conferencing

So the conference opened yesterday. The opening remarks, or rather ceremony, included a musical performance by the Spivakov camera orchestra. For those of you who dont know who they are, this a very big deal orchestra, they perform internationally, they sell out venues. They performed directly on the stage where the podium for the speakers was set up, in such a way that the partially present wind section was sitting behind the podium. The bolshoi soloist joined them for part of the performance. She sang several arias, she is gorgeous. and the whole spectacle was, well, kind of much. the conference attendees are clinicians, presumably, from all over Russia. the clinic staff are also participating, in sneak in adn out throughout the day in scrubs. since the conference is taking place in the clinic, well, the space of the medical center, there is activity going all around. mortal clinic workers going to work every morning, patients showing up for their appointments, patients who are hospitalized and are trying to walk to their doctor's office to ask a question, fully gowned in 'house-clothes' because, you know, they are in the hospital, complete with slippers, sometimes robes. now, there are no people in house shoes at the conference, but some of them are wearing shoe covers and white coats. why do you need to wear a white coat to a doctor conference i'm not sure. it seems that the russians are not very good at using their cell phones. let me rephrase that, they are perfectly capable of making phone calls, answering phone calls, texting, and taking pictures. they are, however, not familiar with the silence function of their cellular devices. the phones are going off all the time, which is annoying. what is more annoying is that people answer them. pick up, have full conversations, all the time. the important scientific presentations are constantly interrupted wiht "hello? who is this? i'm at a conference". damn right, you're at a conference, hang up!! there are side conversations, not in whisper but full volume. someone's alarm went off for a solid 5 minutes (alarm, not pager). i sat next to a lady who ate a cough drop q15min. individually wrapped, crinkly cough drops, every 15 min. crinkle crinkle crinkle. crinkle crinkle crinkle. the conference is simultaneously translated. in exchange for some valuable, like a passport or a shoe, you can pick up a transmitter at the entrance to the conference. what people dont realize is that simultaneous transmitters are like walkie-talkie: they emit radio waves, radio waves that sometimes cause interference. so you get a lot of cshhhh noise. cshhh crinkle crinkle. additionally, what people dont realize is that if you think you're simultaneous translator transmitter is too loud, it probably is. in which case, the best thing to do is to locate the volume control and turn it down a bit. because wearing it around your neck or putting it on the chair next to you means that everyone around you is listening to the translation as well. which is annoying when you dont need to be, like, if the presentation is in english. it's like trying to listen to a conversation with two conversations going on, plus whatever else side-talks are happening. coupled wiht the fact that the presenters are not native english speakers adn you're already trying to decipher the musical italian, which makes everything sound like a question, or a rolling "r" rumble of mumbly french, and i swear i feel like i'm losing my mind. everyone takes pictures of the screen of the power point slides. it is actually quite an amazing site: an entire conference full of phones, ipads, and ipad-like devices, rising in unison with every change of the slide, up into the air. everything is photographed: slides with graphs, important quoted studies, title shots, the 'thank you for your attention' slides. i swear i watched a woman take a picture of every single slide of every presentation for the entire day. what is she going to do with them? organize them? label them into folders? use them for clinical practice or her own presenting skills? who knows! the podium on stage is for those presiding over the plenary sessions. irrespective of the fact that presentations are going on, that people sitting on stage are in front of the whole conference, people keep walking back adn forth up onto the stage, asking questions, delivering messages, whispering things to the queen. queen's minions (she has minions, or more like secretaries and personal assistants) are sometimes summoned by the queen to come up and receive an order. the minions wear slim skirts and tight dresses, heels and tights. they are slender and have long hair. only 50% of the minions speak english. there is also a lot of yelling from the podium. yelling in the form of presiding, which at times is almost comical. presiding directed not just as the 'service' individuals like sound guy ("we need sound! i said quickly! who is responsible! you are not listening to me! now!"), but also at the delegates ("i implore you to cease all activity! stop moving or get out of here and don't come back! raise your hand if you heard me! did you hear me?"). i literally laughed out loud at some point when the conference was ordered to raise their hand and answer a question about something. mostly, because the conference complied. the day ended with broadcasted surgery. large screen, broadcasted from the OR, multiple ORs, surgery performed by the congress delegates world renown gyne surgeons. i hope my colleagues at least got to meet the patients before they were asleep. i wonder what the consent process was like. even though i am your doctor, someone else will operate on you. the risk of the procedure, in addition to the standard bleeding, infection, injury to pelvic and abdominal organs, and death, also includes exposing your internal organs to the world as well as being recognized by your internal organs. actually, that's irrelevant because the case presentations included the patient's names. NAMES! not their birth dates, or medical record numbers. names. HIPPAA would have a field day about this, what IRB approved this. wait, wait a minute, there is no irb. but who is writing the operative report, since the surgeon doesnt speak russian?!?