Occupy Impact - the 1st Annual CASRAI International Conference

Today we are announcing reconnect12, the first annual CASRAI international conference in Montreal on October 10/11/12, 2012. The conference is co-hosted by the Fonds de recherche du Québec.

We are calling our annual conference 'reconnect' as the name not only conveys our mandate of connecting research but also nicely captures the idea of reconnecting with peers and colleagues each year on the subjects of interest to the growing CASRAI community. This year it is 'reconnect12' and subsequent years will increment the number tag. You can learn more, submit an abstract or register at the conference website.

The theme of reconnect12 is: Occupy Impact. We feel the 'occupy' meme fits the subject well. In our case occupy is not about protest or revolution. It is about getting inside a difficult issue and tackling it as a community. From the conference website: "Measuring the impact of a highly diverse research community is a hard problem but one that we need to 'occupy' together as a community in order to make it something we own collectively."

We already have three excellent keynote speakers lined up:

• Rémi Quirion, Chief Scientist, Fonds de recherche du Québec
• Claire Donovan, Reader, Health Economics Research Group, Brunel University, London
• Cameron Neylon, Advocacy Director, Public Library of Science

We are calling for submissions of abstracts on a number of key topics. There will also be workshops announced in the weeks ahead. Details can be found at the conference website.

We will post updates to the community as key registration deadlines approach and as we finalize the conference program based on submissions from the research community.

We hope you will submit an abstract and join us in Montreal in October.

Please share this announcement within your organization and community. Follow us on Twitter @occupyimpact to raise awareness and keep up-to-date on developments as we near the conference date.