We have received a very thought­ful com­plaint about yesterday’s mes­sage, so let me take a few min­utes to address it and to answer other fre­quently asked ques­tions on the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit.

Com­plaint: “Why do peo­ple who pro­cras­ti­nate and sign up late war­rant a spe­cial “perk” (refer­ring to the “Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science and Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine” ref­er­ence book we offered yes­ter­day)? If that is the kind of busi­ness ethic you pro­mote it almost makes me want to can­cel my ear­lier registration.”

That is an excel­lent point, which we did take into account but did not com­mu­ni­cate prop­erly. The rea­son we felt it was fine to offer such a “perk” was because dis­counted early-bird rates had just expired. Assum­ing 20–30 peo­ple reg­is­ter to the Sum­mit by end of today, this gives them (you!) a 33–50% chance at earn­ing a perk worth $89 (because we offer 10 books), so that option rep­re­sents the equiv­a­lent to $30–45, which is less than the dis­count early-birds received. We appre­ci­ate the com­mit­ment by every per­son who reg­is­ter to the Sum­mit, and espe­cially by those who do it early so we can plan things bet­ter. I apol­o­gize for hav­ing given the wrong impres­sion. And hope a few more peo­ple reg­is­ter and par­tic­i­pate in the Sum­mit — per­haps moti­vated in part by the “perk”. The more we are, the merrier.

Ques­tion: will pre­sen­ta­tions be recorded and acces­si­ble after the event? I will be trav­el­ling part of the time, does it still make sense for me to par­tic­i­pate? can I reg­is­ter only to attend a few ses­sions or is the Sum­mit “a whole package”?

All pre­sen­ta­tions will be recorded and acces­si­ble to Sum­mit reg­is­trants for 3 months after the Sum­mit, so one can eas­ily attend some ses­sions live and access the rest online after­wards. The other big ben­e­fit from the Sum­mit is to con­nect with colleagues/ part­ners, which can be done dur­ing the whole year via our Summit-only group on LinkedIn, and via casual gath­er­ings we want to facil­i­tate after the Sum­mit. The whole Sum­mit is one pack­age, includ­ing 3-days of con­tent and the community/ con­nec­tions, so we don’t offer par­tial registrations.

Ques­tion: Where is the Sum­mit located?

In your office/ home. There’s no need to travel any­where. So far we have around 180 Sum­mit par­tic­i­pants, and each of them will par­tic­i­pate from their respec­tive loca­tions, includ­ing the Speak­ers and Moderators.

Ques­tion: I get it, this is a vir­tual con­fer­ence. But why do you orga­nize it this way?

My per­sonal answer is that this is the best way to bring together under one “roof” a true dream team of over 40 Speak­ers and a cou­ple hun­dred pro­fes­sion­als lead­ing influ­en­tial indus­try, research, clin­i­cal, entre­pre­neur­ial and pol­icy ini­tia­tives in the US and abroad, and deepen the con­ver­sa­tion around a crit­i­cal oppor­tu­nity. “Sharp­Brains” is any­one work­ing hard to improve things.

The answer by Peter Reiner, Co-Founder of a Cen­ter for Neu­roethics (so hope­fully he’s more objec­tive than I am), is this “…Even bet­ter, you don’t have to go any­where!! This is a vir­tual con­fer­ence, so all that you need is a com­puter (you need to be able to run Flash, but if you can watch YouTube videos, you are all set) to attend from the com­fort of your own home or office. I attended the 2010 Sum­mit, and it was remark­ably effec­tive – not only did it save travel expenses and time for me (not to men­tion that it was envi­ron­men­tally respon­si­ble), but it turned out that the vir­tual con­fer­ence had an advan­tage over in-person con­fer­ences in one way. Most peo­ple have had the expe­ri­ence that some of the most valu­able dis­cus­sions at con­fer­ences occur not from the podium but in the hall­way. The vir­tual con­fer­ence soft­ware allows for hall­way con­ver­sa­tions, but the bulk of that con­ver­sa­tion occurs as a pub­lic com­ment stream. Get­ting to hear what many peo­ple are say­ing in the ‘hall­way’ is much bet­ter than hear­ing only one per­son, and if you like what they say, you can send them a note and con­tinue your con­ver­sa­tion as a pri­vate one.”

To Learn More and Reg­is­ter to 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury, please click Here.

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