During her keynote address to the 15th World Conference on Tobacco Or Health, WHO head Margaret Chan put her own spin on the classic Virginia slims campaign, “you’ve come a long way, baby” – reminding the tobacco industry that “we’ve come a long way, bullies” since the iconic ad campaign to hook women on cigarettes. Chan also rallied the large crowd of 2600 delegates, urging them to not take bullying from the industry lying down. The scene has been set for a conference with a strong theme of pulling together to battle tobacco industry interference in implementing effective tobacco control.

This is the first world conference where delegates will be Tweeting their impressions and thoughts on the proceedings #wctoh12. I will be highlighting a selection of these tweets on the blog daily. Social media has been getting a lot of attention so far at the conference, this is a hugely positive change from India three years ago, where my presentation on new media had to be included as part of a session on sport sponsorship as it didn’t fit elsewhere.

Tell us about your goal for the conference -what do you hope to achieve? Some initial thoughts from other delegates: