Dr Kim Webber, Chief Executive Officer of Rural Health Workforce Australia, has a gripe to get off her chest, and wonders if anyone is suffering from the same affliction.
She writes:
“Has anyone noticed the huge increase in ‘for profit’ private conferences discussing health care issues? Every week I am getting information, mainly from Informa and Criterion Conferences – current ones are around social determinants in indigenous health, e-health (always plenty of those!), social inclusion rural and remote health, dental health, obesity etc etc etc.
You can always spot one of these conferences because the registration fee is huge (in the thousands). The company’s aim in holding them is to make money – and all good to them – long live capitalism.
The problem with these conferences is that they are run by people outside of the health system (they convene topics on a variety of topics, not just health) – whatever sells. But they must be making a lot from the health conferences as the health topics are multiplying.
My main problem with these conferences (apart from clogging my in tray) is that they are starting to distract from the real policy organisation conferences – are they stopping us from talking to each other?
Who wants to convene an e-health conference when these guys have just done it (even if only a relatively small number of people attend)?
But I guess we as the health sector can choose to be consumers of these products or not.
I, for one, would love to see the back of them.”
• PostScript: The registration fees for this two day conference on “Governance and Accountability Models to Support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Organisations” are up to around $5,000 (reduced to around $4,000 for Indigenous organisations).
What do other Croakey readers think?
Is the booming health conference business wasting valuable time and resources, not to mention carbon emissions? Or do they give at least as much as they take?
I participated in one last year as a speaker after a last minute invitation. I charged like a wounded bull (why should I help feather these people’s nests?), pulled an old presentation out of a file and joined other presenters who seemed to be doing the same. I wondered why on earth anyone would have attended. There is a professional conference attender syndrome with some people having too much time on their hands. I only go to meetings where the program looks fantastic.
I assume the people that go to these conferences are those who do not have to either pay for it themselves or don’t have to run a budget or who don’t read much.
Why on earth I would fly to Sydney for two days @$4,000 for conference fees plus airfare and accommodation to sit around an hear some bored double dipping academic rehash a 3 year old powerpoint show put together by the post grad they are supervising on some topic they have been flogging for years?
Half the time theres much more content on any edition of The Health Report on RN and the other half of the time I can search the net and find a copy of the presentation uploaded form another earlier conference for free.
The other thing that bloody annoys me is that some of these conference organisers have my phone numbers and cold call and then keep calling back hassling me to go to the conference on something as up to date as “The Use of Computers in Healthcare” – hello hello – its 2009 not 1989
I firmly agree with this article… albeit a bite late…
Criterion conferences are very expensive – $2000+ for 2 days spent in a single plenary session (that is with the NFP discount)… As the article points out, they are for-profit, and there is no shame in that. I believe the problem is that they are targeting the NFP sector, and often they are latching on to something that is of significant interest within the sector, such as measuring outcomes, the national disability insurance scheme, consumer directed care, etc. This will naturally be of interest to people who work in the sector and are interested in these topics. What’s worse is that they partner with legitimate organisations to give their conferences an air of credibility (the Centre for Social Impact, SIMNA, the Case Management Society of Australia).
They then offer up ‘scholarships’ or free places and hold this up as them doing their bit…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/letters/helping-the-disabled/story-fn558imw-1226704541723
I think more people should follow the recommendations of the article to which Criterion were responding in the above link, and boycott their conferences. There are much better conferences that actually facilitate the transfer of ideas and knowledge… Also, organisations such as CSI and SIMNA and the case management society and all the other organisations should stop partnering with these guys – run your own conferences!!! It is a fair amount of work, yes, but it is well worth it.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/charities-urged-to-boycott-disability-freeloaders/story-fn59niix-1226703780257#
Lastly, I think that criterion conferences business plan is all wrong, they should cut the cost of their conferences by 50% (at least), stop printing and sending out multiple copies of high gloss conference programs, reduce the number of staff they have cold calling people to get them to attend, and actually put some decent content into their conferences (not the same presenters talking about the same things in the same way). Otherwise, if they keep biting the hand that feeds them, I think they will be a very short lived conference company…