Oct 29 - Nov 1: Canberra, ACT, AustraliaInformation from SPANZA secretariat: spanza@willorganise.com.au or view the conference website. Click here To view the abstracts from the meeting click on the following link: Abstracts
Brazenor produces success in Canberrra
A single person convened the Canberra SPANZA meeting. Stephen Brazenor took on the task at short notice and both convened the meeting and the scientific program. It was a task made possible by the presence of an experienced Secretariat.
The SPANZA meeting is slowly evolving. The pure scientific sessions are now accompanied by the SIG half day before the meeting and the Workshops that are becoming a more and more demanded part of the program. The Pain SIG became a forum for specialists in Paediatric Pain from many specialties to meet and to decide where the best forum for their overall Australasian Paediatric Pain Community to meet should be. It was good to be able to offer SPANZA as a place for this meeting to occur. The decision has been to locate the formal gathering of this group of specialists in the association with the Australian Pain Society Meeting rather than SPANZA but at least SPANZA was able to offer a meeting forum for this decision to be made.
The workshops are in huge demand and several of them were extended as additional repeats to cope with this demand. They are difficult and sometimes expensive to organise but it would appear that this is a very popular format for learning and sharing experiences.
Stephen Stayer was the keynote speaker and contributed in many of the sessions, which is good because it is important to hear the international slant on things. With Andrew Davidson, Stephen is a co-convenor of the Combined Meeting with the SPA in San Diego on Oct 15th 2010 prior to the ASA meeting.
The majority of the talks were of high standard and I will not comment in detail as the program has been on the website.
The highlight of the social events was the dinner at the War Memorial Museum. This museum is the very special and to listen to the strains of the Last Post in the courtyard enter to the realism of the air raid over Berlin and then dinner under the wings of the Lancaster Bomber made for a memorable evening. This is an important function for delegates and their partners. It is the place where old friends meet and new friendships are created.
The Canberra SPANZA meeting was a success and will be remembered well. SPANZA has a record of strong meetings and this was another in that list.
Peter Kempthorne President SPANZA
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