Best practices are brought

from the page to the screen.

BREAKOUT

Thinking Small When ISMRM’s Roberta A. Kravitz attended a meeting several years ago of a “sort of sister organiza- tion” that is much smaller and “a lot newer” than ISMRM, she was struck by its sense of community.

“A lot of my members belong to that organization, and we were having so much fun at the closing party,” Kravitz said. “I realized this is the ISMRM of years ago.”

ISMRM has more than doubled in size in the 18 years that Kravitz has worked there, and she said,

“there are just some things you are going to lose as you get larger.” However, “opportunities like the Journal Club [can] keep that feeling that [members] are doing something special, that they are part of this whole col- laborative, worldwide community that has access to each other.”

as possible to share a connection and therefore share the experience. “At the University of Utah,” Kravitz said, “one of our members always has his post- doctoral students gather in a room and he buys them pizza and they broadcast the virtual Journal Club on a big screen.” After two years, the Journal Club has gathered enough steam for new ses- sions to be scheduled monthly. Kravitz also expects to increase the number of connections, or seats, to 500. While journal clubs have “not always

PCMA.ORG

taken off in the scientific world,” Kravitz said, “for this group, doing it virtually like this — where they see the speakers on the screen and there is an interactive element to it — they just buy into it. The deployment of it, the medium, speaks to this group. “In fact, I had a student write to me after one of the Journal Club sessions. He said: ‘Roberta, the ISMRM is the coolest ever.’”

. Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene. AUGUST 2013 PCMA CONVENE 35

Smaller gatherings, both virtual and face-to-face, “are really extremely important [for] that sense of community,” she said, and in her role as executive direc- tor, she is focused on making those opportunities a part of the member experience. The Journal Club “is one of those ways to do that,” she said, giving students and junior faculty access to the leaders in the field, and a platform to problem-solve and collaborate. She added: “Where is the next big idea going to come from? Who is the next Nobel laureate? Where can they take imaging in the future? These types of small-group offerings facilitate that.”

ON THE WEB

Learn more about ISMRM’s Journal Club at ismrm.org/ members-only/journal-club.