Thanks to all for a great meeting in Nashville last week. Upon reflection, a real milestone. It was our 10th meeting, gratifying as an index that SRSM seems to be a success. We had 43 active members attend, by far the largest number of active members at any of the meetings we have had; and a number of guests and students registered as well. A number of us played the game of "how would you rate the conference on a scale of 1-5", and the answer was always between 4-5. There is always room for improvement, but let's pat ourselves on the back for just a moment.
And here is a history trivia question for us--who has attended all ten SRSM conferences? Kudos to Michael Borenstein in that regards. Is there anyone else? Michael has taken pictures and videos of most (all?) of the conferences from Cambridge to now, and you can see many of them on the SRSM website. So a personal thanks to Michael for this service (and so many other services) to SRSM.
Will Shadish
The 2015 SRSM annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee was held on the beautiful campus of Vanderbilt University, hosted by Mark Lipsey and his colleagues at the Peabody Research Institute. We enjoyed a sumptuous banquet on the scenic Nashville Riverfront and a very fun trip to the Country Music Hall of Fame (a very American experience for our non-U.S. members and guests, and a pleasantly engaging surprise even for the non-country-music fans among us). The meeting was a stimulating and well-balanced mix of topics, ranging from social science problems and challenges in medical research synthesis to serious statistics. The Ingram Olkin Award was made to Julia Littell, and Ingram Olkin was on hand to congratulate her, to everyone’s delight. Our new President-Elect is Kay Dickersin, a past Ingram Olkin Award winner. Chris Schmid organized a challenging discussion session that compared meta-analysis and research synthesis in medicine, social sciences and ecology. Will Shadish, Tom Trikalinos and Hannah Rothstein led a spirited discussion on the future of SRSM, replete with yellow sticky notes all over the front of the room. All in all, it was a stimulating, collegial and very fun meeting.
Jessica Gurevitch