The educational goal of the CDA annual meeting is to provide the dermatologist with the most up-to-date information regarding the diagnosis and treatment of skin diseases. In order to achieve this goal, we have reviewed your comments on the last CDA meeting and have tried to determine specific objectives for the Montréal 2000 meeting. Your evaluations told us that invited keynote speakers were appreciated and given top marks with regard to presentation and relevance to practice. You told us you wanted more time for questions after each talk, so as to provide interaction and sharing of knowledge. Many of you also told us that handouts were essential to summarize key points and conclusions. You wanted less anecdotal therapy talk and more supportive data, more small interactive sessions, the return of mini-case presentations and a focus on dermatologic surgery.

We have tried to incorporate your comments and suggestions in the Montréal 2000 meeting. We have invited world-renowned keynote speakers, such as Dr. Bernard Ackerman, to address the plenary session on medical education. All registered members are invited to attend the sub-specialty meetings, and each of these will have specific objectives. The surgical session will focus on basic office surgery, flaps and grafts, including live demonstrations. The pediatric group will focus on interesting and educational case presentations from its members, and the contact dermatitis group will present the latest updates on skin allergy, including a presentation by Professor An Goossens on allergy to topical steroids. We will also include a wound healing session, where the latest material and techniques will be demonstrated and compared.

Finally, on the last morning, we have organized small group interactive workshops on very specific topics, where delegates can learn new injection techniques in dermatology, how to run a patch test clinic.

In summary, we have tried to structure the meeting to provide specific learning situations based on assessments from the last meeting. Objectives will be provided for each session so that key learning points are emphasized. All that is needed is your active participation, and we will achieve our goal of providing you with the best and latest information in dermatology.