Having managed continuing medical education conferences for almost 35 years, I was surprised to learn the following about the HIMSS conference in HIStalk:
[Submitted by Anonymous] With the new remote registration process, HIMSS admits to having no way to know how many people actually attended the conference. They know registrants, not attendees. They informally poll HIMSS-approved hotels, but this is not accurate. Vendors believed booth traffic was low, but conveniently can't verify it.
[Mr. HIStalk response] Excellent point - there's no real check-in other than picking up your tote bag, if you even bother to do that (how many of those do you need?)
I must admit to being very surprised by this revelation. I do understand the efficiency of the remote registration process whereby the registrant receives an identification badge by mail prior to the meeting. What I don't understand is how and why conference organizers would omit the critical on-site step of having registrants stop at a registration booth when they arrive at the meeting. This only takes a minute, if the booths are well-staffed, and provides an important tally for both the organization and the exhibitors about who actually showed up.
My guess is that their rationale on the part of the HIMSS organizers for the elimination of this step is that it is more efficient not to require a check-in but this explanation leaves me unsatisfied. As hinted to above, I think that the answer is that they really don't want to know the number who actually show up so that they can rely on the presumably larger number who have pre-registered. In the world of conferences, you always want to announce the largest number of registrants to appeal to next year's potential registrants and vendors.
However, there has got to be more going on here than this because it makes no sense to me that some individuals will pay their registration fee and then simply not show up in town. It seems more likely to me that the meeting and exhibits have become only a minor sideshow for some and that the HIMSS event provides an opportunity for vendors and potential customers to meet and transact business outside of the actual meeting venue. This could account for a high pre-conference registration but a perceived low level of traffic in the lectures and exhibit area. It is also a trend that makes the formal meeting itself increasingly superfluous.
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