Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Best of convention hopping
After a whirlwind of conventions, it's time to head back to the office. But, before I go, a few non-clinical highlights:
Most unusual swag: It looks like a highlighter, but one end is a hand sanitizer spray, and the other is lip balm.
Rudest attendee: Raised his hand in the MIDDLE of a session and said, "I don't mean to be rude, but this is a little boring."
Strangest group psychology: the outsized appeal of free food. It's not as if any conference attendees would have trouble affording a couple of bucks for a snack. In fact, many of us are on expense accounts. But throw out a tray of muffins or a case of soda and we're stuffing our pockets like a horde of street urchins.
Weirdest souvenir: The ACR daily paper encouraged attendees to purchase a "Rodman Commemorative Gout Print." Your guess is as good as mine.
Strangest wardrobe: It may have related to the high percentage of foreign attendees, but spotted at ACR were a mullet, a pink fringed suit, and a study author's top so sparkly it could have blinded a cameraman.
Marketing gone wildest: In a montage promoting MGMA 2009, screen faded from e=mc2 to DEN=mc2, to DENVER. Hunh?
Most mysterious session title: Indian Hedgehog and Parathyroid Hormone-related Protein Regulate Articular Chondrocyte Differentiation.
Labels: MGMA conference, rheumatology
posted by Stacey Butterfield at
8:00 AM
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2 Comments:
Sounds tame compared to a heme or onc meeting. I stopped going to the exhibition hall, since it's mostly a waste of time. The most interesting vendors are on the outskirts of the hall anyway.
I am probably not going to attend any more big conferences--it's just not a productive use of time. The useful abstracts get covered in the lay press, so it's more useful to browse RSS headlines that day or the next day. I can assimilate 600 headlines in an hour, or perhaps see three abstracts in that amount of time.
I used to think that when I finished training and was a "real" heme-onc, meetings would be less impersonal, less intimidating, less overwhelming, and more enjoyable. I have since discovered that they are even more of these things, whether that's because of me or them I can't say.
Meetings are not for the attendees but for the organizations that put them on. There is an awful lot of money sloshing around your average meeting, money that would probably be better spent on patient care.
I agree that exhibit halls are only really useful if you're very hungry or in need of a pen. As for the rest of the meetings, that's why we go, so you don't have to.
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