Have You Registered Yet?

About 15% to 20% of AMWA members attend the Annual Conference each year. And 45% have never been to an AMWA Annual Conference. Never been!! Never taken advantage of this outstanding educational opportunity. Never networked with more medical communicators than ever gather anywhere else. As a member who attends every year, it’s hard to believe that a practicing medical communicator would miss out on this valuable experience. If you write or edit any type of document in the medical or health field, you can do your job better or more efficiently with what you learn at the AMWA Annual Conference. So why haven’t more of you registered?

According to those who do attend the conference, the number-one reason for attending is AMWA workshops. This year, more than 80 workshops are being offered, and they’re already filling up. People enrolled in AMWA’s certificate program recognize the value of workshops; 46% say they take workshops to enhance their professional credibility, and 42% say they take workshops to develop skills and expertise to improve their career or business prospects. These reasons apply even if you’re not enrolled in a certificate program—AMWA workshops are valuable individually, whether or not you take them to earn a certificate.

The popularity of AMWA workshops is reflected in early data on registration. Only a small fraction of our membership has registered so far, but already 10 workshops are nearly full. If any of the following workshops look good to you, you should register as soon as possible to make sure that you can participate.
• Advanced Data Presentation: Tables, Graphs, and Charts (Fri.)
• Clinical Study Report Writing: Tables, Listings, and Graphs to Text (Fri.)
• Current Trends in Drug Regulation (Fri.)
• Effective Paragraphing (Wed.)
• Essential Ethics for Medical Communicators (Fri.)
• Macroediting (Fri.)
• Proofreading (Wed.)
• Punctuation for Clarity and Style (Fri.)
• Statistics for Medical Writers and Editors (Thurs.)
• Writing the Final Report of a Clinical Trial (Wed.)

The Intensive Seminars are also filling up quickly. These new sessions are not part of AMWA’s workshops, but with a guest expert as the leader, limited attendance, and a longer-than-usual duration (2.75 hours), they offer an enhanced educational experience. You can select from “Create Visibility and Influence to Fast Track Your Career” (Wednesday), “The P.A.T.H. from Writer to Consultant” (Thursday), and “Seek and Find: NLM PubMed Is Only the Beginning” (Friday). Actually, we scheduled them on different days so you can take all three if you want! Learn more about these seminars in the registration brochure.

Roundtable discussions always fill quickly because of limited seating. More than 60 roundtable discussions will be held over breakfast (Thursday) or lunch (Friday). Check out the list of roundtables on pages 17-21 and 41-45 of the registration brochure. Surely at least one discussion interests you.

So, reserve your seat(s) now! Visit the AMWA website for easy online registration. Become part of the 20%. Maybe together, we can turn the tide and make a majority of members who attend.

We want to see you in Columbus. Expand your horizons and join us!

Available spaces in workshops, tours, and Saturday breakfast roundtables

If you're in Milwaukee and still have some open spaces in your conference schedule, there are a select few spots available in workshops, tours, and breakfast roundtables. For roundtable and workshop tickets, see the AMWA registration desk.

Saturday Breakfast Roundtables
Very limited openings:

S-15: Studying for the New CCMEP Exam
S-26 :The Principles and Pitfalls of Printing

Bubble Boys (and Girls)

I am half of a 2-person company, so I work practically alone, and for me that's both the greatest and worst aspects of being an independent writer. I am far more productive than I could otherwise be, because I'm free from corporate meetings and colleagues' interruptions. But I don't have a boss or many colleagues, so hardly anyone ever challenges my decisions, and my ego isn't always right-sized. A related problem, and even more dangerous, is that my insular existence threatens to keep me from hearing the latest thinking in our industry.

Open Session 10, "Navigating Today's CME Landscape," was a good example to me of why I benefit from attending the AMWA national conference. I write a regular column on trends in medical communications ("Briefly Noted," published in the AMWA Journal), and I've followed the sea changes in CME closely -- or so I thought. But Mary King and Johanna Lackner-Marx had much to teach me about the newer CME accreditation process and how adult learning theory has influenced what accrediting bodies expect from CME providers. Tara Hun-Dorris wrapped up the session with exceedingly practical tips for writing CME materials (and for dealing with difficult faculty), and she gave me a kick in the pants about moving beyond print media.

One of the highlights for me of this year's conference was a workshop that went beyond the lecture/discussion format. I would urge more AMWA workshop leaders to create activities for attendees who are principally auditory or kinesthetic learners. Probably this is too easy for me to say, as I've never led a workshop, and honestly, I mean no disrespect to the VOLUNTEER leaders. In a workshop I attended yesterday, "Audience Analysis for Health Care Communication," led by Bob Bonk, the small-group exercise was very valuable. My team of 5 women, from very different backgrounds, had to outline 2 documents on the same topic for different audiences. There was initial tension and disagreement, and we never did reach true consensus or, perhaps, draft the best possible outlines. But by gum, we got the job done on deadline! The exercise reminded me that even when I'm snug at home, I am part of a team, and I forget that at my peril.

--Faith Reidenbach