EDITORIAL
ACS NATIONAL MEETINGS CAN BE IMPROVED This editorial is a consequence of my immersion in the subject for the past several years as a member of the Council Meetings and Expositions (M&E) Committee, as chairman of its subcommittee on the promotion of national meetings, and as an advisor to the ACS Program Coordination Committee. Since April of this year I have been working with C&EN staff, especially with Mike Heylin, on making changes in the Final Program for the forthcoming national meeting in Chicago that will be published in C&EN. Because my subcommittee members, W. I. Denton and J. H. Stocker, and I started too late on all the changes we would like to make, we were restricted to only three: placing the technical program first, adding a two-page matrix of symposia by division vs. day, and color coding of the pages describing the remainder of the program, such as Council Committee agendas, tours, divisional social affairs, etc. We shall be suggesting other changes in the Preliminary and Final Programs in C&EN for the next several ACS national meetings, such as font size, leading, arrangements and highlighting of items, indexing of symposia, etc. As important as these changes are, and undoubtedly they will help promote the meetings, the net effect is hardly more than store window display changes. Madison Avenue has proved time and again the importance of good advertising-poor advertising is better than none, even for high-quality, reasonably priced products. ACS national meetings are high quality with a relatively low registration fee. Furthermore, they have been advertised well in C&EN. Then why the fuss? As I pointed out in the editorial I was invited to write for the C&EN issue containing the Final Program for the Chicago meeting, ACS membership has doubled over the past 30 years but attendance at national meetings has been on a downward trend, especially during the 1970s. There are many factors that have contributed to this downward trend, such as the national economy, the increasing number of competitive meetings, and the increasing cost (travel, hotel, and meals) of attending a meeting. The most determinative factor is the scientific content of the program. Meetings with meaningful scientific papers, and
well promoted, generally enjoy a good attendance. Another positive factor for meeting attendance is an environment that encourages a high degree of interaction among the attendees. No other factor approaches the force and effect of these two on the success of a technical meeting. A survey conducted recently by the ACS M&E staff disclosed that members (57%) ranked the content of the scientific program as the most important factor by far in deciding to attend national meetings. Ten factors were ranked: the second most important was distance (16%) and the third was fund limitations (1 3%); meeting dates, site, and conflicts and hotel rates, exposition, registration fee, and committee meetings trailed in this order down to least important. The survey, unfortunately, was not designed to solicit comments from the members on how the meetings could be improved. It did elicit several important facts, such as: 55% of the members belong to no division; 2% attend every meeting, 5% once/year, 3% occasionally, and 80% rarely or never (40% rarely or never attend any meeting); Gordon Research Conferences was ranked highest among other meetings. These facts confirm the premises on which my M&E subcommittee has been operating. We shall continue our efforts at promoting the meetings more effectively in C & E N and by other mechanisms. Most importantly, the Council M&E Committee will have to direct considerably more attention to the content of the scientific program. I think some of the things, we have to scrutinize, and possibly act on, are the large number of papers presented at each ACS national meeting and the competition between symposia presented simultaneously by divisions and even within a division. Cornucopia can be both a blessing and a curse. Too much good food also can cause indigestion. For example, about 2,400 papers were presented at the New Orleans (1 977) meeting. The number of registrants per paper was slightly over three, which includes the authors (well over 3,000) of the papers. Every division had symposia in competition with other divisions, and several divisions had two or three simultaneous symposia in competition with themselves, not only for one day but throughtout the week. I submit: this is a bit too much! HERMAN SKOLNIK
2 A Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Sciences, Vol. 17, No. 3, 1977
