VIVA Las Vegas

It's always interesting to see what is going on out there in cutting edge (read: heavily funded) conferences. Those serving highly specialized healthcare verticals are consistently impressive, if not by format standards than at least by measure of magnitude and frills. Participants are typically proven PhD+'s, and very expert in the field. This means that everyone present has a lot to contribute, and the best meetings give them the opportunity to do just that.

A vascular intervention not-for-profit called VIVA has an annual educational shindig in Vegas that spans disciplines and sounds as well designed as any conference that has playing cards on the splash page... see here.

Just by looking at the website, one can't help but notice a few very compelling meeting components that would figure to improve on the desired outcomes of "fostering collaboration across specialities", and "advancing the field of vascular medicine through multidisciplinary educational efforts". Here are a few:

1. Laptop Learning - Participants will all have pc's and will be networked together. They will be able to participate in polls, register questions for speakers, provide feedback and follow content through this system. I'm not sure what the platform is, but there are systems such as CoVision that do similar impressive things. Great for interaction and wisdom of the crowds conditions.
2. Live Cases - As made popular in the '70's by Boston Scientific and others, live demonstration courses enable participants to view a surgical procedure. I'm told that the really powerful courses of this kind also find participants providing real-time feedback, questions, and instructions to the operating physicians. That's a daring and interactive way to draw on the collective intelligence of the audience!
3. International Faculty - This will help to gather diverse perspectives from very different practices and cultures.

As with many of the most prominent conferences, this one is in Las Vegas. The tagline "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" seems like a counter concept to a program where the intent is for people to retain information. I've never been to Vegas for a meeting, but I have to assume they've got the science of meetings down somewhat. I can't help but speculate that the many distractions of sin city have some negative effect on outcomes though. I suppose that this is a necessary trade-off to have a location that can accommodate so many and will actually be a part of the draw.