VOLUME 2 - ISSUE 1 - SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

The end of Professor Graeme Henderson’s term of office as VP (Meetings) means that, sadly, this is the last of his meetings reports. Nothing can compare with his Scottish humour, so prepare for withdrawal symptoms. Thank you, Graeme, for keeping us amused.

The Winter Meeting 2003 was held at the Guys Campus, GKT School of Biomedical Sciences, Kings College London. There may no longer be a Department of Pharmacology at G or K or T but there certainly is a band of hard working pharmacologists who combined to put on a very stimulating meeting. The main burden for hosting the meeting fell on Alan Gibson and Peter Jenner. Many years ago, as a schoolboy athlete, Alan won the Eric Liddle trophy (remem-ber Chariots of Fire?). Anyone who saw him running back and forwards between the Hodgkin Building and New Hunts House to check that everything was going smoothly in both venues could see that over the years Alan may have lost a bit of acceleration but the stamina is still there.

Each morning there was a choice of symposium, the subjects of which ranged from the Pharmacology of Cough, Sexual Dysfunction, TRP Ion Channels, Neuropeptides to Neurological Disease. Our meeting was joint with the European Neuropeptide Club meeting organised by Sue Brain and Helen Cox who organised an interesting debate on Migraine Research on the Thursday evening and a symposium on Vanilloid Receptors on the Friday morning. There were also two invited lectures. Keith Norman (Sheffield) delivered the Quintiles Prize Lecture and Norman Bowery ( Birmingham) delivered the inaugural Gary Price Memorial Lecture. Truly there was something to interest each of the 800 participants at this meeting.

On the Wednesday evening the reception, organised by Susan Duty, was held in the Roben’s Suite at the top of the Guy’s Tower. Plenty of food and wine along with a splendid night-time view across the London sky line made this a very enjoyable event. The official dinner was held in the splendour of the Royal College of Surgeons.

The local treasurer for the meeting was Ian McFadzean. How clever to appoint a canny Scot to hold the purse strings. At the time of writing it appears that the GKT meeting will run within budget. As a young PhD student at Parke Davis, Cambridge, Ian came across to visit my lab-oratory in order to learn how to record from locus coeruleus neurones in a brain slice. During his visit the Parke Davis laboratories burned down and so he ended up staying for nearly two years. You just can’t get rid of some visitors.

Our thanks go to all those at GKT who worked so hard to ensure the success of this meeting. I am sure it will not be long before we return there.

Forgotten but not gone
Well that’s it over, my three years of organising BPS scientific meetings has passed in a flash. It has indeed been a very enjoyable experience for me. During my period of office I have had an opportunity to interact with a large number of BPS members and have made a number of new friends.

There are a host of people to whom I owe a lot of thanks. First, the staff at the BPS Office, especially Luisa Hambley and before her Pam Dale, who actually did all the hard work and who made sure that what needed to be done actually was done. There is considerable stress in organising our meetings, some of it induced by members, but throughout it all the BPS staff manage to remain cheerful and friendly.

Second, I would like to thank the members of the Meetings Committee for giving up their time to help re-organise our scientific meetings. They threw out my dafter ideas and came up with a lot of more useful ones themselves. This new committee has, I feel, an important role to play in developing and expanding our scientific programme in the future.

My thanks also go to those individuals who have hosted a meeting in their institution and who have coerced and cajoled their colleagues into helping them with organising symposia and doing all the tasks required of the local hosts. A few years ago I was of the opinion that it would be better for our meetings to be held in conference centres and run entirely by the Meetings Committee and the BPS Office. However my views were changed dramatically by my experiences at the first meeting I was responsible for in Dublin, where the success of the event was largely down to the initiative, hard work and good humour of the local hosts.

At each of our meetings a large number of people have kindly acted as poster referees, chairs of oral communication sessions or have served on poster and oral communication prize committees. Inevitably during my tenure the burden has fallen on people I know in the society. I am sure that many of those who served me so well over the past three years are looking forward to a rest now that I have stepped down. If others would like to act as poster referees then please contact Luisa at lvh@bps.ac.uk. Volunteers are always welcome.

Finally, my thanks go to all those of you who have presented oral or poster communications as well as those who have asked scientific questions at our meetings. The main purpose of our meetings is to promote scientific discussion and exchange of ideas and information and without contributions from members that would not occur. Late on the last afternoon at the GKT Meeting the poster session was crammed with people and there was a buzz in the room. That is just the environment that we need to have throughout our meetings.

My successor is Steve Hill from the University of Nottingham. Steve has long been an enthusiastic participant at our meetings. I did talk Steve into taking on his new role by telling him how enjoyable I had found doing it. So be nice to him too.

Bye for now

Graeme Henderson
Ex-Vice President (Meetings)