Berlin ready to host 2010 'WOCtoberfest'

HONG KONG — Organizers are already polishing the program schedule for the World Ophthalmology Congress to be held in Berlin, June 5 to 9, 2010, which they have dubbed "WOCtoberfest," according to the meeting's leadership. The plan for the congress has been coming together for a long time.

"We actually started preparing for this since we submitted our bid in 2001, and then it was accepted in 2002, so it is a long story," scientific program director Gabriele E. Lang, MD, told Ocular Surgery News.

"Germany had the World Ophthalmology Congress the first time in 1888 in Heidelberg, 1966 in Munich and now 2010 in Berlin, so it seems to come to Germany once per century, and we thought it was about time to bring it back to Germany," added Congress President Gerhard K. Lang, MD, and husband of Gabriele E. Lang, MD.

"The location is Berlin, where we have the new architecture and the old fighting for recognition," he said. "So it's the ideal location as it sits centrally in Europe and is also the gateway to the eastern part of Europe."

Prof. Dr. med. Gerhard Lang said the WOCtoberfest theme should be a perfect fit for the size of the meeting.

"If you look at it from the outside, the Bavarian lifestyle and identity is something which is well-known all over the world. Socially, it's a good way to host a few thousand people. You can't have a sit-down dinner for that many people, but you can have an Oktoberfest, Bavarian setting with the music and the food and the beer and the people. It will be the highlight of this congress," he said.

The program is coming together in a significant way, and it will feature instructional course programs for the first time.

"We will have an instructional course program, which has not been on the program in São Paulo or Hong Kong," he said.

"We have found that people in eastern Europe are very interested in courses, and we expect to have a very high number of eastern European doctors attending," Dr. Gabriele Lang said.

"There will be only one program for this meeting, and the two German-speaking sessions have already been planned and will be updated, of course, over the next 2 years," she said. "There are a few things on the horizon, but the speakers and the topics have

already been planned, and we will now move quickly with the international program."