At AIBS we're always having to keep in mind that we are no one's primary-affiliation society. People don't join AIBS in order to conduct their research or other primary professional activities in their disciplinary specialties--that's the role served by our member societies and organizations. Rather, we're an umbrella organization offering meta-level services and coalition activities--that's what it says right in the preamble to the AIBS Constitution:
"The purposes of the Institute shall be the advancement of the biological sciences and their applications to human welfare, and to foster and encourage research and education in the biological sciences, including the medical, environmental, and agricultural sciences. To serve these purposes, the Institute will assist societies, other organizations, and biologists in such matters of common concern as can be dealt with more effectively by united action; hold and sponsor scientific meetings; cooperate with local, national, and international organizations concerned with the biological sciences; provide a voice for biologists in the public forum; promote unity and effectiveness of effort among all those who are devoting themselves to the biological sciences and their applications; and foster the relations of the biological sciences to other sciences, to the arts and industries, and to the public good."
Organizing annual meetings at AIBS carries special challenges because no one needs to attend an AIBS meeting in the same sense that they need to attend the meeting of their primary society(ies). In the latter case, individuals attend in order to network with their peers in their area of specialization, present research results, look for jobs, look for folks to hire, etc. But in the case of AIBS meetings, the same kind of draw is not there, or at least has not been there since 1998, which marked the 48th and final consecutive year that AIBS held its annual meeting in conjunction with the annual meetings of a number of its member societies. Those were big meetings with thousands of attendees.
However, by 1999, the member societies with whom we had been meeting had been become sufficiently robust (and the meeting-organizing business had sufficiently changed) that they could head off on their own and hold their own annual meetings. After a year of contemplation (during which the first-ever Presidents' Summit was held), AIBS began holding much smaller, thematically focused annual meetings, in Washington DC, during the March - May time period. The 2000 meeting was on the theme, not surprisingly, of Challenges for the New Millennium. Subsequent annual meeting themes have included: From Biodiversity to Biocomplexity (2001) * Evolution: Understanding Life on Earth (2002) * Bioethics in a Changing World (2003) * Invasive Species: A Search for Solutions (2004) * Biodiversity: The Interplay of Science, Valuation, and Policy (2006) * Evolutionary Biology and Human Health (2007) * Climate, Environment, and Infectious Diseases (2008) * and this year's meeting on May 18 - 19, "Sustainable Agriculture: Greening the Global Food Supply", which for the first time includes a live webcast component.
Our 2007 meeting, Evolutionary Biology and Human Health, marked AIBS's 60th anniversary and was a joint meeting with the Natural Sciences Collection Alliance, an organization with which AIBS has a number of key collaborations. That meeting was also held in conjunction with the Conference and General Assembly of the International Union of Biological Sciences.
Our 2008 meeting, Climate, Environment, and Infectious Disease, was held jointly with the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, an organization that AIBS helped create in the 1950s and was celebrating its 50th anniversary that year.
And our 2009 meeting, Sustainable Agriculture: Greening the Global Food Supply, this May 18 - 19, is being held jointly with the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, the National Association of Biology Teachers, and the National Council for Science and the Environment. The 2009 meeting is also part of the year-long Year of Science 2009 celebration that AIBS helped launch.
We have judged some of our annual meetings to be more successful than others. Over the years of our "experiment" so far (n = 8) we have found that the themes that draw best include a good mix of science, public policy, and education components all bearing upon a topical scientific challenge. We have also found that the meetings were more successful and better attended when we held them during the work week so as to make it easier for DC-area scientists, educators, and science-policy specialists to attend.
AIBS holds other meetings during the year, notably our partnership with the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) to put on an evolution symposium and education workshop each fall at the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) professional development conference. This event, the next being November 11 - 14 2009 in Denver, brings together the latest evolutionary science research and teaching strategies for teachers to integrate into their classes.
AIBS continues to review and revise its meeting plans for 2010 and beyond, always with an eye to how to put the most people in touch with the best and latest in biology research and education.
Leave a comment