MICROBE 2018 - A moment to appreciate Art, Anecdotes, Imagination and Stress Poop...

Taking a brief break to appreciate the imaginative and artistic side of the ASM General meeting...

1990s-esk Viewmaster! 

The vendors were out in full force with creative ways of drawing in the crowd including video games where you shoot microbes, lots of spin the wheels, scavenger hunts followed by a claw game and of course throw backs to the childhoods of many of the attendees such as Karius...

There were plenty of buttons to collect throughout the conference as you made your way through the exhibition hall listening to poster talks, viewing posters and perusing vendors. You could easily establish your pen collection for the next year and giant microbes are always a staple in many of the vendor give aways (red blood cell via Eppendorf) and Chicken Pox via ATCC.

In the world of art both Trilobite Glassworks and Artologica were in attendance as well.

HIV magnet - Trilobite Glassworks

ComputerPhage - Trilobite Glassworks.
Also featured, several stickers courtesy of
ASM and other vendor booths

The computerphage by Trilobite Glassworks was made almost entirely of computer parts salvaged by her husband. Given my husband is a software engineer I thought he'd get a kick out of that.

Johnny Chang - ever so popular ASM graphic artist was on high demand this year with attendees, including myself waiting on average 45 minutes for one of his creations on a button. Since my current work features Methanobrevibacter I showed him the following stock image and asked him to create his rendition of it...

https://bio203july2014.wikispaces.com/Methanobrevibacter+smithii

Well done Johnny!

Agar art was also on display.. with an article written in May about the 4th Annual Agar Art Contest put on by ASM.

For links to more microbial artists - check out Vincent Racaniello's Blog tag 'art'

Other notables included:

The Wall of Resistance!

ASM Cookies!

Love this sketch of DNA; ASM exhibit

The fact I can 'train' for a half marathon and attend a national conference in my field
just by walking between sessions and events!

And of course scientists - between writing, reviewing, drawing up experimental designs, applying for grant money, if you are an academic - the search for that ever elusive tenure track position; we encounter a lot of stress in the field and for that our vendors have us covered...

Stress Einstein

Stress Poop

You just never know what you are going to find at these meetings...