Committees and organisation

Behind every FMC course, every forum and every oral communication session at JDP 2016 lie months of preparation. The programme was built by committed dermatologists together with the congress’s permanent team: reviewing abstracts, balancing themes, assembling sessions and coordinating speakers. This collective way of working has been the signature of the Paris Dermatology Days since they began.

The organising committee

The organising committee carries overall responsibility for the congress. It watches over the whole: choice of venue and rooms, the balance between scientific sessions and the exhibition, the quality of the welcome given to participants, relations with partners and exhibitors, and information for attendees before, during and after the event. It is the link between the French Society of Dermatology, which owns the scientific content, and the coordination team responsible for delivery.

The scientific committee

The scientific committee is responsible for content. Its work begins with the proposals received in response to the call for sessions and ends with publication of the final programme. In practice, it assesses projects for clinical and educational value, distributes topics across formats — FMC, forums, workshops — to avoid duplication, appoints moderators and checks the quality of abstracts. Oral communications and posters follow the same route: every piece of work is reviewed and ranked by experts in the relevant field.

A year’s work in five stages

1. The call for proposals opens a few months after the previous edition, with a firm submission deadline;
2. sessions are selected: the scientific committee reviews the proposals, sometimes asks for adjustments, and settles the framework of the programme;
3. the call for abstracts follows: teams submit their work, which is reviewed for oral communications and posters;
4. the interactive programme is assembled: times, rooms, abstracts and a speakers’ index are loaded into the consultation tool;
5. evaluation comes after the congress: feedback from participants, gathered through satisfaction surveys among other channels, shapes the next edition.

The bodies of the French Society of Dermatology

The JDP are the annual congress of the French Society of Dermatology. As such they sit within the governance of the learned society: the general assembly, the board and the bureau set the broad priorities — research, guidelines, education — which the congress then translates into its programme. Session chairs, FMC coordinators and abstract reviewers mostly come from these bodies or are appointed by them.

Thank you to the experts

Thanks are due here to everyone who gave their time: session coordinators, moderators, abstract reviewers, workshop leaders and prize jurors. Their standards are what built the JDP’s reputation among the 4,783 participants of the 2016 edition. This open system — anyone may propose a topic — is also a gateway for younger colleagues: residents and clinical fellows find in the JDP a supportive setting for a first presentation.

Would you like to contribute to the next edition? The call for FMC sessions, forums and workshops for JDP 2017 is open until 5 February 2017. To see how proposals become sessions, browse the 2016 scientific programme. And for anything about how the committees work, the secretariat will answer through the Contacts page.