We Fall Back...Into Our Fall Group Meeting

But I do promise you a great experience. There’s still time to register, if you haven’t already. Whether or not you can make the meeting, please check out the agenda book . At 80 pages, it’s our biggest, and it will get you completely caught up on SWOG Cancer Research Network progress. You’ll find special updates from our disease and research support committees in the back of the book, and up front, you’ll find top accruing sites, a list of 2020 activated trials, and photos of our seven new patient advocates.

We’ve got a one-hour plenary session teed up for you, as well as most of our standard fall group meeting fare, including the SWOG NCORP Research Base Clinical Trials Workshop, and the Jeri & Noboru Oishi and Latin America Symposia. We’ll also hold a Board of Governors meeting. Note: Almost all sessions are open to all members. Only a handful of committee sessions are closed, so drop into any group you’re curious about.

Two really important points I want to make about the virtual meeting:

On Monday, we launch a special virtual group meeting website designed by our SWOG team with our partners at IMS Technology Services, an IT and event firm. The website will be your home base for the fall meeting – the place you go to find session times and agendas and log into meetings. It’ll be as easy as clicking a few buttons.

The site will also feature a welcome video message from me, as well as links to view our Livingston Lecture and Crucial Conversations, a panel discussion held Wednesday that was recorded so every SWOG member can check it out. It’s the first in a series that will detail current events and their impact on our roles as cancer researchers. This first panel focused on challenges of COVID, personally and professionally, from investigators around the country. And, of course, it’s supported by The Hope Foundation for Cancer Research. Our charitable arm is our biggest champion and a source of perpetual innovation.

Please note also that we are “in” Chicago for the fall meeting. That means all meeting times – in the agenda book, on the special site – are marked Central Time. Remember this as you create your meeting calendar!

A cross-cutting team at SWOG and Hope put this conference together and I want to thank everyone, particularly our meetings manager, Courtney Wille, for the creativity, flexibility, and teamwork on display these last couple of months during the planning process, and Casey Dawson, assistant director of administration, for helping find and set up the tech.

Finally, since we’ll be meeting next Friday, we’ll skip the Front Line. The blog will be back on Oct. 2. Meanwhile, I’ll “see” you online!