Echoes of the annual meeting SAFIS-ALACF 2021

Abstract

In February 2021 with wishful eyes, we started planning our annual reunion of the Argentinean Society of Physiology (SAFIS). The goal ahead was a fully face-to-face meeting in La Plata in October. However, the devil shook his tail and what seemed a declining phase in the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in further outbreak and major lockdown. Under this situation, and without a clear prospective, we decided to switch to a totally virtual meeting, taking advantage of this new tool of communication and learning that we all experienced and have become familiar with during the last 2 years. With no delay, we began planning our SAFIS 2021 virtual meeting with excitement, anxiety and hard work. Our main goal now was to break the stigma of virtuality, that is: long tedious hours in front of the monitor listening to recorded videos without the possibility of a fluid discussion. To achieve this objective, we took the risky decision of having only synchronous sessions with no prerecorded videos. Each symposium or plenary conference would have all the invited speakers together in a zoom session assisted with two chairmen to help with the discussion. These activities would be retransmitted via streaming in real-time for the congress assistants to follow and open the chat rooms for questions. Of course, nothing is sufficient to keep the viewers’ attention if the program isn’t worthy. For this we put together an attractive, innovative and provocative scientific program focused on fostering new knowledge, networking and training, mixed with tablets of more distended talks and short videos to sit back en enjoy. We also concentrated on a program that included internationally as well as locally recognized senior physiologist with a history of cutting-edge research as well as the most promising investigators from early, mid and established investigator levels. In addition, this year, the SAFIS Education Committee organized a workshop on virtual teaching of physiology and for the first time we had a prominent spot in our program for two symposia organized entirely by the Committee of Early Career Investigators. As a hallmark of our annual meeting the highlights were centered in the poster and Award sessions which spotlighted the SAFIS Prize to best work in general physiology, the Camilión de Hurtado Prize to the best study in cardiovascular physiology and the María de los Angeles Costa Prize to the best poster in the area of education.