The 2012 ACEM ASM – Hobart

I’d like to share my excitement about the upcoming 2012 Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine which will be taking place in the city of Hobart, Tasmania from the 19th-22nd November. The theme of the conference is “The Art and Science of Emergency Medicine” and it promises to blur the boundaries between art and science, and perhaps encourage a return to the days of old when the closer intertwining of these two disciplines ultimately benefited humankind.

The program is an eclectic mix with presentations by luminaries drawn from both worlds, and many nations.

There will be a significant FOAM presence with people like Michelle Johnston (@Eleytherius) and myself (@dreapadoirtas) attending and presenting, plus Mike Cadogan (@sandnsurf) and ZDoggMD (@ZDoggMD) presenting via weblink. Minh le Cong (@rfdsdoc) is also running a post-conference RFDS STAR workshop. Prepare to be FOAMed!

The social program is very likely to be second to none, with Geoff Couser having managed to engage the incomparable MONA, David Walsh’s world famous Museum of Old and New Art, which is quite simply one of the most stunning, challenging and superb art collections in the world, described by Walsh himself as a “subversive adult Disneyland.” It is a reason to visit Tasmania in itself.

However, I hope that during your visit here, you will find some time to sample one of nature’s great masterpieces, the Tasmanian wilderness. Get out there into the wild rivers and mountains, breathe that freshest of airs, and get a taste of what makes Van Diemen’s Land so special to many of us who live here.

I would ask everyone attending the conference as a speaker and/or delegate (either in the flesh or remotely) to contribute to the SERPENT interactive art installation inspired by Sidney Nolan’s incredible “Snake” painting (the centrepiece of MONA), the Rainbow Serpent central to Aboriginal Australian culture, and by the serpent of Asclepius. The details of how you can be part of this exciting project will be included with your conference information after registration. I will post again on this blog the details for “remote delegate” participation. I believe it is an ambitious first – no doubt the hard work and creativity of Farida Khawaja and Sara Wright will bring fruit with this project, but they need our participation.

There is a twitter feed on the conference website using the handle @acem2012 and the hashtag for conference related tweets is #acem2012 which has been pre-registered at symplur.com in order to capture and analyse the FOAM (or #FOAMed) impact of the conference and also to facilitate remote attendance. Please use the hashtag #acem2012 for any tweets before, during or after the conference (including social, content-related and logistic tweets).

Geoff is also working with an app developer to generate a conference app – watch this space.

Hopefully, I will see some of you there, and meet some that I so far know only by tweet!!!