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Letter from the General Chairs

It’s still hard to believe that GSA Connects actually happened, much less that it’s over. After
more than two years without an in-person meeting, almost 3,000 of us gathered in Portland and
were joined by more than 1,000 additional online participants.
As scientists, we recognize uncertainty as part of everything we do, but “uncertain” doesn’t
adequately describe the events and related decision making leading up to Portland. When we
started working with GSA staff in 2020, we expected we’d go down to the wire, and we did:
The format of GSA Connects wasn’t confirmed until mid-September, and there were multiple
adaptations up to and during the meeting itself.
But it worked! We had field trips, in-person and online short courses, in-person, online, and
hybrid technical sessions, all the receptions and business meetings that were fun to join in per-
son. We were able to bring hot topics and recent policy changes into play in our Pardees, noon-
time lectures, and alcohol-free poster sessions in the Resource & Innovation Center. We had
face-to-face (masked, of course) mentoring sessions, alumni events, and inducted a new group
of GSA Fellows. We marveled at our ability to recognize each other even with masks—and
realized that mistakenly calling out to people we thought we recognized was risk-free because
no one knew who was doing it. We even basked in the glow of seeing PowerPoint presentations
in person rather than online. Maybe most gratifying was seeing the enthusiasm (and a little
relief) on the part of everyone there, the enjoyment in each other’s company, the people experi-
encing their first GSA meeting in a while and those experiencing their first GSA meeting, the
ongoing exchange of science and everything else, and the grace with which folks handled the
hiccups we faced. There may not have been a better review than, “This actually felt like GSA.”
Of course, none of this would have been possible without the dedicated volunteers on our
Local Organizing Committee, GSA staff, and student volunteers. As impressive as they were,
their efforts would have been for naught without the 4,000 people who jumped in and made
GSA Connects 2021 a success—Thank you!
We wish the best of luck to our counterparts for GSA Connects 2022, Cal Barnes and
Jeff Lee, the Denver Local Organizing Committee, and everyone else involved in planning
for Denver next October—See you there!

Ian Madin, Jeff Rubin,
Co-General Chair Co-General Chair

12 GSA TODAY | January 2022