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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Brilliant ideas: Always a staple at ACC


By the time I arrived at the Annual Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology on the morning of Tuesday, March 16, I had already had my fill of conventioneering.

Having just spent the past five days in Washington, D.C., at the Annual Meeting of my employer, the American Pharmacists Association, my brain was tired of being on autopilot (Hi. How are you? Good to see you). The sleep deprivation, complicated by the lost hour on Saturday night when Daylight Savings Time began, had me barely awake, much less functional.

But it's hard to be at ACC and not pick up on the energy. People are hustling this way and that, attendees sitting in the conversation pits at Atlanta's Georgia World Congress Center excitedly trade information about stents and surgical staples, hawkers try to stuff the convention daily into the hands of some 30,000 passersby, and the television crews liven up the press area.

So, after a few minutes in the hall, I was wide awake. The day went swimmingly. The first news conference was fabulous, with lots of great information about warfarin and genetic testing. I was able to reach a presenter from a previous day as she traveled home by car. I walked into a session just as the speaker I wanted to hear began and was able to get interviews of two other speakers at the end.

Soon I was cruising the exhibits, about as fresh as one can be on a couple hours of sleep. I ran into someone I know at McGraw-Hill, which publishes a couple of my books. We had a great conversation until the show closed and workers began rolling up the carpet while I was standing on it.

On the way back to the media center, I walked past a video recording studio set up in the hallway. I stopped to watch. At my own convention, I had interviewed several people on camera, but I did so from off camera. We had recorded in a normal convention center meeting room, and the noise spillover from outside was a problem at times.

That's when I realized this studio-in-the-way was a great idea, one I want to implement at the APhA meeting next year in Seattle. Not only does it look really cool, but people will later want to watch the video they saw being recorded. The natural sounds of the convention center are expected in that setting, thus avoiding the need to try to create the total silence of a television studio. And maybe by next year, I'll be more comfortable being on camera myself!

Conventions, tiring as they can be, are a great source of ideas. Even when your job is communicating trends in medicine and health care to pharmacists, you can pick up a wonderful new concept at a meeting about the heart. As I drove back to Athens, chugging Coke Zero and chewing on ice and peppermint candy to stay awake, I realized what a great six days it had been, networking and hobnobbing with thousands of my closest strangers.


2 comments:

  1. Great description of the conference!

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  2. Brain death sets in about halfway through the second day of a three-day conference, at least for me. So in the evening. I flip through my notes, on screen or on paper, and highlight things that deserve follow up: stories to write, editors to contact, books or articles to read. Otherwise is disappears into a haze...

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