2020 is the year we learnt to do things very differently due to a small and very nasty virus. We have learnt to use virtual systems for staff and ward meetings, for patient reviews and for our education, our learning and our teaching but we have missed being with our friends, our families and our colleagues. We have learnt to move away rather than towards others, we all wash our hands much more often than before, we have stopped travelling to other places, for work, for meetings and/or for holidays and wear masks much of the time for our everyone’s safety.

So many conferences have been cancelled, postponed, or have been reconfigured as virtual meetings and many meetings are now hybrid. Instead of being in Yokohama in September 2020, the 59th ISCoS Annual Scientific Meeting went virtual and virtual meetings have a lot going for them, including reduced costs and allowing people to attend who otherwise could not.

Our plan was to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the first ISCoS ASM in beautiful Vancouver but Covid19 is continuing to make travel extremely difficult (in fact ‘scary’). Some of you will recall the wonderful meeting held in Vancouver in 2002 and we will revisit this lovely city for our 61^st ASM in 2022 instead.

Our 2021 meeting will again be virtual. The ISCoS 60^th Annual Scientific Meeting will be safe for everyone to attend with no international travel required.  Instead, we will all attend our 60^th ASM from our offices and homes using the interactive technology that we are now utilising daily.

I look forward to spending our 60th ISCoS ASM with all of you via the virtual links that will be available and hope that 2022 allows us to again meet in person once most of the world has been vaccinated against this nasty virus.

A/Prof Ruth Marshall

ISCoS President