So let's get on with it. It is very my extreme pleasure to introduce our immediate past president, Dr. Klaus Mergener to kick off the event today. He really doesn't need much of an introduction. He's done a great job during his presidency, really of getting fellows involved. That was one of his top priorities and he's done a great job at that. So Dr. Mergener, welcome and please let us go on. Thanks very much, Steve, for that kind introduction. It's very nice to be with you all from seemingly the parking lot of the IT&T Center here, but really from a basement in Seattle. I would want to add my welcome to Steve's remarks and also add that all of a sudden parking lots don't seem so bad anymore. I came back last night from the first, again, live performance at Seattle Opera, done open air in their loading dock, still appropriately socially distanced, but it was just an incredible experience to have a live tenor recital again and see each other. And I know that's what we've all been missing. Once again, we're sitting here looking at computer screens, but hopefully very soon we'll be able to see each other again in person. As Steve said, this fellows networking session is something ASG is doing every year at DDW and typically in a large hall with round tables and you go from table to table. What we're going to do today under Steve's leadership is to try to duplicate that experience as much as possible. So really, as was said, please be as involved as you wish and can in the discussions. Send your questions and I'm sure faculty will field them. The course organizers were careless enough to give me a few minutes of introductory remarks and I won't waste all of those 15 minutes. First of all, I have to say it's nice to look at my title slide and see the term past before president because for me that actually equates to about 80 fewer emails in my inbox every day ASGE related. So that part is good. What was very fun without the term past over the entire last year is despite the challenges we have all faced, it has just been not only an incredible honor, but also a great pleasure for me together with the entire ASGE team to focus on a number of new and critically important issues that we wanted to promote. And as Steve said, none of them were more important to me than to work on creating a comprehensive curriculum for you all, for the GI fellows. And I hope we got at least a few steps further. You are the core of ASGE, whether or not you recognize this, whether or not you've been active already within ASGE. You are not only of course the future of our specialty and our society, but we're really looking to you to become increasingly engaged and tell us, tell ASGE what you need from the organization. So I view this today, not as any other Saturday morning networking session, but hopefully for some of you and many of you as the next step and the increasing step in becoming more engaged. Let me just tell you a couple of minutes I alluded to last year and our focus on GI trainee issues. And I want to highlight a couple of things that might be of interest to you over the next few weeks and months, if you're not already graduating from your program. And even if you do, we, as I said, we have tried to pull together the elements that ASGE had already created for GI fellows into a comprehensive program. It starts, as some of you recall, very early on during the first year with our first year fellow courses. Many of you, I imagine, unfortunately, last year with the pandemic, weren't able to participate in these even virtually. I would ask you to please tell your incoming junior class, the next year of first year fellows about these courses. I imagine many of them, if not the vast majority, are aware of them. But if they don't, please make them aware. I think it's a perfect way to start your fellowship training year. But that is really, from our perspective, ASGE's perspective, only the beginning. We then have a comprehensive educational curriculum for you that takes you through the entire three years with the idea of complementing what you get locally in your own training programs. Last year, we added a new session. I created what we're calling Endo Hangouts. Dr. Amitabh Chak has been running them quite successfully, I think, if I look at attendee numbers. Those are meant to be clinical refreshers where you have the opportunity in this webinar format to dial in, to speak directly with experts in the field, and to learn from video-based case presentations. It's a very interactive platform. I would encourage you, when you see our emails come through about Endo Hangout announcements, to check them out. They have been archived. They are on GILeap, on our educational platform at asge.org. They are free. You can go to that platform. You can dial in. You can check them out. There are excellent topics on there already, and as I said, that series will continue in the coming year. Another element that might be of interest to you also on GILeap is a webinar module series we're calling InScope, which again is meant to provide clinical information that sort of follows up on first-year fellows elements and takes you throughout the increasing complexity of handling scopes of dealing with certain clinical topics. We created a new series that's just, as it says in the title, a chat for you. We call it the Fireside Chats. We conducted them weekly last year. They will now be monthly. There's a new installment next week on Wednesday. They will be every Wednesday night at 7 p.m. Central Time. It's an hour of an opportunity for you to dial in and essentially ask any question you want to ask, clinical or non-clinical, career-related, many of the topics that you'll hear about today every month with guests who are joining me to discuss issues that you want to see discussed. There's a whole, I won't bore you with the whole list of things that ASGE has in store for you. They're still not as nicely presented on our website as I would like to, and we're going to continue to work on this, but you can, with a little bit of searching, find all of them. If you don't, feel free to contact us, and we'd be happy to help. Our commitment to you, the GI Fellows, is 100%, and it is something that we take extremely serious. We appreciate your interest in our society. The second and last point I would like to make is to ask you to consider becoming involved with us. As I said at the beginning, hopefully you view this, if you haven't been very involved with ASGE before, as an initial step to become more involved. The ways you can do that are several fold. We have what we call a Fellows Caucus, which is an advisory group where you can join a committee-like structure relatively early on while you're still in your training, if you're so inclined. The way to do that is to indicate your interest by email to us, plenty of avenues. You can go to the website to find our general email address. You can email me directly at kmergener at asge.org, or any of the faculty. You will get a handout, I believe, during or at the end of the meeting with a lot of contact information. Please consider becoming involved. Indicate your interest. The Fellows Caucus is an initial opportunity for you. A subsequent opportunity then, of course, is to become involved in our committee structure, and there's an application process there as well. I'll finish up by saying and circling back to what Steve said at the beginning. If I had one advice for all of you while you're still going through your training, it is to focus now and start early on building your network. Your contact information, keep the contacts of all the faculty today, be in touch with them. You now have great access through your current training programs to your local faculty, but it's hard to believe, but that access goes away very quickly once you're done with your training. My ability to be able to speed dial faculty like Dr. Peterson, like Dr. Kjellman, like Dr. Schmidt, if I have any questions, that's priceless. That possibility is priceless, and that comes from being well-networked, and please consider starting that early. It's going to help you very much during your career. I look forward to the session today. The topics that you will be addressing are topics that we will also address more comprehensively in a senior fellows course, and you'll get some information about that course later after the program. It will occur on August 20 and 21st. It's a hybrid format. For the first time, some in-person component, yes, and it is a course specifically addressing non-clinical topics that will help you choose your best career path. With that, Steve, I appreciate the time, and I wish all of you a great next three hours. Thank you.

Dr. Klaus Mergener

ASGE

GI fellows

educational resources

professional network