The ACR 2021 Playbook Save

The ACR meeting is the premier educational event in rheumatology every year; it’s big for clinicians, academics, North American and international rheumatologists and those who will be presenting their research for the first time.

Your objectives in attending the annual meeting are:

• Learn from Leaders and Peers about new advances and original research 
• Review, discuss and question new research and thinking
• Reaffirm standards of care that apply to daily practice and research
• Interact with your peers 

This playbook is designed to help you navigate a truly big meeting (with >2000 presentations and over 15,000 attendees from over 100+ countries). What follows is based on experience and the acquired insights our peers. 

To conquer and enjoy the Virtual ACR meeting, you need to set your own goals:

1. Commit the time to learn: will you do 8 hrs./day as if you were at the meeting? Or will you snack on content? Or will you wait till it’s all over to hear from others? 
2. What kind of virtual learner are you? We all learn differently –be clear on YOUR best ways to learn
3. Where will you find the right/best information to update your brain and sharpen your practice, research and teaching? Some things are interesting, but others are impactful and relevant.

Rule of Thumb (IP1) – Stuff You Probably Shouldn’t Miss

1. Spend time the night before to find “your favorites” by searching the online ACR program.
2. Plenary Sessions –major advances and blockbuster studies will be showcased for you.
3. Late Breaking Abstracts & Posters – Tuesday – the latest, big clinical trials will be showcased 
4. Look for new treatment or diagnostic ACR guidelines, there’s always a few new ones
5. Must-See Sessions- for most this is “The Great Debate” and the “Year in Review”.
6. Cruise the posters – the good news is that you can see them, listen to the authors 40 second audio clip summary and move to your next poster (this is time efficient).
7. Figure out what your “Must-See Session” is, usually tailored to your primary topic interests.
8. RheumNows coverage is tailored to your interests - Our website will daily feature:
   1. Daily Overview report (day 1, day 2, etc.)
   2. Daily collection of “ACRBest” abstracts (as judged by our faculty)
   3. Find your topic page (e.g., Lupus) to see all things lupus or click the “BEST OF” for the quickest read of the best abstracts.

Everyone Hates ZOOM – But You Will Embrace Virtual Learning

• You will save a lot of time and money (airfare, hotel, ground transportation, meals, etc.) 
• Virtual learning is proven to be time efficient, highly educational and highly interactive.
• By now, everyone is a Zoomatologist, BE GREAT AT VIDEO CONFERENCING
  • You need: a great chair, good screen, external speakers, video cam at nose height AND keep your camera on (“90% of Success is showing up”!)
• Questioning, downloads, screen grabs, social media dissemination, voting are all easier virtually.
• You can engage live (as it happens) or off-line/asynchronously (at night, after work, etc.)
• You can attend from anywhere in the world (in your jammies)
• Peer to peer communication is easy once you are using the meeting app or program
• Virtual learning (live or asynchronous) is here to stay; the Pandemic will severely limit travel and face-to-face conferencing for the next many months.

Before you go

• Register and activate your account 
  • Go thru the tutorial. Once logged in, you’ll be able to: Build your agenda, explore Community Hubs (interact with peers) or Visit Exhibits
  • (There is no “app” this year. Use the online program to develop your schedule of what abstracts or sessions you want to check out) 
• Don’t bother to engage if you are going to be interrupted by work, children, pets, drum lessons. Pick another time, place and way to learn (see below)
• Get comfortable, wear your flip flops and grab a hot cup of coffee as you settle into your ergonomically perfect home desk chair.  Ideally a desktop or laptop computer with 2 large screens will make the experience easier and more enjoyable.  
  • Screen #1 for your program, navigation, cueing up your next session
  • Screen #2 for watching video, reading abstracts and listening to audio clips.
  • Headphones if you want to block out the craziness that goes with trying to learn at home.

The Daily Game Plan

• Eat a good and healthy breakfast. 
• Streamline your Schedule.  This is your assignment, that you have chosen. Allot the time to do 1–2-hour sessions at a time, focusing on that which is most important to you. 
• Take a lunch break and either call or FaceTime a friend or get out of the house for a stroll
• You Want the Big Overviews?
• ACR Community Hubs: bring together leaders and like-minded Rheums!

• RheumNow Nightly Recap 7pm EST – The RheumNow faculty gather at the end of every day and recap the best posters, abstracts, sessions and things said online.  Rheumatologists, NPs/PAs will receive and email Zoom invite to attend a 30-minute session, 7pm EST – everyone can watch this live stream on RheumNows YouTube.com channel. 
• KOL Perspectives: Top-billing on our website is devoted to big picture video reports from leading rheumatologists – Drs. Ruderman, Kavanaugh, Giles, Cush, and more.
• Rheumatology Roundup – Will end the meeting on Tuesday night at 7pm EST (6pm CST).  RheumNow registrants will receive an email Zoom invite to the webinar (others can watch on the RheumNow YouTube channel   This will be a 60 min live recap (as we have done for the last 15 years) and You can ask questions of Drs. Cush and Kavanaugh.

How will you consume ACR 2021?  What kind of Learner are you?

We surveyed Rheumatologists on how they plan to attend and learn ACR Convergence– and there were clearly differences in approaches.  We categorized learner types as:

• The Tigers (willing to hunt and consume the old fashion way)
• The Creators (wanting to try a new way of laptop learning, either after work or during)
• The Dabblers (not attending live, but interested in learning the important stuff after ACR)

TIGERS: have registered, taken time off from work and intend to be at the computer 4-8 hours a day to learn all there is to learn from the ACR. Most will navigate via the ACR Convergence website, follow #ACR21 tweets, sign up for RheumNow “Topic Reports” and engage via the communities mentioned above.

CREATORS: Some Rheums prefer to partly use the ACR website and learn using RheumNow or other sources for the advances and novel reports from the meeting – these are the “Creators”.  Time efficient, high impact content can be found on the RheumNow website that will feature Perspective videos on main topics, Daily Recap Webinar/Videos, RheumNow ACR Podcasts, or "Topic reports".

DABBLERS: are Rheumatologists who will miss the meeting or just can’t take the time off. Our recommendations for “Don’t Miss” would be:

• ACR Year in Review 
• The Great Debate
• RheumNow’s Daily Recap (live-streamed but also available as a video or podcast on demand) 
• “Topic reports” Go to the RheumNow registration page, sign in, under preferences chose a “Topic” email – you will receive an email of all the (e.g., Lupus) content after the meeting is done.
• Social media – if you are on twitter, follow the hashtag #ACR21 on Twitter or on RheumNows ACR homepage https://rheumnow.com/conference/acr-2021  Or use a social media tool to have all of the ACR21 content (e.g. Tagboard, Everwall, Sprinklr )
• Listen in – RheumNow will be posting daily podcasts from the meeting. You can listen to these on the RheumNow website or on your cell phone (Apple podcasts, SoundCloud, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, etc. and just search for “RheumNow”) 
• Video Junkies – RheumNow will be posting dozens of videos daily; these will feature abstract and session reports from our faculty reporters.  Don’t miss our Panel Discussions (on RA, PsA, AS, Gout, Still’s disease, Biologics) and KOL Video Perspectives on what’s happening at ACR2021 and in rheumatology.