A word from the outgoing AIPN President

Pam Albany, first president of the AIPN and old hand at running conferences, has kindly agreed to share some personal reflections on the 2nd National Conference. Pam had this to say:

"When running a conference, one always confronts a dilemma: On the one hand, to be economically viable, the meeting needs to pay its way by ensuring maximum attendance. This often entails offering a substantial number of people the opportunity to present a paper, for if they are not making an oral presentation, they'll have little chance of getting someone to fund their attendance. On the other hand, accommodating large numbers of speakers means that the time they have available for their presentation is very short(minutes goes quickly(and there isn't the time for adequate discussion and questioning to take place. It's a difficult balance indeed. We need to look to other mechanisms for getting delegates to conferences apart from the offer of presenting a paper. While it's true we need open sharing of the experience of others; most delegates will attest that the true value of these meetings is the opportunity to meet others `face to face' and to establish ongoing professional relationships.

"Over time, there seems to have been a trend for injury researchers to report on their work to conferences convened for their own disciplines(ie psychology, engineering, etc.(in preference to more broadly based forums such as injury prevention and control conferences. I was heartened by an apparent reversal in this trend which saw a sizeable number of researchers making the necessary commitment(perhaps even sacrifice(to contribute to the 2nd National Injury Conference. Whilst the networking and other gains for injury practitioners in attending the 2nd Conference are readily apparent and easily balance the energy they expend, this is less obviously the case for injury researchers. For me, the willingness of researchers to get involved in such a significant way is a good indicator of the growing maturity of an Australian injury constituency."