ASGBI_5_conferences_04.07.25

Hello and welcome to Behind The Knife. Today we have the next installment of our collaborative series with our partners from A-S-G-B-I, and we couldn't be happier to share it with our listeners. As many of you know, this series compares and contrasts various aspects of the world of surgery between the UK and the United States, and you, as the listener, gets to decide who does it better.

At the end of the day, I'm John Williams, one of the Behind the Night Fellows, and once again, I'm joined by our A-S-G-B-I co-hosts Kelly Bateman and Jared wme. Today's episode is especially timely since the A-S-G-B-I annual meeting is coming up very, very soon. So, Kelly, would you like to introduce this topic and talk a bit about the upcoming annual meeting?

I. Of course I would. So in the interest of our upcoming A-S-G-B-I International Congress, which is gonna be in Edinburgh in May we thought it'd be fascinating to learn more about what goes on to behind the scenes of these conferences and how it's all put together. So we'll be discussing the logistics of planning how we've decided on the content and that balance

between clinical, academic, how we work with industry and integration of.

Of that, and particularly the value of attending surgical conferences for both surgeons in practice and surgeons in training and the future going forwards. So to do this episode, justice, we'll of course need some experts who have LED conferences and design number four. So, Jared, do you care to introduce our UK guest?

Of course. Mr. Damascus initially from Greece, came to the UK for his fellowship. And is an upper GI and emergency general surgical consultant in Edinburgh with an interest in abdominal wall surgery based in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. He's the current director of scientific program for A-S-G-B-I and he is responsible for organizing our main International Congress this year.

It happens to be in Edinburgh. He also held, has held numerous other events for surgical societies, including the British Hernia Society. Welcome. Thank you

very much for the invitation. Alright, and for our US based expert on surgical conferences, we're fortunate to have Dr. Ann Ledor joining us. Dr.

Ledor serves as the program chair for the Society for American Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Surgeons, or Sages for Short, which is a wide reaching US based international surgical society that encompasses many facets of general and minimally invasive surgery. The Sage's annual meeting was just last month and is a great opportunity for surgeons to convene and share clinical experiences, academic work, and professionally connect.

Dr. Ledor initially completed medical school at the New York Medical College and then moved on to George Washington University for general surgery residency training. Following residency, she moved to Baltimore to Johns Hopkins, where she completed her minimally invasive surgery and bariatric surgery fellowship, and subsequently stayed on as a faculty surgeon after some time at Hopkins, during which she held many education leadership roles, both at the medical school and as fellowship director.

She moved to the University of Wisconsin to become the chief of minimally invasive and bariatric surgery. A role that she continues to hold

today. Dr. Ledor is a prolific foregut surgeon and has been involved with multiple surgical societies, including sages. I'm sure it's been a busy year, organizing the Sages annual meeting, and so we're extremely happy that Dr.

Ledor is able to join us. Well, thanks for having me. So perhaps we can get started with some conference basics. Mr. Damascus, I wonder if you could start by telling us about what the goals or the purposes of different surgical conferences are, and particularly how they might be tailored to different groups of surgeons within the uk.

Yes. Thank you very much, Kelly. I think as far as the United Kingdom goes there is. Two groups, two main groups of audience we're trying to capture. So we are doing our best to provide as much content as possible for our residents. Which is I would say our main focus. So try to provide material and make the conference meaningful for their attendance to help them to get CPD points that will enhance their

portfolio.

But at the same time we do understand that, you know, also our consulting colleagues need to get the opportunity to, meet with other consultants in the meetings and learn about new techniques, learn about how our profession is evolving, and also have the opportunity to make new collaborations and new academic kind of acquaintances.

So that's, these are our two main focuses in terms of audience, but also increasingly over the last few years we have seen. More allied health professionals or specialist nurses attending our conferences. So over the years, we have been adjusting our content to enable the participation of this group of professionals as well.

Thank you. And Dr. Lidar, you've obviously got such a vast geographical area to cover as well. How do you decide who your target market's gonna be? How do you decide whether to go hybrid or virtual? Or do

you focus on the in-person events? Well, yes, we've, we've definitely gone to back to all in-person.

You know, I think obviously during Covid we, we were all virtual and then had a hybrid for a year or two. This. The past couple years, it's been fully in person. Everything is available on online for every participant after the meeting is over. So even if they weren't able to attend or if there were concurrent sessions going on and they weren't able to get to one session 'cause they were at another session, they're able to get all of the content afterwards.

So I think that's, that's a big plus of attending our meeting. I mean, sages is a pretty big organization. It it, it has members from foregut surgeons to bariatric surgeons, colorectal surgeons, acute care trauma surgeons, community practice surgeons. I mean, it's it's a pretty broad based organization.

One of its main focuses, as Demetrius said, is the residents and fellows, so trainees as well. We have a large

number of international participants who come every year. So, you know, the programming is designed to provide content for all of those individuals, which is obviously it can be a little daunting when you start out.

But it, I think we do a really good job. That's great. I love that. Yeah, you have the, you encourage the be in there and in person for the networking, but it is also available afterwards. I think I've watched a few recordings online in the past. And do you also have smaller societies that might have more regional meetings?

Sages doesn't have any sub meetings, but there are tremendous number of regional meetings for all the different subspecialties in the United States. I mean the American College of Surgeons, which is our sort of overarching. Surgery society. They have, each state has their own regional college meeting.

There are regional conferences for all specialties. I mean, I could just it's the combinations are endless. I wouldn't be able to go

through all of them. I think. It's nice to get involved in regional meetings because those are large, your local colleagues, and it's nice to see them.

But the, you know, your, the content there is somewhat limited and the and the participation is limited. So, usually being part of a bigger society like Sages or some of the other bigger societies, I think is probably, most people probably belong to something like that. Awesome. Well, I appreciate there's a lot of time and energy put into creating and coordinating these international events.

Can you both tell us a bit about your respective societies and how much goes into the planning, the logistics, and the organization of the meetings in the upcoming year? So for example, how do you decide where to host it? How do you decide on a venue? How do you balance the educational and clinical components and, you know, new technology versus a challenging old dogma?

How do you design a good

conference. I'll start with you, Dr. Damascus. I. That's a very long question, Janet. I'm gonna take it from the top. Okay. So how do you decide where to do it? I think that's more of a logistical issue. We, I mean, we are not like the United States, obviously. We are much, kind of more condensed as a population and much smaller as a population. But our meeting attracts, you know, a reasonable amount of people compared to the population of our country. So we do. Look for venues that one are easy for our delegates to get to and are easy for our international speakers to get to two venues that can hold the number of expected delegates, which has I.

You know, been rising over the last few years. Three venues that are have the available kind of surface to host our exhibition area and our trainee village activities. So that is with

regards to where you choose to do it and also in our kind of, thoughts about where to do it.

We do try our best. I. To rotate between the various areas of our country. So try to. Do one conference in Scotland. Try to do a conference in Ireland. Try to do a conference in Northern England. Try to do a conference in in south of England. Try to do a conference in Wales. So we try to do our best to give the opportunity to all our members to be able to to get to a meeting that's closer to their home.

So that's with regards to the logistics, with regards to the content, I think, over the years, specifically, my focus, I think over the last couple of years that I've been running the program has been the kind of evolving mood, multidisciplinary approach in general surgery, the professional aspects of general surgery that, some subspecialty organizations may not kind of give that much focus on

and international collaborations, like for example, with sages, which has started two years ago and is evolving every year. Yeah. Well, the hosting of the meeting that's done, you know, 10 years in advance. I mean, they that's done by the, we have a.

A managing company that sort of takes care of all those logistics for us. But in general as Dr. Damas said, we try to spread it out across the United States so that everyone has a chance to go. So, for example, a couple years ago, I. It was a, we had a meeting in Montreal you know, then the year after that was in Cleveland, in the Midwest, and this year it was in la.

Next year is gonna be in Tampa. So it circulates across the United States so that all regions are being are being represented. And of course, you know, we have to, it has to be at a, in a city that has a convention center that's big enough to host our meeting, which is quite large. So. That's how we decide where it's gonna be.

The venues are decided, you know, years in

advance. So I, the program chair doesn't have too much input on that. The actual content of the meeting, I think it's done in a pretty. A pretty diplomatic way there. All of the committee chairs are asked a year in advance to submit ideas for topics that they would like to see.

At the meeting. Any member of Sages can go online and submit topics that they think would be of interest, and then the program chair basically just gets downloaded this enormous Excel file where you have to go through all of the topics that are suggested and try to decide which. Which they think would be most relevant.

One of the things that I did, I spent a lot of time was my, myself and the, my co-chair, Dr. Aki, we combed through all of the comments from the participants from the previous year. You know, for example. So one of the things that we saw for this meeting in la. That the year before, there were a lot of comments that people thought that the,

that the content was too robotic heavy and that there wasn't there didn't seem to be enough balance between you know, laparoscopic versus robotic.

So we took a, we took that to seriously, and we made sure that every single session had at least one talk that was. A robot versus laparoscopic debate. So that this way, that could sort of eliminate any, I guess, concerns that people thought that may be, you know, intuitive, which is obviously the main robotic company in the US was sort of, you know, buying, you know, our.

Our meeting. So that was something we took a lot of attention to the ch the president of the, of the, of the society. So this year it was Chris Schlock. They have, it's, it's their prerogative to, to come up with the overall theme of the meeting. And then also. Pick if there's any specific topics that they would like to be highlighted.

So for example, this year, something that Dr. Sch was

felt very strongly about was that we had a lot of content on ai, right? That's clearly something that everyone is very interested in. So we had many, many sessions on ai. Another thing he was very interested in was ergonomics and surgery. So we had several ergonomic sessions, not only to lectures, but also like personal I'm sorry in demonstrations on how to actually be more ergonomically, you know, correct.

In the operating room. So it's, it's a, it's a big, it's a big, you know, sort of task to go through the Excel sheet comments from last year. You know, take the input from your, the, the sitting precedent. But it's a lot of fun. Maybe a follow on question is how do you decide which topics are gonna be presented and, and the speakers that you choose?

Because obviously you choose far in advance. You know, do you pe do you choose most of the people who are part of the society? Do you, do you reach out to international experts who may not be part of the society? How, how does that work? So, I mean,

once we've come up with all of, once we come up with, once the program chairs come up with sort of the shell of what the different sessions are gonna be, that has to get approved by the executive committee.

Once that's approved, then we have, then we go about assigning program, I mean, sorry, session chairs for each of the sessions. And we try to be very. Deliberate about inclu, making sure that there's gender parity. So, you know, we don't have any, what we call mans, that's like all men panels. We don't have that.

Right? So we try to have equal number, you know, roughly men and women. We try to be thoughtful about including not only senior people who are experts, but some people that might be, you know, a little bit newer in the field, international. People stages does have what's called a speaker bank where anyone who's in stages can submit topics that they're experts in and they would like to talk about.

So if, if we're, if we have a panel that, you know, I might not not know, like a great

person to talk about, you know, media arcuate ligament syndrome, for example. And so you could go to the speaker bank, find someone who. Thinks that they're an expert in mouths and if they are great for them, but that way we can, that way we can sort of make sure that we're including people, you know, people don't wanna hear someone giving a talk about something.

They don't, they're just reading and they don't really know anything about, right. You really wanna have someone who actually ha is doing it in practice and is and does have expertise. So we're very mindful of, again, including all those individuals, the actual session chairs. Then. They get to pick the individual speakers.

And they're being, they're also reminded that they should keep all those tenants in mind of, as far as gender parity, you know, diversity of whether they're specialists, whether they're community surgeons, whether they're an international people. I mean, there's a lot of deliberate thought that goes into that.

I really like that idea of getting your members as well to submit talks and suggest themselves potentially, or

suggest colleagues for speakers. I don't think that's something we've done before, but I can see Mr. Damascus taking some notes. Mr. Nasco, do you wanna explain a little bit about how you've recruited your speakers in the past?

I know you've worked very hard scrolling X or Twitter in journals. I, yeah, I mean, you hit the nail on the head, so, I'm essentially online the same at all times, looking for ideas that have a wide network of spies that send me ideas. From AF just after the previous meeting finishes they, we, and we already have a little folder.

With ideas for next year we do it slightly differently. So, actually in our meeting, the session chairs are allocated at the end, very close to the actual meeting. We have a scientific committee and we decide the various sessions and symposia and amongst ourselves based on feedback based on.

What Dr. Ledor mentioned about

you know, trying to have good balance of speakers. We start creating a basic framework of the conference. We always try to give a little punchline to create a bit of a, the sense of what the conference is gonna be about every year. So, for example, this year, because the conference is based in Edinburgh, which is the, you know, the home of the oldest surgical college in the world.

So we started with this punchline, embracing tradition and delivering innovation. So we have a combination of topics, some of which. Kind of celebrate the history and some of which are cutting edge. So we try to find the punchline. We find the symposium, and this actually the session chairs are chosen closer to the actual event.

So all the invitations and the ideas come from within the SGBI board, the SGBI

subcommittees and the recession chairs are invited at the end. Can I ask a little bit about sponsorship? Obviously you gotta pay for the conference. You can charge registration fees, but high fees put away potential attendees.

So sponsors are really important. How do you engage with industry and sponsors and, you know, what, what do you need to provide in exchange for their money? It's a very good question. I mean, the, as you said, it's impossible to perf to do all these big events without help from industry. The most important thing, I think, is that there is a framework and there is a way of work that is very clear on both ends about what the agreements are on both sides of the of the discussion industry has been very supportive in all our, conferences so far we have detailed discussions with them about what kind of content they would like to showcase in our

meeting. There are various levels of sponsorship, obviously, so, not all the companies provide the same level of sponsorship, and according to that, they may have different type of access to the activities of the actual conference.

What we have seen in the last two or three years is that, as far as our meeting goes, is that companies seem to develop a very keen interest to do two things that previously have hadn't been that common. So the first thing is. What we do as the trainee village which is actually not my ideas.

Ideas from Kelly and from the Mohan Academy, which is our trainee branch. So instead of having stalls and giving out leaflets, now a lot of companies decide that they want to do educational events in the exhibition area. Were they. Deliver some content which trainees can attend, or consultants can attend, and they can get some accreditation or some CPD points.

And the second thing that also has become common is that companies now would like to take the opportunity of the sponsorship to engage with focus groups. So have a few select people that they want to ask their opinion or certain things. That has become part of the sponsorship. They seem to be very keen, understandably so, to engage with our patient representatives.

So, A-S-T-B-I has five patients in its committees and the some of our sponsors are very keen to try to engage with them and understand the patient experiences. The patient's opinions, the patient's main interests, the patient's focus on their safety when they're in a healthcare environment.

That's very interesting. I didn't realize that that was becoming more, more prominent, but it makes a lot of sense. That's who we're here for.

Dr. Lior, what I think you, I'd ask you the same question, but also how do you avoid. Not just how do you choose the industry sponsors and how do they get involved or how do you choose for them to get involved?

But how do you avoid bias in a meeting where, you know, some are paying more than others, but also, you know, they might be saying things that the committees and the society at large don't agree with. How, how do you manage that? Yeah, I mean, very similar to what Dimitri said. I mean, we, the, you know, we have a very sort of active, committee that's involved in soliciting donations for not only educational and research support, you know, we have a many courses and so forth, like for fellows and for residents that it's nice to have support from industry for that. But we then have, we offer the industry sponsors, they can have, we have a massive exhibit hall, right?

So they are offered spaces in the exhibit hall for them to be there and to

provide an opportunity for all the members to go that are attending the meeting, to go through, to be able to look at. And interact with all the industry sponsors. We have focus groups, like you said. We have industry sponsored luncheons where they'll, they'll be talking about something and members can go and have lunch during the meeting.

And and those are actually very popular. You know, the bias, I would say our conflict of interest. Task force spends a lot of time looking at every single. Every single talk that's submitted and if they're, obviously everyone has to, you know, disclose if they have any financial relationships upfront.

And if. If there is a talk that there, they cannot mitigate the conflict. We do have non CME talks, so if there's any talk that we think could potentially be in any way viewed as biased, that will get put either get eliminated completely or get put into a non CME talk so that. And it's very clearly labeled.

There's a

separate room. This is like a non CME talk display. You can go in, you can go listen to the talk. You know, upfront that there's, that it's, you know, there's some sort of a potential conflict, but it does give you an opportunity to learn about, you know, new technology or something that, yeah, you may not be able to hear of in a session if you're going to be getting CME for it.

Alright, so the largest audience at these surgical conferences is of course, surgeons that are in practice, whether that's attending surgeons in the United States or consultant surgeons in the uk. How do your respective societies keep surgeons in practice engaged and support them in their careers and promote their attendance at the meetings and active involvement in the society?

Maybe we can start with Mr. Damascus. It's a very good question. The answer to that is we try to as the association evolves, we have various committees various local events where we can get our colleagues to become engaged with the society. We

do have. Another meeting throughout the year.

So obviously our main meeting is next month in May, but we also have a second meeting, which is usually run in October or November, which is our emergency. Surgery day is another opportunity for our colleagues to engage. It's a smaller event and we give focus only on emergency surgery and no other particular kind of part of the literature.

We have started doing some local educational events in smaller areas sorry, in, in areas of the United Kingdom and also what is. A new idea, which has just come up this year. We're trying to make this work. Some of our consultant colleagues who have, who are now retired, have reached out to say they want to engage again with our society.

So we thought that we are going to create an event. They're just

gonna come. In our meeting, we won't ask them to pay any registration and we'll have some sort of a catch up with them perhaps kind of a little lunch or tea or coffee event where, you know, the younger members of the society can come and chat to them, see how society has evolved over the years.

These are people that have a huge amount of experience and we are. Actually very excited that they have reached out and we're hoping that we can make this work. Yeah, I, we don't, we don't have as many sort of local SAGES events throughout the year. One of, I think one of the main focuses of SAGES has always been education and training for residents and fellows.

So we do have a number of resident. Fellow events throughout the year. A bariatric course, an endoscopy course, a career

development course. And these are ways that we sort of encourage younger members who are what are considered candidate members, that we hope eventually that they'll become interested in stages as a result of these courses and go on to become, you know, active members within s stages moving forward.

So I think I think that's something that. We've put a lot of effort and time into, you know, we also have a fair amount of involvement in sponsoring the actual fellowship. So the bariatric fellowship, the our advanced GI MIS and for guide fellowships. So then these are all ways that that stages are involved outside of the actual meeting in education and training, and hopefully in allowing younger members to, to feel like SAGES has helped them to get to where they are.

And that will. Make them feel like Sages is their home society, and I think it's worked really well. Thank you. Yeah, I think it really shows how the surgical societies are there to create a family of surgeons really, aren't they? Where you're being

mentored throughout your career. And these are a great place to meet people at different stages.

Dr. Letter, I'm really keen to know how. Else you engage and support trainees within the conference. So obviously you've got your educational contracts, but I've been really fortunate to work with A-S-G-B-I the last couple of years, as we've already talked about, to build training village with skills workshops into the conference or various poster presentations and oral sessions.

Do you, you do similar to support the cv, CV building and skill development of your trainees. Well, yeah, so outside of those courses that I talked about, those are not, those are not necessarily tied to the actual annual meeting. But within the, the actual meeting, of course, you know, we have, we solicit abstract submissions, right?

This year we had a record number of abstract submissions. I can't remember how many, and it actually was, but it was the highest number of extra submissions ever in the history of sages.

And we have, we try to. We try to include. As many of those abstracts, accept as many of them as possible. So not, of course, not every single abstract is gonna get an oral presentation.

But if it doesn't get an oral presentation, we have long presentations. We have, you know, what's called our quick shot, which are a little bit shorter, oral presentations, but then we even have video presentations and then posters. So this, and this allows residents and trainees, fellows to come to the meeting.

And be able to su to, you know, present their, their research have, you know, people in the audience to be able to ask questions of them, to come up to them. At the, after the poster sessions or at the video sessions, we have a poster award and a video award to the best presentation. So, I think there's a lot of effort made, you know, to include as many trainees as possible in that way.

I think it's really valuable to sort of have that semi constructive, semi-formal but also friendly environment where you can sort of

try and learn and build those skills. Mr. Damco, do you want to talk about some, some of our abstract submissions and stuff for trainees, including the Behind the Knife video prize that we've done this year?

Oh, you caught, you caught me to it. I was just gonna mention it. So, I was gonna start by that and saying that we have had a lot of. Very beautiful video submitted, and I think it all had to do with Behind the Knife supporting us in that regard. And I'll take the opportunity to thank John on obviously and all the, all the behind the Knife team.

So yes, we do have, I. Video prizes. We also have our standard prizes, which is the Moines Hand Prize and the NLA Prize. We have started this year giving out the patient safety prize. We have started a new category of abstracts, which has to do with patient safety team work and non-technical skills.

So we are going to give out a new prize this year, and we are hoping that one of our patient

representatives will hand out the prize for the best patient safety prize. We're also having a sustainability prize as well as a trauma best paper submission. We have the trainee village, which is small 90 minute activities throughout our exhibition, sponsored by some of the companies that support our meeting.

We provide the faculty and they bring their equipment and we design educational events. That our trainees can residents can register to free of charge after the register for the main event. They can book these activities and they can get CPD points for them. And this year we are very lucky to have four pre-conference courses.

We have a Sages MIS pre-conference course for which we're very excited. We also have our laparoscopic skills in emergency surgery course, and we have two courses on abdominal and thoracic trauma by our great colleagues of

the David Knot Foundation. Well, thank you both for all of your insights. I wonder whether you could tell us about the future of surgical conferences.

What do you think are the biggest changes on the horizon going forward, both in surgical practice, but how that reflects in surgical conferences? Dr. Leader, we'll start with you. You mentioned AI and its big role in your future conferences. Is there could you expand on that? I mean, I'm not an AI expert by any means, but I do think every day I'm hearing about more and more ways in which AI is being used in, you know, in the, in medicine and in surgery.

I mean, you know, from using AI to write your, you know, letters of recommendation to having an AI. Basically act as your scribe while you're seeing patients in clinic, so you don't have to spend hours after you're seeing patients in clinic to, to write

your notes. I mean, at some point, I mean, it's not here yet, but it will be here where probably with robotic surgery, AI will be able to perform, you know, operations sort of without a surgeon at the console.

Right. You'll just probably need someone to be at the bedside and. And put the ports in and the robot will, will do everything else. I mean, obviously that's a waste down the line, but I do think there's a lot of things that I don't even, I can't even conceive of that, that AI will be used for.

So, I mean, the bottom line though is, you know. As we've all talked about, one of the main advantages to going to these meetings is the opportunity for you to meet up with your colleagues, for you to be able to network, for you to be able to get your trainees, to meet other people. And there is no, there's no substitute for going to a meeting and hanging out with your friends and talking to people that are experts and getting to network and

making connections that you can, you know.

Work on a research project with, or maybe looking for your next job. So that to me, that there's no substitute for that. And I hope you never get to a place where everything is AI and you don't actually get to go to a meeting and see people and enjoy yourself too. So, from my end, I think I do agree with what Dr.

Reor said about, you know, the opportunity to meet up with people. Certainly, my journey with doing these conferences has shown me that increasingly more and more companies are. Interested to engage in educational activities, whereas it used to be a lot of stands and giving out leaflets and try to convince, you know, it's part of what they need to do, convince people of the professionals of the safety and of the efficacy of their products to actually building and showcasing and delivering

content.

Were. While at the same time having surgeons using their products, but also making it meaningful for them to engage and gain out, gain something out of this engagement. So there is some kind of bilaterality and we're both sides gain something from it. And the other thing I would say is what we have also seen is there, there are a couple of sessions that, have been relatively new and are gained a lot of traction. One of them is a session that we have on national trials. A lot of our residents need to build their portfolios for their applications and, having a participation in and multicenter audit or a multicenter trial is a very big plus for their portfolio.

So we have started doing these sessions where people from around the country are invited to say. We are starting this new trial, please come in and join us. And they have become very

popular. We didn't actually expect how popular they were going to be. So I think this is going to expand over the next few years as more and more studies are coming out.

And I see, I see the engagement with these types of sessions. And the second thing I was gonna say, as far as our membership goes, we do see. A trend of people wanting to engage to talk about the things that matter in the professional aspect of surgery. So there is a lot of content out there a lot of webinars where people can learn about new techniques.

And there are a lot of conferences, either a local or national or international for technical aspects, but there aren't a lot of. Places or meetings where you can actually speak about conflict resolution ergonomics, as Dr. Ledor said. What happens if you get sued? All these things. How do you

manage a difficult colleague?

So all these kind of. Soft skills or aspects of our practice that we don't necessarily have literature on. And we may not necessarily think that they are or should be part of a conference, but we, we have seen people engaging a lot with these types of sessions and also getting given feedback.

So I think, and the technical aspect obviously needs to be there. It's a surgical conference, but we are kind of building on the professional aspect as well. That's great. The other thing I've noticed is where there's an increased effort on supporting a diverse workforce. And how do you incorporate that into the way you design?

Conferences and congresses. So making them, for example, dog friendly you know, encouraging people to either bring their children if they can't find childcare or even just to make them feel welcome.

Breastfeeding rooms, prayer rooms. What, what, what else Or have you had to think of all these things? To make sure they're in place for everyone to feel welcome to come to conferences.

We spent a lot of time on what we called our wellness aspect of our meeting this year, and it was actually really fun. I mean, yeah, we do, we definitely offer childcare. I. And that's, that is that's advertised, you know, well in advance because especially when it's going the meeting is gonna be someplace like, for example, this year at LA where, you know, you, you would think that families might wanna go as opposed to maybe, you know, some other me places.

I'm not gonna say any names of cities so that people don't get upset, but. So we definitely had, we definitely offered childcare. We spent a lot of time on the wellness activities. So this year, for example, we had a, and these are offered for everyone, not just the members, right? The members and their, and their, you know, whoever they're bringing their family.

So we had goat yoga, which was sold out immediately. 'cause it was on the, it was

immediately, as soon as it got posted, goat yoga got sold out. We had a running. Running with the leadership session, you know, that that happened, you know, before the meetings. That also was very, that got sold out. We had a bourbon tasting session.

We had a matcha tea session with like a, an actual expert in that. We organized a a professional, I'm trying to remember if it was a hockey game where everyone could go to that. So we, the, we put a, we put a lot of effort into. Into those what we called them wellness activities. And they were all very well attended.

So I think that's we're making it known that we want you to bring your family, we want you to enjoy yourself, we want you to come here and, you know, obviously learn a lot and do all the stuff that's associated with the meeting, but also be able to enjoy a little bit of, you know, of the area and hanging out with, with your other friends and family.

From the SBI point of view, I think I. We do our best to show that we welcome everyone. We do have similar

activities. I don't think we have that many Dr. Ledor, I think know we have to learn a lot from you. We do our best. And we do have you know, we do encourage people to bring their families.

I should say. We did have childcare rooms on our last meeting. We definitely have prayer rooms. I think a lot of these things now. I have come to realize, at least from my engagement with these activities, they come organically. So, the conference centers now that we tend to work with, have already thought of these things.

So it's, as we start our programming, the conference centers themselves say, you know, this space is for prayer, this space is for childcare. So I think my experience has been that this has grown organically. We have had running sessions. I did not. If you expect to have a running with the leadership with me, I don't think you would you would get much out of it.

But yes, it is a great opportunity to show

that you are an inclusive society and we have our own code of conduct for the event where we try to encourage people. To ask questions, but in a, in a way that is meaningful and not be mean to people. We and this code of conduct is visible on screens throughout the conference so to, so to make people feel welcome.

I did remember one, one of the big things about sages for anyone who's not been to Sages, that there's a, there's a very at the very end of the conference, there's a there's what we call the sages. It's called the Sing Off, but it's just a, it's a huge venue. It's usually at a very fun place. Like this year, it was at the Aquarium the year before was at the rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

So it's like at a very nice and fun. Venue, there's always a live band. There's dancing, there's there's this year we had everyone who wanted to participate in the, it was called Sage Got Talent.

So you had to submit an audition upfront of a performance, and if you got selected. We selected everyone, by the way, and they've got a chance to get up and do a live performance in front of everybody.

Every year we have a group from Japan that it's been going on since Sage has been in, in around the, there's a group from Japan that comes in and they do. This huge group sing, it's called, we Are To, you know, we Are The World, but they sing it. We Are the World, we are Sages, and it's like a huge thing, and everyone's hugging each other and they're flash, they're like flashing their lights.

So it's, it's a really, everyone who comes to Sages for the first time and goes to the sing after, they're like, wow. It's just so much fun. That's, I think that's a, that's one of the unique things about Sages. I do have the fondest memories from the combined A-S-G-B-I Sage karaoke nights in Belfast last year.

Just to say for people that are coming to our meeting next month, we'll have a gala dinner and we'll have a

Scottish Kelly dancing for those interested me. Sounds pretty awesome. Alright, so that wraps up our deep dive into surgical conferences and all that goes into making these meetings such an awesome experience for those that attend.

Thank you Dr. Ledor, and thanks Mr. Damascus for both of your insights and for your leadership and organizing these great conferences for these great organizations. I certainly am even more excited to attend both the A-S-G-B-I and the SAGES meetings in the near future. So thanks again for taking the time.

More behind the knife and A-S-G-V-I collaborative content is on the way. So, as always, if you have any thoughts, questions, or comments, please feel free to reach. Reach out to us at hello@behindtheknife.org. Mr. Damascus, do you care to do the honors to send us off? As always, dominate the day.