International AIDS Conferences - have they been useful

Dear friends, now Vienna is done and dusted.

At the blog http://ippfaids2010.blogspot.com/2010/07/time-to-pull-plug-on-international-aids.html?spref=fb

My dear friend and mentor Kevin Osborne says 'whisper it, its time to pull the plug off the international conferences' - please read it when you have the time.

Its a voice of reason and experience coming from deep within the vicinity of the epdemic just as much as the voices of those who have returned from the conference, some with an extended holiday thrown in thereafter to recover from the fatigue.

Its likely that the next 'bigger spectacle' will be held (in Delhi?) with complete aplomb as though none of these comments ever traversed the HIV world's cacophony. But its time to stop repeating the conferences that have long ceased to yield in proportion to the spend. Anyone monitoring the 'returns on investements'? Anyone taking stock of whether these dollars can be better invested?

I am not arguing in favour of or against the international conferences per se. I am however questioning whether they are designed to achieve concrete results. My services are on offer if at all required. Any congregation of people who are change agents or have the potential to be so, can only be good - but can we design these congregations with complete mindfulness that they be more than mere jamborees, that the design of the conferences display an acute awareness of the changes in the environment since the Conferences first started 20 years ago, that they truly add value?

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