The following transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hello, and welcome to Montreal. I’m Geoffrey G. Emerson, MD, PhD, FASRS, president of the American Society of Retina Specialists. It's great that people are here. It's a wonderful city, great venue, and the scientific program's amazing. It's actually our biggest meeting ever.

I’ve been president of ASRS this year, and it's been the best year of my professional life. It's really exciting. It's fun to be a retina specialist, but also fun to advocate for my profession. And it's exciting times because the world of retina is changing—changing scientifically, but also changing business-wise.

The meeting this year is really heavily into surgery and also the new medications and therapeutics that are coming out. I also like the social events at night. We’ve got the opening reception down on the river. There’s also a closing reception in Old Montreal. Both are fantastic events. And then a lot going on around town. There’s the international fireworks competition, which should be amazing.

Being the president of ASRS is a pretty busy time, but the person who really runs the meeting is the program director. That’s Audina M. “Nina” Berrocal, MD, FASRS. And working with Nina has really been a lot of fun.

We run ASRS as a team. It’s a team of 8 people on the executive committee. This is sort of a ladder as you go from the beginning to the president, but you learn along the way. You’re the treasurer for a while, secretary, program director, vice president. And we work closely with [ASRS chief executive officer] Jill Blim. Jill is the piece that basically holds ASRS together and keeps track of all these details. And she’s the one who’s the 24/7 go-between for the members and the organization.

I’m excited to be here. I think it’s going to be a great 4 days and I hope my other friends and colleagues who are here are going to have a great time. RP