Best and Worst Conference I Ever Attended

The first healthcare conference I attended was TEPR sometime in 1995. TEPR was of course an acronym for Toward an Electronic Patient Record. I was on the Cadence GUI Team at that time, but the sales team wanted to show Cadence and EpicCare Ambulatory to the TEPR audience. Attending the conference meant we’d have an opportunity to see what else was out there, and honestly, have a look at the competition. We’d staff the booth for some of the time by answering questions and redirecting competitors away from the booth.

While I’d been to Florida as a child (Disney World), I’d never been to the “East Coast” of the United States. The farthest east I’d been besides Florida was Ohio. The experience was definitely new for me, and while Introvert Aaron was not entirely enthused about staffing the Epic booth, seeing what others were doing seemed interesting. I can’t find the old schedule for exactly when and where the TEPR conference was held that year. Since the Medical Records Institute folded in 2009 (the organization that hosted the conference), the data may be lost to memories only.

In any case, Washington DC here I come!

The conference was two days, and I was arriving with another software developer on the Cadence GUI team. Our team leader was to show up later as he was on a sales trip and wasn’t flying directly from Madison as we were. Our schedule was to fly in the early morning and leave the next day afternoon.

As you read further, this was 1995. Cell phones were luxury items. Paper maps were all the rage. AOL was the way we got online. We had no laptops (or computers of any kind with us). We had no access to our Epic internal communication system.

After checking in, we got all dressed up and headed to the convention.

🤣

I assume many of my readers have been to the Epic campus (either as an employee or as a customer). Voyager Hall, the training facility has meeting rooms that can seat anywhere from 50-250 people depending on arrangement. They’re large, but not huge by any means. Or, if you’ve been to HIMSS and the Epic booth, I’d guesstimate the current Epic booth was about the same size as the entire conference floor.

TEPR 1995 would have fit into the Epic HIMSS booth.

Needless to say, we were not aware of that before we set foot in the exhibitor hall. This would have been Epic’s first time exhibiting at this conference so our expectations were much grander for the size of the conference and the number of attendees. There were maybe 50 exhibitors TOTAL. We walked around for about 20 minutes at a very slow pace looking at the vendor names and gathering a rough understanding of what was being exhibited. It was underwhelming. There were no educational sessions for us to attend. It was essentially the exhibitor hall.

However, what was more confusing: we couldn’t find the Epic booth!

After a tiny bit of checking: it wasn’t that we needed a map. We’d actually seen the booth several times. It was the booth that had a folding table set up with two chairs but no one there — that was Epic’s booth. The salespeople hadn’t shown up!

Surprised — we decided to call back to Epic. What’s funny is that I don’t remember how we did that. We were discouraged from using the hotel room phones as their rates back in the 1990s for a long-distance call were HIGH. Like, someone is getting rich high.

What we learned: the sales team was delayed and still planned on showing up. Our TL was on his way and would be arriving later in the evening (he was already on the plane). After relaying the poor attendance and lack of vendors, it was decided that sales team would not show up at all. We enquired briefly about alternate flights, but … remember, 1995, it wasn’t something that was easily done quickly (and we had no access to the agents).

We decided we’d make another pass through the floor, talk to whomever would listen and then wait for the TL to show up.

Honestly, that took no more than 45 minutes before it became completely obvious that spending any more time on the convention floor was pointless.

We were at a loss for what to do. It wasn’t like we could just work remotely — all we had was a pen and paper for notes.

Note: SEND HELP.

I like doing software development, but I wasn’t going to try to hand-write code! We also didn’t have any compelling designs or anything to talk about.

Hmmm. Washington D.C. may have some things to do.

We went to the front desk of the hotel and enquired about seeing the city. They had a tourist map, provided some basic instructions and said the subway was the best way to get around quickly. We had about 4 hours till our TL was to arrive.

We quickly changed and headed out. We found a subway entrance nearby and asked the super friendly agent about tickets, getting around, safety, what to see, … they were amazing! We’d explained how we had limited time, new to D.C., etc. and as it was at an odd time of the day, we were the only customers.

Off we went. We saw more of D.C. in those 4 hours than I think should have been humanly possible. It was AMAZING. For those of you keeping score: it was during a work day on Epic work hours. The SHAME! (We sincerely wanted to be working, but there was no work to do!)

We got back to the hotel very shortly before the TL arrived. After explaining the situation, he called back to Epic and we learned that changing flights was way too expensive, we’d already paid for the hotel stay …, so coming home early wasn’t an option. We had dinner at the very overpriced hotel restaurant and made plans for the next day. He’d go walk the convention floor briefly and then … we’d do a rapid tour of D.C. with him. 🤓

Our fearless TL wanted to see some of the same sights we’d visited but we also took a closer look at the United States Capital building. There were two funny events that happened there.

First, CNN was filming live about something. Our TL wanted to get in behind the shot and wave. He did. Maybe on some archive footage of CNN on a VHS tape you’d see him waving … but not me. We stayed back (we had great fear).

Secondly, we wanted to go in the Capital building. There was a long line though. It wasn’t “security” as much as it was just basic crowd control. We didn’t have time to wait in line, so we wandered around the Capital building instead disappointed by the line. There were a few doors … and one that didn’t have anyone there watching it. We walked up, checked it — OPEN! — and went in. We essentially used a “back” entrance!

I may be exaggerating, but my feet felt like we did 42 million steps after those two days and I recall how painful my feet were for several days afterward. But, the experience was worth every step, even seeing the same sights twice. I didn’t have a camera as I hadn’t expected to do any sightseeing while we were there.

What conferences have you attended that you fondly remember because of the work you didn’t do?