Every ten years....

...there is a "Decennial Meeting" devoted to prevention of healthcare-associated infections, co-sponsored by CDC, APIC, SHEA, and IDSA.  I'm heading to Atlanta today to attend a planning meeting (provided my flight leaves--I hear thunder as I'm typing this).

With dwindling travel budgets, increasing (and appropriate) restrictions on industry-medical society relationships, and in the age of webinars and video-conferencing, I wonder if the Decennial should be our new model for professional society meetings.  Maybe every 10 years is too infrequent, but do we really need to meet each year?  Moving first to every other year might be sensible, with societies working together to coordinate schedules (for example, SHEA and APIC alternating, IDSA and ICAAC alternating, or ICAAC and ECCMID).  This would probably increase the attendance at each meeting, as attendees would no longer have to choose one meeting over another.

Anyway, if I do get out of rain-soaked Iowa to Atlanta for this planning meeting, I'd be happy to pass along any ideas for speakers and/or sessions for the Decennial meeting in 2010.  Just leave them in the comments section.