Amid a rapidly developing, accelerating, and unprecedented global outbreak of disease caused by novel coronavirus, several health and medical societies cancelled planned events with hours to spare. On Friday March 6, many people were preparing to head to Boston for the International Antiviral Society-USA (IAS-USA) Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI; March 8–11); some attendees were already on their way. However, despite reassurances early in the week that the conference would take place, on Friday lunchtime (for those in the USA) the organisers made the difficult decision to cancel the face-to-face conference and to attempt to run the conference as a virtual event. This was a bold move, but one that, by-and-large, paid off, and provides numerous lessons for other conference organisers as the covid-19 pandemic stretches into the spring and summer. We suggest any conference organisers considering a similar move seek advice from the CROI team on running a successful online conference.

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今天的未来会议？

在由新型冠状病毒引起的迅速发展，加速和前所未有的全球性疾病爆发中，数个健康和医学团体取消了计划中的活动，并花了数小时的时间。3月6日，星期五，许多人正准备前往波士顿参加美国国际抗病毒协会（IAS-USA）逆转录病毒和机会感染会议（CROI； 3月8日至11日）。一些与会者已经在路上。但是，尽管保证会在本周初举行，但在周五的午餐时间（对于美国的与会者），组织者还是做出了艰难的决定，取消了面对面的会议，并试图将会议作为虚拟会议进行。事件。这是一个大胆的举动，但总的来说是有回报的，随着covid-19大流行持续到春季和夏季，并为其他会议组织者提供了许多课程。我们建议所有考虑采取类似举措的会议组织者都应向CROI团队寻求有关成功举办在线会议的建议。