It is my honor to be a course director for this course. My name is Vani Konda. I'm from Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. And my co-director, needs no introduction, Dr. Prateek Sharma. We are so excited to be joined with an all-star faculty. I can't tell you how excited I am to learn from them. We have experts from all over the country to share their pearls with us on esophagology. And I want a special thank you for all of you who are taking time to spend this weekend with us. Both our in-person audience who's here with us today, as well as our virtual audience who is logging on and will be joining us virtually. Just as a reminder to the virtual audience, please feel free to pose any questions in the Q&A section of the Zoom. And I will be chiming in, in person, to convey those questions with the Q&A, through the questions that you add in the Q&A. And with that, I'm going to pass it on over to Dr. Sharma. Okay, thanks very much, Vani. Again, thanks to Vani for really on the hands-on. You know, she's been working really hard in making sure that tomorrow you guys get a very good look at different techniques. And in fact, we'll have for the virtual audience, we'll also have a virtual hands-on station that they'll have the ability sitting at their homes to be able to get, not the real hands-on, but at least see what the experts are doing with that. Here's our faculty. I think you'll see them sitting on this side of the auditorium and get an opportunity to meet them and talk to them during the breaks as well. So you can see a really diverse faculty, again, from all over. You know, the conflicts of interest are there for each of the speakers have been listed. They're available online. They will be mentioned during their talks as well. And the ASGE does have a very strict conflict of interest policy, which, you know, we all adhere to. So that's important for us as well. Again, these courses, again, back live or even when over the last few years they've been virtual, we've had a lot of support from our sponsors and they're listed here. So again, please take some time to spend and say, recognize them and go to their booths. And this support is provided by Apollo Endosurgery, Boston Scientific, ConMed, Cook Medical, EGS, Irby, Medtronic, Microtech, Ovesco, and Steris. And a lot of these vendors will be providing their sort of in-kind support also in terms of the hands-on sessions tomorrow. So feel free to use different types of, you know, whether they are clips or kits for EMR, et cetera. So you'll be able to do that as well. Now ASGE has again taken the lead on DEI and what you will see throughout, not just at this course, but at all our courses, including at DDW, our commitment to diversity, equality, and inclusiveness. So that's something hopefully all of you are doing it at your homes as well, as well as your workplace. Now what you will see on your badges is that you have a different dot, okay, for all the attendees. And it's not good or bad if you have a red or a blue, so don't get too concerned about it. It's just to tell you which group you are in, because tomorrow what we'll be doing is half of you will be in the auditorium for cases. The other half will go to the hands-on session. And then we'll flip. And that's what the dot is there for. So that please follow that, because we've actually had just sufficient number of folks at the hands-on station. So if there are too many of you who end up going there, then you may not get your chance to practice or do the hands-on. So that's critical that you follow the red dot or the blue dot. And if you don't like either color of the dot, come see us. There's not a whole lot we can do about it. We'll let you know which color it is. These are the hands-on session. Those of you who've been here multiple times know where to go through it. So it's the Bioskills Lab. And you go through your respective sort of restrooms. And that leads into the locker area, the changing rooms, where you can put on gowns, change into scrubs. And also for the faculty, it will be the same thing. But again, as Vani mentioned, I think our faculty have been here multiple times and know what to do. Food and drinks are not allowed there. So again, you've seen where breakfast was and where the drinks are. So please be cognizant of that and not taking them here. Vani already mentioned about the Q&A for the virtual audience. So again, my hello to the virtual audience. And please keep those questions coming. And Vani will be tracking those and feeding them to our moderators. So for the moderators also, if Vani's waving or making some signals, it's not to say hi, but to tell you what the next question is. So be cognizant of that as well. And in the chat, or don't use the chat function, but use the Q&A function for those of you who are on virtually. So I think that's it for the do's and don'ts. So again, thanks all for being here and hope you have a wonderful time at the IT&T Center as we are gradually reopening post-COVID and taking a few steps at a time. With that, it's my pleasure to open session one. And the moderators are Shivangi and Arvind. So if I can have both of you up here, you can use the chairs and the table. And then what we will do for the speakers is after the speakers are done, after that we'll have a panel discussion at the end for the in-person audience. Of course, you don't have to put your questions in the chat box. You can ask them directly at the end when we have the panel discussion. So Arvind and Shivangi, welcome to both of you. Thank you for being here with us. And we look forward to a great first session. Thanks.

esophagology

virtual audience

Q&A section

sponsors

hands-on session