I have been to a lot of Conferences and Seminars in my time. I have given talks, exhibited for my companies and attended as a keen delegate. But I have never before been to a large scale online conference. Due to the events of 2020, the worldwide pandemic has meant that traditionally in-person conferences are being offered virtually for the moment.
The ANTA World Health Symposium is the first virtual conference that I will be speaking at. Part of me is a little sad not to be able to give my talk to a room full of participants and enjoy the feeling of community you get from being at a large scale conference. I also love to see my audience becoming more and more engaged as the talk progresses. It’s nice to know that I am capturing attention!
However with my virtual talk I will sadly not be able to see my audience and feel the presence of 100s of pairs of eyes looking up at me. Instead I will have lots of delegates tuning in to listen to my talk. Many of which will likely be in their pajamas still! And happily, I will probably be in pajamas to! These are the trade offs for living life virtually. There is more focus on the information and less on the destination.
I am looking forward to seeing how this conference goes and how I find engaging with my audience. I am usually one for a chat and banter and love to engage in interesting question times and teasing out of the content. The online workshop I will be presenting, “Understanding Iron Studies Results in Clinical Practice“, is an interesting and eye opening topic to broach. I am sure there will be many conference delegates who learn a thing or two from this talk. I am very glad to be able to still offer talks to practitioners and student practitioners even in these challenging times.
Despite global hardships, it is now more pivotal than ever for natural medicine practitioners to step up and improve the quality of their practice. I have found over my years in practice that there is always something more to learn or some skill that I can hone. That is the joyous thing about being a health practitioner. The fountain of knowledge is endless. So it’s important to embrace the beginner’s mind and embrace learning with our fellow clinicians no matter if it’s in person or online.