When you build a meeting agenda for event professionals, you need to check all the boxes:
• Education and interaction.
• Sessions for new and seasoned planners.
• Coverage of forward-looking topics and classic pain points.
For pharmaceutical and life-science meeting professionals, the agenda for the March 24-27 Pharma Forum conference follows the script, and then some. Here are three educational highlights from the event (owned by MeetingsNet’s parent company, Informa), which will be held at the Tampa Marriott Water Street in Tampa, Fla.
Congress Strategy: Surveys of past Pharma Forum attendees have revealed congress strategy as a hot topic, said conference director Danica Schroth. She’s put together a new educational track on the topic, including a panel discussion and interactive breakouts led by experts such as Linda Lee Pang, associate director, marketing operations at Gilead; Mandy Davis Aitken, vice president, meetings at the American Society of Clinical Oncology; and Chris Metzger, vice president of program strategy at Czarnowski Collective.
Technology: Generative artificial intelligence was just beginning to boom when Pharma Forum convened in New York City in March 2023. A year later, attendees will find two sessions on the topic. One is planned as an overview, allowing attendees to envision the organization of the future and consider the pros and cons of A.I., particularly in the life-science space. This will be followed by a hands-on session where pharma planners will learn how ChatGPT can effectively automate event-management tasks. This is a similar session to one offered at Pharma Forum EMEA, held last November in Amsterdam, and was among the event’s most highly rated, Schroth says.
Of course, A.I. isn’t the only technology development on the minds of event professionals. In another session, a panel of tech experts and medical meeting professionals will share case studies of how they’ve integrated AR, VR, and other immersive and experiential technologies into their events.
Brainstorming Pods: Attendees will have a chance to dive deep on the meeting types they most want to discuss, adding elements of personalization and interaction into the three-day agenda. Whether an attendee’s big concerns are around investigator meetings, speaker programs, national sales meetings, incentive travel, advisory boards, or another meeting type, Pharma Forum organizers have set aside time for brainstorming pods—discussions among like-minded peers—giving them time for discussion and solution sharing.
To check out the full agenda for the March meeting, visit the Pharma Forum website.
