Conventions

Feb. 20-25, 2012. The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is a healthcare organization focused on optimal use of information technology and management systems for human health.   It has offices in Chicago and Washington D.C. HIMSS represents more than 23,000 individual members, of whom 73% work in  patient care. HIMSS also includes over 380 corporate members and over 50 not-for-profit organizations sharing the mission of transforming healthcare through the effective use of IT and management systems.  There were education sessions focused on the industry’s hot topics, such as Meaningful Use, plus HITECH (way more popular than “LOTECH”, of course), HIE, standards, interoperability and more.  Wait, is interoperability really that healthy?

Jan. 23-25, 2012. MacWorld and iWorld are held as twin events, and were being held for the first time since the untimely death of Steve Jobs.  That did not stop a torrent of new product demonstrations, demos of the hottest iOS Apps, and new software.  There was an iPhone Film Festival, Digital Art Gallery, art-tech talks and seminars, live art competitions… plus add-on premium training sessions for MacIT, specializing in such esoteric topics as The Passionate Photographer, Telling Your Story in iLife, Speak to Me O Muse (built around a new Adobe gizmo codenamed MUSE) — “There’s all that code”, they explained, “all that geek speak, all that technical jargon that gets between a designer’s vision and the web’s reality. But Adobe’s new (beta software) MUSE is the first major step by the software powerhouse to overcome that divide”…

Sept. 6-9, 2011: Photoshop World was the ultimate  convention  for both amateur and professional photographers. The  convention featured three days of more than 100 photoshop, photography, printing, special effects, retouching and lighting. Instructors included well-known photographers such as Jeremy Cowart, Jay Maisel, Joel Grimes, Cliff Mautner, Helene Glassman and Fay Sirkis. The free  Photoshop World Expo provided a place for  photographers of all levels to mingle and check out the coolest new technology, gadgets and services available.

This one comes to you courtesy of the DMA, the Direct Marketing Association. NCOF is their National Conference on Operations & Fulfillment. Things started getting really complicated when direct marketing graduated from just sending out paper mailings (they hate the term junk-mail, as it ignores the care and effort they put in to targeting products at exactly the right kind of people) and began to colonize the Web. Internet marketing raises the game enormously, but also adds a whole new level to all that Operations & Fulfillment stuff that the convention was convened to talk about. As “an industry run on brainpower”, these guys feel the need to nurture, maintain and grow talent throughout the world of marketing, and even more so in the world of direct and interactive marketing. Hey, what do I do with this offer from the Readers’ Digest?

HDI is the Annual World Conference for IT Service and Technical Support. This service and technical support conference addresses the IT needs of a company’s entire team — from seasoned directors to front-line analysts — and provides insight into how formal procedures, processes, and industry tools can improve service and support performance. A keynote on “How to Win an Unfair Fight” asked “How do you get people to do what you want them to do without looking like a jerk (or a psychopath)? How do you learn how to handle the difficult people you encounter along the way without losing your sanity?” This is need-to-know stuff, you IT people. Okay, okay… Whaddya mean, the screen is still black? Did you try plugging the darn thing in?