ÿþ<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>Comment Summary</title><link media="all" href="css/Export.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /></head><body style="margin-left: 15px; margin-right: 15px; margin-top: 15px"><a onfocus="blur();" href="SurveySummary.html" class="NormBtn" />&nbsp;<< Back to Summary&nbsp;</a><div style="margin-top: 15px"><table class="rsltsmry" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0" border="0"><thead><tr><th class="hdr" colspan="3">Any other comments, suggestions, observations, or criticisms? We remind you that this survey is completely anonymous.</th></tr></thead><thead><tr><th class="hdr dflt">#</th><th class="hdr dflt">Response Date</th><th class="hdr dflt" style="width:99%;">Response Text</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 2:03:00 PM</td><td>a realy fantastic summer school!!! You did a great job!!! but, not enough computers for the hands-on-workshops.</td></tr><tr><td>2.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 2:10:00 PM</td><td>unfortunately there was no student lectures session, which might contribute to students significantly</td></tr><tr><td>3.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 2:21:00 PM</td><td>Perhaps shorten the meeting to 1 week. Chairs in the lecture theatre are rather uncomfortable, especially for those like me with a bad back.</td></tr><tr><td>4.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 2:40:00 PM</td><td>Why don't you focus more on techniques rather than specific examples?</td></tr><tr><td>5.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 3:02:00 PM</td><td>THere was a bit too much time spent on workshops. Also some of the general lectures were a bit too simple, even for PhD students in the field</td></tr><tr><td>6.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 4:43:00 PM</td><td>For poster session I would better prefer if instead of short poster introduction times (60-90 sec) for everyone, there would be 2-3 best posters selected for presentation of about 5-7 min+discussion. Also it would be more useful if posters could be observed for more than one day, because poster presenters were mostly able to see only half of the posters.</td></tr><tr><td>7.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 5:50:00 PM</td><td>Small remark on housing: Some rooms in San Francesco do not have functional shower cabin - there is no shower curtain, this causes daily flooding of the bathroom.</td></tr><tr><td>8.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 6:04:00 PM</td><td>The place is incredibly fantastic. I'm not spreading the word - if many people knew about it, the competition would be impossible :) THANK YOU!!!</td></tr><tr><td>9.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 6:26:00 PM</td><td>While it is important to get the students to participate, it somewhat curtailed discussion to focus only on the students.</td></tr><tr><td>10.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 6:26:00 PM</td><td>While it is important to get the students to participate, it somewhat curtailed discussion to focus only on the students.</td></tr><tr><td>11.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 7:41:00 PM</td><td>It was a great and successful meeting.</td></tr><tr><td>12.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 8:52:00 PM</td><td>better maps of Erice shall be distributed Please avoid give long list of successive drugs tested without giving even the name of the target (occurred friday afternoon). When describing drug developement story, quality of information is more important than quantity. Too much information kills information.</td></tr><tr><td>13.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 8:59:00 PM</td><td>Since restaurants were too slow in serving us, lunch time was a little short. Probably the afternoon session could have been delayed 30 minutes in order to start the tutorials in time. Posters were very interesting and I wish I had more time to visit all of them. It would be very nice to have time to look at posters before the sessions. It's a pity that the group photograph is of a poor quality. Apart from that, the meeting was brilliant: the organizers managed to solve all our problems in the quickest and most efficient way.</td></tr><tr><td>14.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 9:04:00 PM</td><td>I don't like the food.</td></tr><tr><td>15.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 9:09:00 PM</td><td>Some of the lectures were presented in a report manner, instead of providing some hints and methods to the problems. The best speakers were: Blundell, Klebe, Bergfors, Cruciani (one or two may be missed). The official info about the possibility of baggage lost (especially on the Rome airport) could help people in proper packing. Some workshops failed. People do not want to follow blankly instructions but also need to know what for they are doing it. Computer facilities did not meet the needs of participants.</td></tr><tr><td>16.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 10:14:00 PM</td><td>Great job! i will attend for sure next time</td></tr><tr><td>17.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/6/2008 10:48:00 PM</td><td>It was important to have more time to do workshop session, because something of these were difficult to comprehend in one only session of 2 hours.</td></tr><tr><td>18.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/7/2008 7:34:00 AM</td><td>Perhaps there should be an opportunity for a small number of outstanding students (maybe 3) to give talks. This would be a good feature especially if their results are interesting and they can teach something useful to the younger students. Keep in mind I really think the current course was excellent, and I would not change it much if at all. Thank you.</td></tr><tr><td>19.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/7/2008 9:06:00 AM</td><td>I heard from poster presenters that they would have liked to be able to view others' posters in the same session but I am not sure how to suggest that this could be made possible. This has been the best technically, scientifically, socially and fun meeting I have attended in 6 years since starting to attend these meetings and, as a supplier, I go to many of them. Bravo!</td></tr><tr><td>20.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/7/2008 9:10:00 AM</td><td>The workshop rooms were not entirely ideal (small and noisy) but I would prefer to be in Erice with this limitation than in a modern facility with ideal rooms!</td></tr><tr><td>21.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/7/2008 11:55:00 AM</td><td>A very good aspect was the fact that almost all lecturers left good time for discussion - and the participation by younger scientists was excellent. The relaxed pace and time for meeting socially was very important.</td></tr><tr><td>22.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/7/2008 5:27:00 PM</td><td>The meeting is (for the moment) the best that I attend, and I think it will be difficult to find better! I think 10 days is the maximum for this meeting. The presence of the industrials are very important: keep this ! Please give us more time for the poster session (I can't see the posters of my session). Or allow the possibility to keep the poster more time in St Francisco. Thanks for all!!!!</td></tr><tr><td>23.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/7/2008 5:58:00 PM</td><td>Page numbers for Speaker abstracts in the programme at the start of the abstract book.</td></tr><tr><td>24.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/8/2008 7:16:00 AM</td><td>Very interesting workshops, but impossibility to attend all/almost all of them. Presentation time too long, 30/40 minutes each would be better to keep up attention. Service at the restaurants was generally too slow.</td></tr><tr><td>25.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/8/2008 8:06:00 AM</td><td>My congratulations especially to Lodovico and Paola for the special atmosphere (maintained over 40 meetings), to John for the computational infrastructure, and to Colin, Neera, Joel and Tom for the scientific quality.</td></tr><tr><td>26.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/8/2008 7:12:00 PM</td><td>Organisation was excellent. sessions were mostly of high quality (with a few exceptions). Posters of very good quality but time to short. Number and length of talks very good, selection of topics as well. Housing very convenient (La pineta)</td></tr><tr><td>27.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/8/2008 11:35:00 PM</td><td>More comments follow here: 3) Book of abstract may be improved. I found it difficult to find anything in it. There are at least two reasons: - missing contributions shuffled order of speakers. I understand that not all the speakers sent their contributions ahead of time; Maybe empty pages (with a foto) should be inserted as it was done in the case of missing posters? - all the pages were looking the same and contributions were quite long. Thus it was not easy to find say 16-th talk. The easiest thing that may be done is to insert a color page separating talks from posters. This alone will be a great help. Now e.g. looking for the third-last speaker is a disaster. The idea could be extended further, e.g color dividing page separating each day, color mark on every page - same color for same day, etc. Moreover the book was difficult to handle: to thick in comparison to its format. Maybe it could be done as a spiral A4? 4) Restaurants. Quality of food was random, even in the same restaurant. I visited Ulisse twice, Elimo 3 times, Venus 3 times, Ermione once. Only the quality of pizza in in Venus was always the same and always perfect. The worst thing was the quality of service - always slow. Once it happened that we (around 10 people) didn't have enough time to have dessert. This is not correlated with the number of people in the restaurant. In Ermione I was the only customer and still I had to remind about a dessert, otherwise I certainly wouldn't get it. Did the restaurant try to save some money this way?</td></tr><tr><td>28.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/9/2008 7:01:00 AM</td><td>Great idea to have them in the afternoon and lectures in the morning.</td></tr><tr><td>29.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/9/2008 8:43:00 AM</td><td>Excellent meeting! Would come again.</td></tr><tr><td>30.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/9/2008 9:27:00 AM</td><td>- you forget the CCP4 workshop which was really nice - erice needs a place were people can do noise late in the night - the sound in the conference room should be improved (larsen) - very positive: the email list / the group photo / food / animation / friendship</td></tr><tr><td>31.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/9/2008 9:30:00 AM</td><td>A meeting which keeps us busy, entertained and emersed in the Erice spirit! Please keep organizing meetings like this!! It is worthwhile to go to the top of the world to attend it!</td></tr><tr><td>32.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/9/2008 9:31:00 AM</td><td>I was struck by the absence of Chinese and Japanese nationals and the presence of only one Indian national. Was the conference adequately advertised in those areas?</td></tr><tr><td>33.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/9/2008 10:52:00 AM</td><td>Give an official sertificate to the participants: &amp;quot;attended ....international school on...&amp;quot;</td></tr><tr><td>34.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/9/2008 12:37:00 PM</td><td>just a very small comment on the Feynmann lecture room (I had the CCP4 workshop there). The accoustic was quite poor, a few curtains along the wall would probably help a lot. Great course! I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot.</td></tr><tr><td>35.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/9/2008 12:43:00 PM</td><td>The meetimg is a little bit extended. Maybe 7 or 8 days length is sufficient for the meeting.</td></tr><tr><td>36.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/9/2008 12:50:00 PM</td><td>The meeting was wonderful. Erice will always remain deep in my heart.</td></tr><tr><td>37.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/9/2008 3:29:00 PM</td><td>Completely unrelated to science, and one and only complaint, but I think that the quality of food in the local restaurants has gone way down in the past few years. Other than that.....way to go PS: I did not partecipate in the workshops, so my evaluation does not count, but I could not proceed unless I put a number to queston 12 ;-)</td></tr><tr><td>38.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/9/2008 7:09:00 PM</td><td>the food in restaurants was almost everywhere the same there was no paper / plastic garbage separation</td></tr><tr><td>39.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/9/2008 9:17:00 PM</td><td>Surprisingly, I like better the watch me workshops I took (CCDC and DMPK) than the hands on (CCP4). In the hands on CCP4 I felt like I didn't learn from the experts, and I just followed a online tutorial, as I could have done at home. In the watch me workshops I could get a better overview about the programs.</td></tr><tr><td>40.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/10/2008 9:38:00 AM</td><td>More time for a discussion/questions after the lectures would be good.</td></tr><tr><td>41.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/10/2008 10:00:00 AM</td><td>Lectures were too long. 45 min would be enough. No need for 1 min poster presentations. Workshops should be at the and of the day between (17)18 and 20.</td></tr><tr><td>42.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/10/2008 11:07:00 AM</td><td>The lecturers need to be reminded that this is a workshop and not a conference, there are many nationalities present, most of whom do not have English as the first language. There is also a very wide spread of subject expertise. Lecturers should be encouraged to spend at least ten /fifteen minutes on the basics of their subject, and not treat it as a research seminar trying to cram in as many recent results as possible. They are there to teach and should take it slowly and clearly.</td></tr><tr><td>43.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/10/2008 11:44:00 AM</td><td>Workshops were useful, but hands-on not really necessary for me. I would have attend to more Show-me + discussions type workshop. Thanks guys, great work</td></tr><tr><td>44.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/10/2008 4:00:00 PM</td><td>Thank you very much</td></tr><tr><td>45.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/11/2008 4:01:00 PM</td><td>(Concerning issue 11: 0 means not attended!) excellent workshop, absolutely recommendable. Thank you very much for the great organisation!</td></tr><tr><td>46.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/11/2008 6:46:00 PM</td><td>The free time was too limited.So it was difficult for me to find time to repeat things that I have learnt at workshops.Except this everything was perfect. Thank you so much for everyth1ng.</td></tr><tr><td>47.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/11/2008 9:51:00 PM</td><td>I didn't go to workshops so I didn't evaluate them. A colleague at lunch suggested we have a survey to rank the several restaurants, with winners getting special notice, a prize perhaps, the following year.</td></tr><tr><td>48.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/12/2008 7:45:00 AM</td><td>Everything was well orginized thanks for all opportunities but after the workshops we needed to have more time to practice that we learned and ask the questions about that we study.</td></tr><tr><td>49.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/12/2008 10:10:00 AM</td><td>The meeting is too long.</td></tr><tr><td>50.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/12/2008 10:49:00 AM</td><td>Alberto did not let sitting in the upper floor despite the overcrowding in the main hall.</td></tr><tr><td>51.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/12/2008 11:15:00 AM</td><td>Maybe give more time to the workshops so students could get more practical information and more than just a brief presentation.</td></tr><tr><td>52.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/12/2008 12:04:00 PM</td><td>Everything was well organized and the meeting went quite well in almost all aspects. The one comment would be that it was unfortunate to have the posters up for such a short time since it made it difficult to see other peoples work most of all if you also had a poster the same night. Simply by leaving them up another night would have made it possible to at least see the poster and then contact the author during free-time. Another comment would be that the industrial presentations were taken heavily by global pharmaceutical companies rather than from some of the smaller companies. So, it may have given a distorted view of industry to the younger generation.</td></tr><tr><td>53.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/12/2008 12:09:00 PM</td><td>Excellent meeting with a wide spectrum of topics. Although in my own research I am not using any drug-design or drug-discovery techniques (yet), I found the lectures very informative and accessible. Small point of criticism: it would be better to have a longer display of posters, maybe at another location (?). Now it was impossible to look at and discuss posters during the session in which I had to present my own poster. Other point: the registration to the workshops was quite confusing: I think it would be better to ask participants before they come to Erice for their preferences, and use this for making a scheme prior to the meeting.</td></tr><tr><td>54.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/12/2008 12:15:00 PM</td><td>I really enjoyed the meeting. I all ready miss the people I got to know. Ludoviko's songs was just great, but I't was a little bit sad that the marsala room closed at 24 every night. The orange scarfed staff did a fantastic job and was very helpful. Thank you for a nice meeting</td></tr><tr><td>55.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/12/2008 3:18:00 PM</td><td>About shortening the presentation sessions and adding some more discussion panels. About a third type of Marsala ?</td></tr><tr><td>56.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/12/2008 3:41:00 PM</td><td>Reduce to 7 days, could have more intensive lecture timing and cut the more &amp;quot;history&amp;quot; talks. Focus on those teching concepts and importantly with real case stories form drug design.</td></tr><tr><td>57.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/12/2008 5:14:00 PM</td><td>Maybe finishing at 3 or 4pm one day in the middle of the conference, and having nothing organised for that evening. This would allow participants to rest a little. This maybe only me though, but i found it very tiring.</td></tr><tr><td>58.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/12/2008 5:27:00 PM</td><td>A married speaker got drunk and overly aggressive with an attractive girl half his age at the marsala and it really looked bad. Im just a student but someone should really stop that from happening. After seeing that happen, I really didnt want to go to marsala anymore.</td></tr><tr><td>59.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/13/2008 1:19:00 AM</td><td>I understand the organizers were a little disappointed that some well-known speakers did not attend. I think it is nice to hear other speakers, younger people or scientists in industry, who do not often have the chance to speak. The best speakers are by no means the most famous, and the better-known lecturers in Erice did not necessarily give the best talks.</td></tr><tr><td>60.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/13/2008 12:16:00 PM</td><td>Local Arrangements - The only (minor) suggestions regarding the local arrangements are (1) as it was difficult to find a restaurant for lunch on Sunday due to all the tourists, it might be a good time for a group lunch? (2) it would nice to have wine and/or beer at the poster sessions to stimulate disscussions, (3) the poster sessions were too short. Can we keep the posters up for several days? Program - Unfortunately, many of the talks were not geared to the audience (many students) or topic (drug design). The organizers should have been more demanding that the lecturers give talks designed specifically for the course rather than their canned presentations. A set of talks at the beginning giving an overview of the drug design process would have been helpful.</td></tr><tr><td>61.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/13/2008 1:54:00 PM</td><td>Super meeting</td></tr><tr><td>62.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/13/2008 3:54:00 PM</td><td>1. This was one of the best (if not the best) meeting I ever been. Please continue like now!!! 2. CCP4 workshop should be improved. 3. Next time, rubies for all participants!!!</td></tr><tr><td>63.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/14/2008 4:32:00 PM</td><td>My only complaint is that the conference is a bit long - I was very exhausted by the end. Also, I would have preferred more methods lectures like the proteopedia one rather than the ones that focussed on peoples results.</td></tr><tr><td>64.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/14/2008 9:55:00 PM</td><td>Overall it's a terrific meeting, and I thought that the local/technical organizers especially did an outstanding job. I thought that the actual talks were sometimes of mixed quality. Some were outstanding while others were hard to follow or not really at the very top of the field, as I would expect them to be. Of course that still left many that really were at the cutting edge. Perhaps this reflects the &amp;quot;school&amp;quot; nature of the meeting, and the fact that it is not, after all, a Gordon conference. My own view is that students will learn when presented with the latest-and-the-greatest that a field has to offer, even if at first they must work hard to keep pace. Finally, there seems to be a preference at the conference for students who are from disadvantaged institutions. It seems to me that there were few students from the really great research Universities. Why is that?</td></tr><tr><td>65.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/15/2008 4:38:00 PM</td><td>Sleeping accommodations were extremely noisy, both in hotel Ermione and in San Francesco. It was difficult to get enough sleep. The acoustics in the upstairs workshop rooms are terrible -- so bad that it was difficult to understand the speakers. You should install echo damping material on the walls.</td></tr><tr><td>66.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/16/2008 2:00:00 AM</td><td>I understand that the course was on crystallography and drug design but felt that some elements were repetitive. A broader look at the field of crystallography OR a broader look at the field of drug design would have been helpful, encompassing where these fields are heading, new technologies, alternate approaches. Maybe even some input from chemists, or NMR-ists, modellers etc. The talk on cryo EM provided a valuable example of adding soem breadth to the field and the complementarity between different approaches. How crystallography could be used for vaccine design or even a talk on how unknown targets are identified for established medicines (e.g. aspirin) would have been interesting. The quality of the workshops was also variable and some seemed pitched at too basic a level. Those attended (see above) did not expand upon the basic set of tools in my repertoire. I have some basic knowledge of crystallisation, seeding, data collection and molecular replacement. How to deal with more challenging crystals, more challenging datasets, could have been useful.</td></tr><tr><td>67.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/16/2008 10:12:00 AM</td><td>Everything was ..perfect! Thank you!</td></tr><tr><td>68.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/17/2008 3:40:00 PM</td><td>I was in Erice in 2002, and now again in 2008. I can only summarize that, even if this is difficult to achieve, you have improved on the overall scientific quality of the meeting, on the facilities, on the workshops, on the social activities, etc., with respect to the 2002 meeting! Thank you all the organizers and the orange scarves for such a wonderful meeting!</td></tr><tr><td>69.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/17/2008 3:41:00 PM</td><td>I was in Erice in 2002, and now again in 2008. I can only summarize that, even if this is difficult to achieve, you have improved on the overall scientific quality of the meeting, on the facilities, on the workshops, on the social activities, etc., with respect to the 2002 meeting! Thank you all the organizers and the orange scarves for such a wonderful meeting!</td></tr><tr><td>70.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/19/2008 3:48:00 PM</td><td>I would like to have had all the hand-outs of all the lectures, but I still hope to get it in the final book. Still, it would have been great to have it during all the lectures.</td></tr><tr><td>71.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/22/2008 11:54:00 AM</td><td>If there is anyway to organize the meeting to be of somewhat shorter period, I think this would be good. Currently it is one of the longest workshop/schools that I know. I realize that there are constraints due to Erice organization, in general, but this is a suggestion to consider.</td></tr><tr><td>72.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/24/2008 4:39:00 PM</td><td>The matresses at S. Rocco need renovation</td></tr><tr><td>73.</td><td style="white-space:nowrap;">6/25/2008 6:50:00 PM</td><td>Overall the experience has been amazing! Lot of information was gained, but in a well optimized way, so that it was never too overwhelming. The chance to interact with people from different fields, experts (well balanced from academia and Industry) has been extreemely usefull. Moreover it gives a chance to explore so many different culture, people, ideas to broaden ones perspectives! I will always cherish the memories from Erice and love to come back again in future.</td></tr></tbody></table></div></body></html>