and oral talks.
8. the only saving grace, for me, were the corporate sponsors. They very were nice and eager to help and provide info. From giants to small startups. illumina, roche, ingenuity you just name it .... They must be expecting good business from attendees, which is fair. Seems they generously sponsored many of the expense including lunches, drinks etc. I just hope they got some returns and the event organizers did not fool them too, on the pretext that lot of people will be attendance who will buy stuff and all ... Now when i think about it, it is brilliant business plan.
Anyways, hope I haven't been too critical because believe me, its just a part of what we really experienced. Given a chance again, i will utilize the same money to attend some good research meeting like ASHG ISMB etc. Would love to hear form others too, i may be way way off
Hi all. Since this a forum dedicated to people interested Next Gen sequencing technology and applications, people may also be interested in events on this topic. I attended such a meeting called the Xgen congress organized by Cambridge Healthtech and would like to share my views. I hope some of you would find it useful.
I am an early career researcher interested in sequencing data analysis and I went in with the expectation to learn about that, and the people in the field. Please consider the statements below are just my personal opinion which may be biased due to what I was expecting from the conference. Feel free to respond comment and make your own additions.
1. I think it was overpriced, hefty $1145 for academics and $2745 for the industry, and this is just the registration.
2. It was located in a resort which is kind of in isolated surroundings so you are kind of restricted to spend for food and other needs there, which was overly priced. The resort as such was nothing special, just your regular hotel rooms because you pay for everything else if you want to use. Parking was $25 for each day + tax, so not many people opted for that option, especially younger people who are dependent on their PI's grant support.
3. it all started when the lady who declared the commencement of meeting, she spend less than a minute to do so and the mic was not working. Since I was sitting in first row, i could hear she was welcoming all participants. The attitude of the organizers was very unwelcoming, it was more like they already got the money so it was going through the motions as they say in America.
4. Organization of the program was very poor. They did not have the timing there till last moment, and they had four sub-sessions which was quite unclear why. The end results, they had parallel sessions going on for chip-seq and RNA-seq, both of which i wanted to attend. Later on they had plant sequencing and some company product demo in parallel which was both uninteresting for me. I understand it can be hard to cater to everybody's needs, but you must be kidding if you think chip-seq and RNA-seq should be run in parallel. Either they didn't want to put time and thought, or they just didn't know any better.
5. Speaker were generally good when it came to general topics, some big and really bright people in the field. Speaker were also good for specific technical talks. The only complaint I have is the talks could have been more educations : like a tutorial on library preparation steps, may be a data analytical overview. All we heard was people telling us about their own research, like any other conference. May be I am being harsh here but i was expecting something along those lines. I saw one such talk in the program, but i came to know that i should pay addition 400 dollars to register for that one talk, despite having the highest premium package registration which should allow me to attend everything.
The other thing is some of the speaker were very young researchers, and some were not very proficient in english. I overheard someone that did not understand even a single word in one of the talks. It could have been better planned. I hope they payed good compensation to those at least for the talks, or were they saving moolah and inviting just about anyone to speak who would do it for free. No offense to any of the speakers though, they were probably just doing what they were asked. It is for organizers to select good speakers. I have met lot of very very talented people who are not great speakers. I will again concede that i am not a very proficient speaker myself, but again I don't Charge people 2800 dollars to come listen to me.
6. Food and refreshment were a big disappointment. On risk of being labeled stingy, I concede that food is an important factor for me especially if you are spending one week at some place and you have not many options around you. Not a single warm meal was served, lunch was mostly cold sandwiches and chips, which we all ate in extremely uncomfortable manner on our seat listening to some talk. Except for first few rows, we did not even have a table to keep these things on. Why can't they have had lunch break, I will tell you why, since they did not book any space for that. Many times people did not even get lunch, i saw one organizer scolding a participant when he asked for lunch coupon because it was all over and she plainly said you should have get it first. Poor fellow, either he misses the talk and goes out to eat at resort's overpriced restaurant, or stay their hungry listening to other people crack the rock hard potato chips. He chose the latter option. Welcome reception meant drinks and few snacks near the poster session at around 6 PM.
They had some breakfast sort of thing in the morning, which is worse than what my car dealership routinely serves. At time, there was no coffee, can u imagine. The organizers ofter used to be at the door of the breakfast room to steer people away from there towards the conference.
7. Lot of us got the feeling that they were not very forthcoming. It was more like as I said earlier, we have your money already so why we bother serving anymore. There is no list of attendees anywhere for any of their conferences, probably for the fear of people sharing the experience with future participants. there is a web resource intronet for participants, that too is you can just find affiliation and not the names, seems too much a hassle to reach someone. It felt like a corporate event meant for money making. Have some big names to attract audience, and then invite people to present posters and give talks, to fill the blanks. In return, award them a 50 dollar discount in registration. They had a contest in which you should fill a review of the conference and one lucky winner will get iPOD. that how they got all good reviews from attendees as a legal proof against any possible outburst (like my comments here
). When it came to announce the winner, the lady said It is not required for winner to be present to receive the prize. the next moment she announced a name which no one knew even attended the conference. She made sure to slip in how nice would it have been to see the face of the winner, but guess what, there was no iPAD to be seen anywhere. You think somethings fishy .... First conference I attended where no conference bag was given to anyone.
No abstract book was published for posters and oral talks.
8. the only saving grace, for me, were the corporate sponsors. They very were nice and eager to help and provide info. From giants to small startups. illumina, roche, ingenuity you just name it .... They must be expecting good business from attendees, which is fair. Seems they generously sponsored many of the expense including lunches, drinks etc. I just hope they got some returns and the event organizers did not fool them too, on the pretext that lot of people will be attendance who will buy stuff and all ... Now when i think about it, it is brilliant business plan.
Anyways, hope I haven't been too critical because believe me, its just a part of what we really experienced. Given a chance again, i will utilize the same money to attend some good research meeting like ASHG ISMB etc. Would love to hear form others too, i may be way way off
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