My LinkedIn feed has been filling me with green-eyed envy because so many of my connections attended the International Back and Neck Pain Forum this past week in Davos, Switzerland.
The organizers got creative and held multiple parallel sessions of presentations while hiking trails in the Swiss Alps! From what I can tell, there were varied levels of difficulty and distance, and many ended at a restaurant or other scenic site.
A post from Sara Rubinelli on LinkedIn shows the incredible scenery enjoyed by attendees during the Alpine Adventure sessions of the International Back & Neck Pain Forum 2025.
I love the idea, but can’t help but wonder about the experience…
- How do you keep everyone together?
- Did the organizers consult risk
management?
- Were emergency services on stand by?
- How do attendees pick which session?1
- Could everyone hear?2
In one video I saw, the speaker was standing on a berm using his phone for notes. The audience were standing around and many had their phones out, presumably following along (slides? a PDF? webpage? slides as a webpage?).
Have you experienced a conference session like this?
I’ve heard of wilderness medicine and been to ultra running conferences all about science in the outdoors, but the closest we got was a practical session (blister care) outside the venue (and, of course, casual discussion during morning trail runs).
I really hope the IBNPF organizers report on the experiment.
What data would you collect beyond attendee satisfaction measures–total distance hiked, calories burned, average heart rate over time?
Variations on the movement
I shared these thoughts to the ScienceUX subreddit and got some other suggestions for ways to incorporate the hikes other than presentations-in-motion.
I particularly like the idea of post-talk sense making! Instead of everyone surrounding the speaker next to the podium for follow up questions, the speaker should get a 5-min head start and whoever catches her first gets to ask their questions. 🤣