| 1. | 10/27/2007 3:21:00 PM | 1) Talks were generally too long: shorter formats may be useful with more time available for discussion.
2) Hands-on experience through dedicated training sessions for students may be considered for future meetings. |
| 2. | 10/28/2007 6:49:00 PM | Good Job! |
| 3. | 10/29/2007 5:56:00 AM | Thank you! I really enjoyed this and I hope I learned a lot!
I would be grateful if the next conference could be more green - e.g. recycled paper pads, greener food choices, - and the most important element - choosing a location that minimizes flying for participants (e.g. see Science article - http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/318/5847/36). But, thanks for donating the extra pads and pens - what a good idea!
It would also be nice to have a few more publishers come to the next conference. And, maybe invite a few bench scientists that are officers in organism or discipline-based societies - both to get their feedback and to improve our standing. And, how about someone from NIH and someone from NSF? Maybe they should hear how important it would be for community annotation if participation in these efforts were rewarded (or required) at the granting level.
One topic that seemed to be ignored a bit, that worried me, is duplication. Sometimes it seems like multiple groups are doing redundant things, e.g. in terms of annotating literature or developing metabolic pathway databases. How can we avoid wasting time and precious money generating the same types of resources?
Can all of the posters and the meetings proceedings be submitted to the Nature gateway that was discussed at the conference?
Thanks again for all of your hard work!!! It was a very good conference. |
| 4. | 10/29/2007 5:26:00 PM | We need a forum to encourage more interaction between MODs, perhaps more workshops or short, small, informal meetings discussing various topics, e.g. prioritization of literature, approaching journals to encourage people to submit 'curator-friendly' papers, community outreach, cross-database consistency and linking |
| 5. | 10/29/2007 6:20:00 PM | -a morning break after the plenary talks would have been nice
-need to enforce speakers keeping to time
-small group discussion format, maybe no talks or just one to start off the discussion and then have the bulk of the time for exchange of ideas
-social event: competition (some kind of game?), beyond drinks |
| 6. | 10/29/2007 9:30:00 PM | 8:30 am to 10:00 pm is a bit much. A couple hours break during the afternoon, or free evenings would be nicer. |
| 7. | 10/30/2007 4:52:00 AM | Make talks a bit shorter.
Don't let speakers run over time.
Kanehisa talk was terrible.
More time between talks for discussion. |
| 8. | 10/30/2007 2:05:00 PM | Really enjoyed meeting. Particularly liked workshops and would like to see them repeated at future meetings. |
| 9. | 10/30/2007 3:52:00 PM | I thank everyone involved in organizing this meeting, from sponsors through poster presenters. It was a WONDERFUL meeting. I also like that meals are included and that the site was some what remote from offsite dinning - it really helped encourage interaction between interesting groups of people that would not normally have any opportunity to interact. |
| 10. | 10/30/2007 6:20:00 PM | Some speakers were very good about making their talks fit within the allotted time periods. In other cases, it was clear from the number of slides that some speakers either weren't aware of how much time they would have or completely ignored it. Some moderators were very good about keeping people within their time, but others (particularly on Friday) were not. I don't mind 20 minute talks, 30 minute talks, or 1 hour talks, but I don't like 30 minute talks and 5 minutes for questions in 20 minute time slots. Next meeting I would like to see speakers be aware, beforehand, of how long they have to speak, given a reminder of the time allotted for their talk a week or two before the meeting when they are likely preparing their talk, and the moderators being more vigilant about notifying speakers when there is three minutes left before the time for audience questions. |
| 11. | 10/30/2007 11:04:00 PM | I want to hear more talks from established large databases about how they do curation, such as SGD, FlyBase, WormBase, ZFIN ... I hope there is a special session for them to bring out the best curation they did. The talk can be as short as 10 min so that more database can talk. It will be very helpful to the newly established databases to learn the best curation approaches. |
| 12. | 10/31/2007 6:20:00 PM | Very well organised meeting !!! Look to attend more workshops or practical hand on type work shops !!! |
| 13. | 10/31/2007 6:21:00 PM | I found the chairs in the meeting room very uncomfortable. |
| 14. | 10/31/2007 7:24:00 PM | One of the main strengths of the meeting is that curators from all over meet and talk. There was a severe lack of talk time at this meeting. Meals were too short to finish conversations which meant that you either had to skip part of the next session to finish conversations. The breaks were also not long enough to eat/go to the lavatory/ talk.
Perhaps an extra day of meeting time with an afternoon break of an hour or 2 before dinner would facilitate more communication. |
| 15. | 10/31/2007 8:40:00 PM | Would be interesting to have a talks on the application of ontologies to research questions; how do ontologies give insight into larger biological questions? Perhaps have several invited guests give case studies on how they use ontologies in their research. This might give biocurators more insight into how to develop their databases.
Other thoughts:
Hotel very expensive
3 days was the perfect length |
| 16. | 10/31/2007 9:11:00 PM | food was excellent.
strange pricing for room vs day use.
would be nice to have conference closer to public transit vs having to rent cars or take shuttle.
maybe consider appending biocurator workshops to higher profile conference to raise awareness of an entirely useful and interesting meeting |
| 17. | 10/31/2007 11:08:00 PM | Sorry if I clicked all in question #9; I think they would all be useful to different people.
I thought the meeting was a bit short for all that was covered. This community needs to present AND exchange about their experience, unlike research conferences, and sometimes there was not enough time for discussion. |
| 18. | 11/1/2007 9:06:00 AM | Great meeting - much more focussed than last time on curation issues and not just the databases themselves.
Perhaps what could be useful at the next is concurrent sessions for (a) developers and (b) curators? |
| 19. | 11/1/2007 2:16:00 PM | Sue did a wonderful job. The venue was great. It was one of the best meetings I have attended. In particular, I got to know many people, with the receptions and meal format. |
| 20. | 11/1/2007 5:10:00 PM | It would be nice to have the posters in a separate room. So you can look at them at other times, without disturbing the talks going on in the main room. |
| 21. | 11/1/2007 10:42:00 PM | I felt that the venue was a little too expensive, but otherwise the meeting was perfect!!! Thank you!!! |
| 22. | 11/2/2007 11:21:00 AM | 1. Some of the talks sessions could have been more severely chaired to ensure they kept to schedule.
2. Having only one microphone on one side of the room disencouraged people from asking more questions in the main sessions.
3. The talks should have (IMO) more fairly represented the major MODs. E.g. there were no talks in any session from WormBase or FlyBase. Next time, I suggest there is a separate session devoted to MODs, with each and every major MOD giving a brief overview of curation at their DB or highlighting a particular topic of concern/renovation wrt curation at their DB. |
| 23. | 11/3/2007 1:17:00 AM | I think the morning sessions were too long. If we hadn't been at a venue where people could easily go in and out, and get coffee etc., they would have been arduous. We need to make the meeting a little longer and provide more free time. |
| 24. | 11/7/2007 4:40:00 PM | Overall the meeting was great! Not too long, not too short, and I had a chance to talk to many people during the poster session.
I think more concurrent workshops with short talks, like the ones that were in the afternoons are very useful and allow focusing on more specific topics.
Most interesting plenary lectures were the ones that gave an historic overview on databases and development in annotation practices, such as Helen's PDB talk which was excellent! |
| 25. | 11/12/2007 10:07:00 AM | Thank you for the great meeting.
One matter I wish for the feature meeting is to accept credit card payment for the meeting fee.
(It is now really strictly restricted to send money to US from the abroad!) |