Inside the Annual Meeting
Volunteers guide staff regarding which topics
will be popular, and we try to minimize
occurrences when an attendee will want to
be in two or three session rooms at the same
time. We look at historical attendance to
predict which session should go in which
room based upon the room’s capacity. Again,
we make an educated guess at the size
requirements. But in the end, people make
decisions in the moment about which session
they want to attend. We could control session
attendance with precision and efficiency if we
forced everyone to make their selections in
advance and issue tickets, but our members
like the freedom to change course. Webcasts
are very popular for those who want to watch
sessions they could not attend.
The safety of our attendees is our priority,
so we follow the defined capacity of each
room according to the local fire marshal, who
is on site to monitor crowd sizes. ASH has
adjacent overflow rooms available if necessary.
At the beginning of each session, staff
members are closely watching the occupancy
levels, and, when we reach 60 percent,
everyone is poised to open the overflow room.
This triggers changes to the location on digital
signs, the mobile app, etc.
Can you give us a sneak peek at anything
new for this year’s meeting?
This year, we’re rolling out something new
to help attendees on site: Amazon Alexa