This is an important update for everyone who has preregistered or otherwise expressed an interest in attending the Albany Conference on Biomolecular Motors and Nanomachines. It contains new information about deadlines and reduced conference fees, among other things. Please read carefully.

1. THE COST IS DOWN

The Albany Conferences are a kind of laboratory for scientific meetings. Part of this year's experiment is that (like last year) all publicizing is being done by internet mechanisms (email and bulletin boards). The savings in organizational expenses are used to reduce the cost of the meeting for all participants.

As a result of sponsorships received so far, we are REDUCING THE MEETING FEE from $400 (actual on-site per capita cost) to $350 for everyone who sends in a preregistration form BEFORE AUGUST 1. This is in addition to the 10 (or more) full-fee waivers that will be provided to young investigators and others who may not otherwise be able to attend the meeting (see below).

To save an easy additional $25 off the registration fee, see ABSTRACTS AND HOMEPAGE below.

2. FINDERS FEES

Another aspect of the experiment is that the participants themselves are asked to help out with publicizing the conference. I know that many of you have, in fact, relayed the "calls for participation" to colleagues and collaborators. While we already have a critical mass for the meeting, we still have room at the conference site. Therefore, an idea we want to try this year is instituting "finders fees". If anyone preregisters after today (July 12) who says he or she was informed about the meeting by one of you, your meeting fee will be reduced by $100. Likewise, if you send us the name and address of a corporate sponsor contact and we hit paydirt, you also get a $100 credit. Any combination of 3 registrations plus paying sponsors and you get a full fee waiver! (While this might sound extravagant, it is actually cheaper than the thousands of dollars usually spent on glossy snail-mailed flyers, society and journal mailing lists, and journal ads.)

3. ABSTRACTS AND HOMEPAGE

The abstracts are coming in painfully slowly. The same thing happened last year, resulting in a mad rush to get the homepage up in time for voting on the session speakers. To encourage early submission of abstracts, those who submit abstracts by JULY 25 will save another $25 off the registration fee. Remember to email abstracts as UNENCODED ASCII files to carmen@wadsworth.org. (If you'd like to see what last year's meeting page was like, you can view it at www.wadsworth.org/albcon96.)

4. ACCELERATED YOUNG INVESTIGATOR AWARDS

To encourage early abstract submissions, we have decided to give full fee-waivers to the first 5 eligible young-investigator applicants who are "sponsored" by preregistered applicants and who have submitted relevant abstracts. The next 5 awards will be part of a later competition. Pending success with sponsorship, we hope to make available another 5 awards, for a total of 15.

5. WORKSHOPS

We generally have informal workshops at these conferences on Friday and Saturday afternoons. If you have an idea for a workshop, please let me know. We will set up an email server for meeting participants soon, so you can directly exchange ideas with each other about workshops and other aspects of the meeting.

The suggestion has already been made by one of the nanotech conferees that we have pre-meeting workshops on Thursday afternoon. The purpose would be to introduce biomotor researchers to the field of nanotechnology and vice versa. If you'd like to volunteer to participate in such workshops, please let me know.

6. POSSIBLE KEYNOTE SPEAKER

We might consider inviting ONE individual to serve as a keynote speaker on Thursday evening. Let me know if you like this idea and, if so, whether you have a favorite candidate for keynoter.

7. EMAIL PROBLEMS

Our institution has switched email providers and we have since been experiencing peculiar problems, in particular, truncation of messages. If you receive only part of a message from me, please let me know and I will resend it.

8. THE UNDECIDED

If you have not yet preregistered and are certain that you will not attend the conference, please email me to that effect as soon as you can. I will immediately take your name and email address off the meeting lists. For the rest of you in the "undecided" category, we will hold a place for you as long as possible, at least until mid-August.

That's all for now. Remember the deadlines:

Email me your preregistration form before August 1 and save $50.
Email me your abstract by July 25 and save another $25.

As usual, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please email me at carmen@wadsworth.org.

Thanks!

Carmen Mannella
President, Albany Conference Foundation
Chair, Program Committee, 1997 Albany Conference