Record of - virtual - attendance for ICML, but there is nostalgia for the face-to-face

The 16th edition of ICML - INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MALIGNANT LYMPHOMA, the world's largest conference dedicated to research on malignant lymphomas, ended in the best possible way, for the first (and hopefully last) time in a totally virtual mode. The possibility to attend in streaming from all over the world, together with lower membership fees, allowed a greater participation of researchers from poorer countries, which brought the number of participants to a record total amount of over 4700.

For the occasion, the Palazzo dei Congressi was totally transformed into a large television studio, with broadcast rooms, stages, control rooms, etc. This allowed the participants to follow both the four channels broadcasting hundreds of pre-recorded speeches, and the plenary sessions, live from the Palazzo dei Congressi.

As we said in the previous news, the decision was hard to take. They tried to the last to keep part of the public in attendance. In the end, the health rules in force did not allow a face-to-face event and a totally virtual edition was opted for. The congress worked very well, but the human contacts, we used to have before, during and after the congress, were evidently missing. "Contacts that we miss very much and that we hope to guarantee at the next edition" commented the president of ICML, prof. Franco Cavalli. We cross our fingers and hope to finally shake our hands at the next edition in 2023.