Inside EMS Podcast: A Little Conference Love

On this week’s episode of Inside EMS, co-host Chris Cebollero and I welcome guests Nathan Stanaway and Daniel Mills to the Guest Table, to talk about state and regional EMS conferences. Nate and Daniel share their experiences and perspective about organizing and promoting the Metro Atlanta EMS Conference and the Alabama EMS Conference, respectively.

If you’re an aspiring conference speaker, attendee, or organizer, you should give it a listen.

I’ve been speaking at and attending EMS conferences for over twenty years. I’ve helped organize them, as well. There is a LOT that goes on behind the scenes that attendees never see, and these things are obscenely expensive to organize. If you’ve wonder why your registration fee was well over $100, or even $500 for large national conferences, it’s because everything costs money.

That urn of coffee in the exhibit hall? At least $50, for each and every one of them. And $100 is not unusual.

The rubber chicken served for lunch, and the questionably edible dessert? The conference probably paid close to $100 a plate for it.

The projectors, sound system, and AV support? Major money.

Want to set up a booth in the exhibit hall? At a national conference, a 10×10 space may cost $1000 a day, and believe me, the conference isn’t making money from it. The venue is.

Want carpeting and drapes? That costs a few hundred $$ extra.

Want electricity in your booth? Not only does it cost a few hundred bucks extra, but if the venue is a union shop, a union electrician has to set it up. Even if it’s just plugging in an extension cord. That’s $100/hour, for a one-hour minimum.

They also charge you to haul your wares into the exhibit hall, and no, they won’t allow you to do it yourself.

All this is to say that putting on an EMS conference is a Herculean undertaking, and what makes them go is attendees. Vendors do the lion’s share of underwriting the conference, and without their income, your registration fees would be thousands of dollars, not a couple hundred.

And without attendees, vendors are reluctant to come. It’s just not cost-effective.

You should make it a point to attend a state, regional or national EMS conference, because the education, fellowship and networking opportunities you get there are simply not available at your EMS agency.

Yes, your employer may provide free CEU offerings and certification classes, but often the quality is questionable, and they’re mostly just protocol compliance and the way things are done at your agency.

As the saying goes, if you’ve seen one EMS system… you’ve seen one EMS system.

If you want state-of-the-science EMS education, job opportunities and networking, you have to look outside your EMS agency’s sphere of influence.