With so much CME content now available online, what do you think your attendees are looking to get out of the live experience of your meetings — education, the show floor, networking? FN All of the above. The question is, how much importance is being placed on each one of those categories, and has there been a shift in the importance that we aren’t catching? You know, people still will gather. I don’t believe in the medical industry that we’ll ever get to the point

— “ever” is a long time, but I think we’re a long way away from getting to the point where everything will be done online. I think the medical industry is such that there needs to be that interchange, that interaction between people to discuss solutions and possible solutions.

BH I think it’s because maybe I’m beginning to be the same age as these people, I now realize that they like going to congresses because it’s a break from work. I don’t know about in the States, but in Europe the life of an average cardiologist profes- sionally has become a little bit less fun; they’re no longer viewed in the same way in the sense of privileges. They’re being bossed around by hos- pital managers and having to think about things about health economics that they really don’t want to think about, and getting away for five days to congress is literally that — it’s getting away from it all. Still talking about work, but in an environ- ment which is a bit more conducive to what they consider to be their specialty. I don’t think we can underestimate that.

LA And I think the other biggest factor, just like with any other meeting, is the networking and connection. They like seeing colleagues. One thing about medical meetings, you can get a pair of these physicians or researchers that haven’t seen each other for a while, and they’ll sit down, they’ll talk for hours. It’s amazing. Just looking at each other’s research or looking at each other’s way of how they’re doing it at their institution or their facility. So the networking is extremely, extremely important for them. The education, yes. But a lot of it is the networking, and that is probably more for the older base. For the younger attendees, it’s to get their message out there. So they’re extremely excited about giving these posters and talking about their abstracts. It’s a really big deal for them.

BS From evaluations and from my experience with them, it’s the high-quality science [that ATA attendees are interested in], where they’re learning cutting edge, they’re learning new

76 PCMA CONVENE AUGUST 2013

CASE HISTORY

(ACS) Chicago, USA Largest meeting ACS Clinical Congress Last year Sept. 30–Oct. 4, 2012, Chicago This year Oct. 6–10, 2013, Washington, D.C. Next year Oct. 26–30, 2014, San Francisco facs.org/clincon2013

American College of Surgeons

“It’s about 8,200 surgeons, and about another 1,000 or so attendees who are professional attendees,” said Felix Nie- spodziewanski, ACS’s director of convention and meetings.

“And then the balance would be exhibitor, spouses, etc. — the balance being, I think we’re at about 13,200, so the balance is 4,000. Right now [the exhibit hall is] at about 65,000 net square feet; that’s technical exhibit space, and then our scientifics are another 50,000 square feet.”

data that’s not just a review of what they already have read in their journals. They’re not coming to find out what’s hap- pened in the past year. Our attendees come to hear about the absolute current state of thyroid research and discovery.

What are the challenges of serving an audience of international attendees? LA I would say the challenges are the normal challenges — visa issues, because we are international and we do funding for some of the young investigators. But we’re a U.S.-based society, so with funding, say, for some of those coming from Cuba or Iran, we have to deal with OFAC [the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control], so that’s an issue for us. But generally most of it is just getting folks there — again, the visa issues, and for some of them that have never traveled outside of their area, just being able to make sure that we are accommodating, helpful, and can give them some insight and knowledge to where they’re going.

BH It’s not a big issue. In fact, what is more of a problem [for ESC] is the national issue. We are going to Amsterdam this

PCMA.ORG