This September, your HDBuzz editors Jeff Carroll and Ed Wild will be teaming up with Emmy award-winning broadcaster Charles Sabine to bring you ‘Oz Buzz’ - the hottest science news from the World Congress on Huntington’s Disease in Melbourne, Australia - September 11-14, 2011.

The World Congress on Huntington’s Disease

The World Congress on Huntington’s Disease is the biggest regular meeting of people with Huntington’s disease, people at risk, family members, friends, carers, scientists and health professionals.

It’s a unique opportunity for the global Huntington’s disease community to come together and for people to learn from each other.

For HD-affected people, it’s a great opportunity to hear directly about the latest progress towards treatments for HD, to meet scientists who are working on HD, and to find out what’s working, what’s not and what might be around the corner. Chat to your favorite researcher and thank them - or tell them to hurry up!

For scientists and care professionals, it’s a valuable time to get to know HD family members and hear about their lives. It is so motivating, for a scientist who may spend all day looking down a microscope, to meet the people his or her work is trying to help.

The World Congress is held every two years. This year’s is in Melbourne, Australia - at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. It’s the first time the World Congress has been held outside Europe and America.

The Congress begins on Sunday 11th September 2011 and ends on Wednesday 14th September.

Registration is open via the World Congress website at http://worldcongress-hd2011.org/. Family members get a discounted registration price of 320 Australian dollars (about 240 US dollars, 240 Euros or 210 British pounds).

HDBuzz has seen a sneak preview of the Congress timetable and we’re really excited at the quality and diversity of speakers and poster presentations.

Our advice - beg, borrow or steal to get to Melbourne in September.

Announcing … Oz Buzz!

We’re excited to announce that your HDBuzz editors-in-chief, Jeff Carroll and Ed Wild, will be presenting a nightly feature at the World Congress - which we’re calling Oz Buzz.

Oz Buzz will bring you all the hottest science news of the World Congress, with the HDBuzz ethos: the latest research news - brought to you by scientists - in plain language - for the global HD community.

We’ll be joined by our friend, Emmy award-winning broadcaster and former NBC News anchor, Charles Sabine. Charles will be hosting the Oz Buzz feature, and making sure Jeff and Ed stay on track without lapsing into jargon and science-speak.

You might be familiar with the ‘triplet repeat’ of Charles, Ed and Jeff, from their popular ‘Evening News’ presentations at the 2009 World Congress in Vancouver and the 2010 Euro-HD Meeting in Prague. You can watch videos of those ‘Evening News’ slots online.

What’s new about Oz Buzz?

With Oz Buzz, we aim to build on the success of our previous ‘Evening News’ features, while unveiling a new format that will allow us to delve a bit deeper into the most exciting science from the Congress.

Of course, not everyone can make it to Melbourne. So we want to emphasize the truly global nature of the 2011 World Congress, by using internet and social media technology to connect with the hundreds of thousands of HD-affected people around the globe.

We don’t want to give away too much just yet - but look forward to:

• Twitter science updates from the Congress in real time

• Live interviews, in plain language with the top scientists and clinicians

• Online interactive text and video Q & A sessions

• Real time video feeds of Oz Buzz

• Special guests

Watch this space

Closer to September, we’ll post instructions for how you can interact with the World Congress via Oz Buzz.

In the meantime, to catch our live science updates from Melbourne, sign up to our Twitter feed by following HDBuzzFeed.

And don’t forget to head over to http://worldcongress-hd2011.org/, where you can check out the program and register to attend.

We hope to see you in Oz!

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