Reflections on the art and risks of conference planning

So when one of the industry delegates asked over dinner if conference organising was my main job, I had to confess. The HNA meeting in Oxford was the first meeting I’d organised. Well, confession is good for the soul.

I’ve worked at or helped out on lots of conferences over many years but this was the first one where I had to arrange rooms, sort the menu, make sure we had slides, collect the monies and so on.

Was I nervous? Curiously, not until an hour or two before we started, when I was suddenly very happy to have Alex Whittle around to keep things on track in the exhibition room. (And I know many of you enjoyed catching up with him again.) There were a few glitches – fortunately Shawn was around to fix the technical ones, and Sandra made sure the registrations and counting went well. But on the bigger picture stuff I think we did ok.

Absolutely brilliant that 80% of nurses completed their feedback forms (most meetings struggle to get 30%), even if two of you forgot to turn them over! So far, it looks like most of you had a fabulous time. The responses give us lots of ideas about what you want when we start planning next year’s meeting.

What’s the secret of organising a good meeting? Seems obvious doesn’t it – give the people what they want. Well, up to a point. As Henry Ford said, if he’d started by asking his customers what they wanted, they’d have said “A faster horse”. And then where would the meat industry be!

The HNA committee – Anna, Emma, Helen, Anica, Martin, Jayne and Kate – were brilliant and brought a mix of creative thinking and real life experience to planning. That meant taking a few chances, and I must admit to doubting we’d get any Snippety Bits without a lot of arm-twisting, but you rose to the challenge magnificently. Now I’m wondering if we can copyright the name and format! I particularly loved Trish’s Haemtrack poem, which you can hear by clicking the link. https://soundcloud.com/mike-20-4/01-trishs-haemtrack-poem

 

The evening’s entertainment starting with the poster session was also a bit of a risk, but was planned in response to feedback from the Manchester meeting. Fortunately you all seemed to love it. I think Emma and Anna smiled through the whole thing! Lots more photos on the site, with more to come later!

We’ve had great feedback and expressions of support from the industry, which we hope will turn into funding support for those of you who signed up to specific studies and initiatives on Kate’s trees! Many of these will kick off with surveys, and the first of these (planned pre-conference) is nearly ready to go.

This week we’ve also had lots of new sign ups to Haemnet from people who came to Oxford. Please keep coming back to the site and stay in touch with all of the great people you met in Oxford. We recorded the meeting on film and sound and I’m currently assessing the best way to share all of that with you and the 60 or so nurses who were unable to come along. But that video of the committee dancing to “We are family” is my pension plan!

 

Mike Holland is the founder of Haemnet and SixVibe. He is a freelance medical writer, editor and event organiser – find him at Google+ and Driftwood.