European ‘life scientists’ met in Dresden (Sept 1-4, 2007). I haven’t been able to define myself as a person dedicated to ‘Nuclear RNA processing’, ‘Membrane dynamics’, ‘Glycobiology’, etc. and therefore was twisting between various topics of this huge event. Openly, I expected that at European Life Sciences Organization (ELSO) meeting primarily ‘life’ data will be on show. On the contrary, scientists of all age presented many biochemical data describing fine tuning of signals within various cells but scarcely life imaging. The true is that many images and sequences illustrating the output of signals processed at the level of entire organisms were seen: yeast, C. elegans or Drosophila. However, if I do not count for company presentations (Zeiss, Leica, Olympus) focused on technology (and business), almost no imaging at molecular level was presented during plenary sessions and at mini-symposia.
On the other hand there is hope for the future. Numerous and colourful posters summarizing single cell and molecular imaging experiments were seen. Obviously, poster is not the best medium for life data presentation. Organizers, being aware of this problem, introduced BioClips session few years ago. Surprisingly, this was also the most criticized part when chatting about the meeting with other participants. Who can spend so much time to present their data using high-tech multimedia technologies? How challenging is this issue was underlined by the protagonist, Christian Sardet, lamenting about small number of submitted clips.
Well, this can be the way how visually present your ‘life’ data without complaining about the limits of poster.