There are various reasons why doctors attend conferences. A break in the monotony of work, a vacation with family, a chance to showcase ones work, to network with colleagues, sometimes all of these.Rarely, it is for learning.
For beginners like me, it is most often latter.People like me do not harbour political ambitions(yet), and most of our socializing is done on facebook. And in my case it is always out of hard earned money(mine!).The last year was a disappointing one for me. Every time, the purpose was defeated and I returned fearing that I had forgotten whatever little I knew, leave alone learning something new.A mega conference on a focused topic in infertility actually turned out to be a mish mash of all the topics under the Sun with confusion reigning supreme. Another one had more faculty than delegates.Still another one had the same old wine in old bottles with new labels, served by same old faces.
This was enough to put me off conferencing for a while. Meanwhile, the flyers/brochures/emails/sms alerts about impending conferences continue unabated.
Some DVDs of conferences had been lying around. I saw them today and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Here I could choose the topic and speaker, skip across the bits that drag, repeat what I liked. No hopping from hall to hall, schedule in hand, bumping into an acquaintance and missing the whole session while catching up. The only theoretical advantage of attending one in person is that of interacting with the speakers and faculty. But almost always, the lectures are long drawn and leave no time for questions or interaction. The sessions start late, the speakers overshoot time limits, chairpersons eat up whatever remains with their sanguine remarks and by that time the attention span of the author is vastly overstretched. So what began as a tryst for knowledge ends as a quest for the nearest coffee table to stave off sleep.
So one resolution for next year is going to be to be to go green. Leave a smaller carbon footprint and attend more conferences virtually.So that no one can 'con' me out of my hard earned money, and I can still be 'in' touch with whats going on in the field of infertility and assisted reproduction. That is the 'Con'ference 'In'ference for this year!
This was enough to put me off conferencing for a while. Meanwhile, the flyers/brochures/emails/sms alerts about impending conferences continue unabated.
Some DVDs of conferences had been lying around. I saw them today and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Here I could choose the topic and speaker, skip across the bits that drag, repeat what I liked. No hopping from hall to hall, schedule in hand, bumping into an acquaintance and missing the whole session while catching up. The only theoretical advantage of attending one in person is that of interacting with the speakers and faculty. But almost always, the lectures are long drawn and leave no time for questions or interaction. The sessions start late, the speakers overshoot time limits, chairpersons eat up whatever remains with their sanguine remarks and by that time the attention span of the author is vastly overstretched. So what began as a tryst for knowledge ends as a quest for the nearest coffee table to stave off sleep.
So one resolution for next year is going to be to be to go green. Leave a smaller carbon footprint and attend more conferences virtually.So that no one can 'con' me out of my hard earned money, and I can still be 'in' touch with whats going on in the field of infertility and assisted reproduction. That is the 'Con'ference 'In'ference for this year!
