Welcome to those of you who I met at the meeting this week and are checking out the website for the first time. My long time readers will know that I like to write an "initial reactions" blog post when I'm sitting at the airport (sometimes with an adult beverage), and ponder about what just happened in the past few days...
AAFP Leadership Conference of Current and Aspiring Leaders: This past week, the American Academy of Family Physicians announced a "reimagination" of their annual leadership meeting currently named the "Annual Leadership Forum" and the "National Conference of Special Constituencies." You can see the video announcement above. But next year, in 2015, will be the 25th anniversary of this meeting, and the Academy stated that a natural evolution of this leadership meeting needed to take place. The new name is above and the two leadership tracks will be "National Conference of Constituency Leaders" and "Annual Chapter Leader Forum." I'll write more about this soon....
Family Medicine Social Media Impact: It's no secret that I've been encouraging the #FMRevolution community to share our story on social media. This was a tremendous week in getting more people signed up for platforms like twitter, and encouraging more people to use twitter. The final stats are above including 2186 tweets, 196 participants, and 4.2 Million impressions. The next big event will be in the fall at the AAFP Congress of Delegates and Annual Scientific Assembly....
New Friends & Catching Up With Long Time Friends: One of the things I love about these meetings is the opportunity to meet new people can catch up with long time pals. As you all know, social media only goes so far as keeping up with people's lives. There is nothing like those in person interactions, telling stories, and laughing a lot. As always happens at gatherings like this, there have been some life long friendships started here, and it will be exciting to see their professional leadership careers develop.
Finally, thanks to all those who make this week's leadership meeting possible. Shout out to the AAFP staff, the physician leadership teams, the conference presenters, and the enthusiastic participants who continually make this meeting fun for me. What will happen for the 25th Anniversary of this conference? We'll see...