I am totally getting this blog out before the end of the month if it kills my thumbs. I'm writing on my phone, so bear with me. I don't know about you, but as the fall comes, my days seem to turn out to not be my own. Perhaps that is why last years reflections on the annual meeting didn't come out until January.
This year's annual meeting held in hot and humid Orlando was another success. It was smaller than previous years, which I don't think is any reflection on the content or our organization, but on the economic times. You could even see that in some of the displays from the vendors. But that didn't mean we didn't have a whole lot of fun. From fabulous general sessions, to workshops that pitted the different generations against each other in an electronic version of Connect Four (totally my gen X jam) to even teaching us some Tai Chi forms and reminding us that when teaching activity, to our patients that we should actually be active. What was you favorite part of the meeting? If you were only able to join the meeting using the virtual meeting, what was your favorite session?
NC was greatly represented at the meeting. We had about 60 members in attendance, we had poster presentations from a few different places. We even had people teaching us about how to expand ourselves to virtual client interactions (Awesome talk Joann!!). Our own Beth Silvers even won a blueberry bush.
One of my favorite parts of the meeting is networking. I was able to sit in on a strategic planning session for our next goals for 2016-2018. There I got to meet a lot of our board members. But I think my favorite meeting was seeing all of the NC people and meeting some of our newest members. Two of those members are Ginna P. and Rachel S.
Rachel has the coolest job I've heard of for a CDE in a while and probably one of the most important. She is a pharmacist at UNC's student health and serves as a CDE there. What an important time in a young person's life and how wonderful for a school to have a CDE available to them! Rachel will be giving us a blog that gives an insight into that role soon.
Of course we had a lot of fun at different events, Dancing with the Stars, seeing the Blue Man group after learning about the newest insulin pump, waking in a super humid 5k, hanging out at Sea World, meeting a Top Chef and PWD Sam Talbot and dancing the night away with our general session host at the new and improved Irish Coffee event that helped support the AADE Foundation. I think I might still be tired from the week at the beginning of August, but I am counting the days until New Orleans and AADE15! I hope to see you there!
Till next time, Chris