Sunday was filled with more prep work for the Pharmaceutical Meeting Planners Forum, which we're co-organizing with the Center for Business Intelligence. For me, this meant more work with those bags. One of the items to be stuffed in the bags didn't show up until we were well under way bag-stuffing Saturday, so we were busy throwing in that item, double-checking to make sure everything else was in there, and stacking the bags up by the registration desks. I've gotten a little proprietary about these bags, having spent so many hours over the weekend intimately involved with them, and it's gratifying to see them slung over people's shoulders as they (delegates, not the bags!) started coming in for pre-registration yesterday afternoon.
I don't have much time here, have to get down for a pre-con team meeting at 6:15 a.m. (sleep, sleep, my kingdom for another hour of sleep!), but so far, things are shaping up pretty well. I love Expo Logic's reg system that we're using—even I could probably work it in a pinch, should the need arise. While we got a lot of people pre-registered yesterday, we're expecting a flood of folks in this a.m. before the opening general session at 8. Wish us luck!
P.S. I can't wait to transform from conference staffer back to editor today at 8! I love that people get all this behind-the-scenes work done so seamlessly that we conference-goers don't even have to think about it, but man, there's so much grunt work involved! But since I'm all about the content, I can't wait for the big shoe to begin.
I'm particularly looking forward to a keynote address this morning by James Sheehan, Associate U.S. Attorney, on compliance and accountability, and the impact Medicare Part D will have on pharma program scrutiny. Look for a summary of what he has to say later today. We also have some great topics coming up in keynotes from several pharma folks, which I hope to summarize, even if I can't mention the speaker by name (covering this conference is a little touchy, and we have to be very careful about confidentiality issues, but I'll try to give as much of the substance of what's going on as I can.) This afternoon, I'll be covering the pharmaceutical meeting planners "birds of a feather" session, which, if last year's closed-door session is any indication, should be really, really interesting.
But speaking of birds, this getting up at 5 a.m. is for the...
