Episode 42 | SCRIPT

Kevin’s Unofficial Guide to the HAPS Annual Conference 2019

TAPP Radio Ep. 42 TRANSCRIPT

Episode 42 Transcript

Kevin’s Unofficial Guide to the HAPS Annual Conference 2019

Introduction

Kevin Patton: Groucho Marx once said, “If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me because I’d like to hear it again.”

Aileen: Welcome to The A&P Professor podcast, a few minutes to focus on teaching human anatomy and physiology with host Kevin Patton.

Kevin Patton: This episode features tips and insights for getting the most out of the annual conference or the human anatomy and physiology society HAPS.

Welcome

Kevin Patton: Welcome to episode 42 Kevin’s unofficial guide to the HAPS Annual Conference. Now, I did this last year in episode 17B but a number of things have changed since then and I’ve gotten some additional questions and advice on the content.

Introduction to Kevin’s Guide

So this is an all new version of Kevin’s an official guide to the HAPS Annual Conference. And it’s a bonus episode and you know what that means? That means it’s really, really long. It’s like three times longer or almost three times longer than an average episode. But that’s okay because it’s broken up into little pieces so you don’t have to listen to it all at once and still be able to follow what’s going on. And we have a couple of callings this time and even some music and dancing and magic tricks, we have something for everyone. Let’s get going.

Kevin Patton: The thing about a guide to the HAPS Annual Conference is you don’t really need a guide to the HAPS Annual Conference. It’s all easy and intuitive and pretty smooth sailing, just walking in cold. And besides that it’s filled with teachers and by our very nature we’re ready to help each other. So don’t worry about any of that. I’m only giving this guide because I think that I have some tips and insights that might make things a little more effective and might answer some of your questions if you’re going to be a first-timer at the HAPS Annual Conference.

Kevin Patton: And I do want to emphasize that this is an unofficial guide. This is not sanctioned by the HAPS Organization and I have asked some input from them and gotten some guidance from them, but I may have gotten some things wrong and there are always things that change at the last minute because of logistical issues and so on.

Kevin Patton: So things might not be exactly as I described them but I’ll do the best I can and I think in general this will be very helpful not only to people who are going to HAPS Conference for the first time or people that have gone to a few HAPS Conferences. I think it’s also going to be helpful for people like me that had been to a whole bunch of HAPS Conference because it’s going to give you a little bit different perspective, maybe a few tips that you hadn’t heard or different way of approaching things that might help you tweak your own method of getting the most out of a HAPS Conference. I also want to mention that there is in fact an official guide to the HAPS Conference.

Kevin Patton: Just go to theAPprofessor.org/haps and you’ll see the official guide their online and it’s a lot more streamlined than what you’re going to get here because I’m going to be giving you a lot of specific tips and insights and so on and the official guide on the HAPS website is a lot more to the point in getting to the main points to give you just sort of the initial idea that would be helpful walking in.

Kevin Patton: So the 2019 conference that I’ll be referring to mostly it’s coming up in just a few weeks after I’m recording this here. That will be in Portland, Oregon, May 22nd to the 26th and the workshop part will be at the University of Portland. In 2020 if you’re planning ahead, the plan is to have the HAPS Annual Meeting in Ottawa, Ontario in Canada on May 23rd through the 27th. And the workshops at that one will be hosted by the University of Ottawa.

Kevin Patton: And then way out in the future in 2021 the plan is to have the HAPS Annual Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That’s May 26th through the 30th and the workshops for that one will be hosted by Central New Mexico community college. Now before we get into the meat of this episode, I want to give you a little bit of background, sort of my credentials is to why I think I’m an adequate person to guide you to and through a HAPS Conference.

Kevin Patton: The conference in Portland is going to be my 30th consecutive Annual HAPS Conference. Not only that, but I was the host of the 1995 conference, so that goes way back in the olden days when we didn’t even have a staff to help us do it. It was pretty much Kevin and his friends putting this on. And I was also very involved in the host committee, primarily being the update speaker organizer for the 2005 HAPS Conference. And both of those conferences, ’95 and 2005 were held in St Louis, which is where headquartered.

Kevin Patton: I have also had a number of other roles related to HAPS Conference and I don’t want to go into all those, but I’ve been both on the participant side over those 30 consecutive annual conferences. And on the organizer/staff/leadership side of things. So I kind of know many of the ins and outs. Not all of ins and outs because things are always changing, but I’ve had a lot of experience with HAPS Conferences, but everyone’s experience of a HAPS Conference is unique. So keep in mind that this is just my take on things. It’s just kind of a starting point. And you can take any advice or tips or insights that I have or any of the other people that you’ll be hearing on this episode and let that be sort of one of many counselors that are guiding you to and through the HAPS Conference.

Sponsored by HAPS

Kevin Patton: This podcast is sponsored by HAPS, the human anatomy and physiology society promoting excellence and then teaching of human anatomy and physiology for over 30 years. Go Visit HAPS at theAPprofessor.org/haps. The whole HAPS organization including the conference is so helpful because of the many volunteers going the extra mile to volunteer time, effort, and expertise. so I always try to say thanks in some way. When I run into our staff, our officers and our committee members is I run into them at the HAPS Conference. When you do that at the upcoming conference, would you do me a favor, perhaps mention that you’re also grateful to HAPS for sponsoring this podcast.

Way Before the Conference

Kevin Patton: Now I want to take a couple of minutes to talk about a good way to prepare for the HAPS Conference way ahead of the conference and some of what I’m going to say. Most of what I’m going to say in the next couple of minutes, it’s probably too late for the 2019 conference. But for future conferences, maybe you’re not able to go to this year’s conference or maybe you are, and once you do you know that you want to come back for more. Here’s some things that you should be doing months ahead of time. One is register early. If you go to theAPprofessor.org/haps, and you find the events tab and you go there and you see where the registration information is, that gets released way ahead of each annual and regional conference.

Kevin Patton: And the reason that you want to register early is because there’s an early bird rate that gives you significant savings, so whether your institution is paying for all or part of your way there or it’s coming out of your own pocket or your own expenses. Either way, that early bird rate is really going to be very helpful. And there’s also a lot of guidelines and policies there so that if you’re an exhibitor or working with an exhibitor, there’s information for them or you can pass along to exhibitors that you want to encourage to come to the HAPS Conference because you want to see what they have to offer and talk to them and ask them questions and so on. Or if you’re interested in being a presenter, a workshop presenter or a poster presenter, those call for proposals and the guidelines for how to do that, they all comes out really early in the deadlines for that stuff is fairly early too.

Kevin Patton: Another thing that you want to take a look at early on is getting your hotel reservations because we do get special rates at the conference hotels, there’s usually more than one hotel these days that is designated as I have so official conference hotel and you get a reduced rate, locked in rate, but the problem with that is that they seem to always sell out at some point.

Kevin Patton: So you want to get your reservations early so that you’re not stuck having to find your own good rates at a hotel that maybe isn’t quite as close or convenient to the official conference hotels. As a matter of fact, as I’m recording this, all of the conference hotels are already booked. Those room blocks that were reserved by HAPS are already taken. And luckily on the website they do have a list of alternate hotels, but none of them have a special rate or anything cause that’s all negotiated way ahead of time. Sometimes you just miss out on the good deals if you wait too long. Another thing you probably want to do way ahead of time is familiarize yourself with the HAPS leadership and the HAPS staff. And all of that information is on the website and go through that and see who does what.

Kevin Patton: And another thing is is that most of them have their picture there. So you’ll start to recognize familiar faces when you walk in. If you’ve never met any of these people before, you’ll still feel a kinship to them and you’ll be able to identify them easily and you’ll know who to ask which questions maybe going into the game. Oh one other face that some people refer to a personality called Skelly and you might think, who is this person? And it’s not a person, it’s the mascot of our conferences. Skelly is a skeleton, a cartoon skeleton, not a real skeleton. And Skelly is always part of the logo of each conference. And you’ll see the Skelly character represented in other areas too. So if anybody has ever talking about scholarly or referring to a character called Skelly, you’ll know that that’s not a real person. It’s a mascot, a cartoon mascot.

Just Before the Conference

Kevin Patton: Now, let’s talk about things that we can do just before the conference to get ready for things and make sure it’s the optimum experience for us. So before the meeting, what we want to do is get the app. There is a conference app, just go to the App Store on your device. And I just did this for my iPhone. I just went to the App Store, typed in the search field, HAPS 2019 and it showed up and I went in there and they’re already a couple of people that had registered. So you have to go in and register, that’s free and you’re not automatically inserted into it just because you’ve registered for the conference. So you want your name in there because that’s required number one and number two, it gives you the opportunity to exchange messages back and forth without having to go into a wider, larger social media platform.

Kevin Patton: It’s just a closed little platform just for our conference. So you want to get the app and it’s not just about social media, it’s also going to give you information on the times and days of all the events. It allows you to make your own little scheduled. You’re just like Click which workshops you want to go to and so on. And it saves that for you and sort of tells you what you’ve marked and oh, there’s just all kinds of things in the app. It’s really, really worth it. Well, it doesn’t cost anything, so it’s certainly worth it. But what I mean is it worth your time and effort to get linked in to that. There’s also a lot of information on the website. Just go to theAPprofessor.org/apps and explore around under the events tab and there’s all kinds of information and go back a few times before the HAPS Conference because they’re always adding more information as it becomes available.

Kevin Patton: As a matter of fact that’s true in the app as well. I was talking to Brittany in the HAPS office. She’s usually the person who answers the phone when you call HAPS headquarters and I was asking her about some things that were missing from the app that are usually there and she told me, well that’s still being populated with content. So there are some things that you may notice that you expected to be in the app and they’re not there right away. We’ll keep checking back because they’re in the process leading up to the conference. They’re in the process of adding the features and the content that we need. One of the things that you can do in the app or on the website is read up on the update speakers because you want to have some idea of what they’re going to offer us before you get in there because I think that you just get more out of it.

Kevin Patton: That’s been my experience. When I walk in cold, I do get a lot out of it, but when I walk in having read through the bio of the speaker and a little bit about what they’re going to be talking about their topic, then I really get even more out of it. It’s sort of like how I like to read the notes in the program before I watch a play or look at a few reviews or summaries before I watch a movie. I kind of want to know a little bit about it beforehand so I have a general idea of what I can expect and what I should be looking for and so on. You’ll also want to get familiar with the workshops, go through the workshops and start narrowing down what it is you want to do because this is one of the most difficult things I think is trying to pick out what to do in any one session because there’s so many good choices.

Kevin Patton: So you want to start narrowing down your choices ahead of time. Don’t make any final decisions but start looking at what you might be most interested in, but keep your mind open and I’ll give you some hints later for why that’s important to keep your mind open about it. Another thing that I always recommend, and not everybody does this, but I wish they would, and that is make sure that you have business cards and that you bring them with you on your trip and not only that, you actually unpack them from your luggage and get them into your pocket or your bag so that you always have them with you, even when you’re out and about having lunch or something non official because you’re going to be running into people that you want to connect with more deeply. There’s going to be people that you want to get back to sometime later in the year and ask them some questions or ask them to share some resources that they mentioned that they have or realize that there’s all these experts in different areas, people that have tried things you haven’t tried yet, and you want to have their information really handy so that you can go back and contact them.

Kevin Patton: So if you don’t have any business cards because you’re still a student and you’re not really an A&P teacher yet, or you’re an A&P teacher but your institution doesn’t provide you cards, or you’re an adjunct who’s at three or four different institutions and you don’t have that many cards or you don’t want to carry around that many cards and they’re not all that useful. Anyway, we’ll get some of your own go to one of these places that prints up 100 or 200 free business cards or just print them out yourself and cut them out of a piece of paper. That’s okay too, just put your contact information down. If nothing else, at least give me your business card with a little paper that you’ve prepared because I want to be able to contact you if I have a question, if I need to get some insights from you having your particular experience or being at your particular institution or your particular role and so on.

Kevin Patton: Then I have some resources, so if you see me, not if when you see me at the HAPS Conference, then hand me your business card and I’ll give you one of mine too. The other thing I want to mention about that is that some of the most amazing collaborations and friendships have started with chance meetings at a HAPS Conference. Some of my best friends in the world are people I met at HAPS Conferences, longtime friends. I’m involved in a lot of different projects, as you all know, including this podcast and a lot of my collaborators on these various projects are people that I met at a HAPS Conference. So there’s lots of benefits that we can give each other and that we can get from each other at the HAPS Conference and those business cards. I think kind of grease the wheels a little bit for that and I wish more people would be handing out their business cards at the HAPS Conference.

Kevin Patton: So that’s my little push for that kind of behavior. Now, in a past episode, I alluded to the fact that it is a struggle for me to remember names right when I need them. So when you see me at the HAPS Conference, please say hi, but also remind me of your name. Even if I’ve met you before, that doesn’t mean that your name is going to come immediately to mind. Ask my kids or anybody in my family or my circle of friends that sometimes I struggle with … I can usually remember my own name, but that’s about as far as it goes. So I’ll call my kids by the pet’s names and vice versa. So that’s just a struggle with me. Back when I was asked to run for HAPS president, this goes away back in the ’90s when I was still a young man with a young mind.

Kevin Patton: I hesitated to run because of this remembering names on the spot challenge that I have. So my friend Pam Langley from New Hampshire, another friend, lifelong friend that I met at a HAPS Conference, she literally knew everyone in HAPS at the time, even all the exhibitors. So she promised that if I run that she’d be my chief of protocol if I ran and won and what she meant by that chief of protocol they’re the person that stands behind the president or the queen or whatever in a reception line and leans over and whispers in their ear, this is the ambassador from Mozambique. This is the prime minister of Tanzania and so on. And that’s what I needed. And sure enough, she did do that. I ran, I won. I became HAPS president and she very often would lean over and whisper into my ear when it was clear that I wasn’t remembering who the person was that was asking something of me.

Kevin Patton: She would lean over and remind me who that person was. Even if she thought I should know that person, she knew how my brain works. That is very slowly when it comes to names, so please help me out in that regard. Now what to pack at the conference. Well, one of the most frequent questions I get from people who are going to their first HAPS Conferences, what’s the dress like? How should I dress? Because at some conferences people really dress up, a lot of the men are wearing suits and ties or at least the tie, maybe not the suit part and women are dressed in dressy dresses and so on and HAPS Conferences it’s kind of a mixed bag. I mean I think most people dress very casually. The previous version of this unofficial guide to the HAPS Conference.

Kevin Patton: I stated that it’s probably best described as business casual, but I don’t know. I think if you go business casual, you’ll fit in just fine. A lot of people do dress in what would be considered business casual, but there are a lot of people that dress way more casual than that with shorts and a T-shirt and sandals and so on. Depending on what the weather’s going to be like, that may or may not work out for you. I’m too cold in the hotel at least on the first two days when we’re all of our events are in the hotel, I usually will wear layers. I will sometimes even bring a sport coat and that’s a little bit dressier than most people do. But the only reason I bring a sport coat with me is because I sometimes get a little bit of a chill when they crank the air conditioning way up.

Kevin Patton: So it’s up to you. I mean, just be comfortable. That’s the main thing. And you just never know what you’re going to see at the conference. My friend Joh Jackson has shown up and a bodysuit showing all the major muscles of the body more than once. That is more than one conference he shows up at. So I’m looking forward to seeing him do that again at the upcoming conference. It’s kind of a tradition now. Now he doesn’t wear that for the whole conference. So he’ll just show up for a little while in that suit. And that’s a lot of fun. And I’m not saying you should do that, but it does go to show you that we’re a pretty laid back and often pretty playful group. Speaking of which, I gotta tell you what happened last year in Columbus where we were having our annual conference, there was what they called a haunted house convention going on at the same time as our HAPS conference in the same hotels and in the same convention center.

Kevin Patton: And what I mean by haunted house convention is it was all these people who run haunted houses and Halloween Stores and things like that. And they were meeting together to share ideas and visit with their vendors and so on. And they came in costume sometimes and sometimes their sessions would let out and the doors could open and smoke could come billowing out and it was all dark and creepy inside. It was really kind of fun. So I was chatting with a couple of first-timers and they said that when they got to the elevator to go to the opening reception for the annual conference there in Columbus, there was a guy with a shovel and muddy clothes and they thought he looked kinda like a grave digger or something. And then they looked down and saw that he had a wagon full of body parts and they look to each other and thought, oh my gosh, what kind of anatomy conference are we going to?

Kevin Patton: Of course, they were very relieved when they find out this guy wasn’t in HAPS but was going to that other convention, the [inaudible 00:23:41] convention. So anyway, I got to stop this. It’s already a long and I have way too many HAPS Conference stories. So what else do pack before you go to the conference? Leave room for some extra stuff in your luggage because you’re going to be picking up some things maybe at the vendor booths and so on. Maybe in the sightseeing you’re doing in between HAPS events. You never know, and so I mean that’s just a general rule I think for good traveling anyways, always leave an extra room in your luggage because it’s quite possible you’re going to bring stuff back.

Kevin Patton: Oh, also make sure you pack your historic caps wear if you have any, if you’ve been to HAPS events in the past, bring your T-shirts from previous conferences if you have those or hats or pins or whatever and wear those, that’s kind of a fun thing about being at HAPS is you’ll see people wearing antique T-shirt’s from way back in the olden days and in pins and hats and so on.

Kevin Patton: And it’s a lot of fun and it breaks the ice for a meeting and conversing with new people. Also you may want to bring a T-shirt or two from your home institution with your institution’s logo or sports team or whatever on there because we do trade those with people we meet at the conference and I’ll tell you more about this in a later segment. Another thing I want to mention, something that’s become more popular recently, not only at the HAPS conference but other conferences as well and that is pins. Basically lapel pins, but you can pin them on why I usually like to wear them on the lanyard or the name badge of the convention badge. Some people will put them on their hat or on the bag that they carry or some other way, but they’re fun and again, it opens up conversations and they are going to have or they already have HAPS pins available, conference pins available online at theAPprofessor.org/HAPS for $7.

Kevin Patton: If you wait to get them at the conference desk when you register, they’re going to be $8 and they might have run out of them by that time. So you might want to get it ahead of time. And also I have pins for the podcast, the A&p Professor official pin and you can have one and doesn’t cost you anything. I got to do is ask me for one and I’ll give you one. Ask me at the conference though. The best place to do that, I have a whole bunch of them at the opening reception. If I don’t run out of them there then you can run into me anytime during the conference and asked me for a pin and I’ll give you one. And you can pin it on. I really like you to wear one of our pins because again, then people can say the A&P Professor, what’s that? And I would love for you to explain your experience of the A&P Professor.

Sponsored by AAA

Kevin Patton: A searchable transcript and captions for the audio gram of this episode are funded by AAA, the American Association of Anatomists at anatomy.org. Hey, I’m a member, why don’t you join too? And by the way, triple a has a great reduced rate for people who are already members of HAPS. So go to anatomy.org and check into that.

Structure of the Conference

Kevin Patton: My experience of putting together college courses is where to put things in an A&P course, there’s all these topics that are all interrelated to one another and sometimes it’s a struggle to figure out, well what should come first and then what comes next and what … I’m always running into colleagues who say, “Well this thing that’s usually taught later in an A&P course I put at the beginning because students need to know that. Well you could say that I think about any topic in A&P, it’s all interrelated and we just do the best we can figuring out what goes first. And I ran into that same problem when I was organizing the list of things that I wanted to talk about in this unofficial guide to the HAPS Conference. What should go first, second and so on. And this little segment here is sort of a description of the overarching plan of how HAPS meeting is organized.

Kevin Patton: And I could have done that at the beginning, but I decided to put it here. I just think it fits best here. So the main parts, first of all, the opening reception and I give it it’s own thing because it’s not really part of the other sections of the meeting and it’s something that many first-timers skip. It’s like, well I don’t know anybody, so why would I want to go to the opening reception? No, no, no, no, no. That’s the wrong attitude. This is the place where you can immediately and pleasantly experience the friendly and welcoming culture of a HAPS meeting. And you’re going to know at least one person there, because you probably would have already registered. So you would have met some of our staff, you would have met some of the people around you as you registered. And you know me, I mean at least by my voice and you know a little bit about me by listening to these podcasts.

Kevin Patton: And you can go on the website and see a picture of me. So you’ll be able to pick me out of a crowd. And there are enough people around that know who I am, that they can point me out and tell you where they last saw me and I’ll have that stack of pins that I’m giving out. So that’ll be a place where you can start. And so that’s the opening reception. Please do go to that. And then the next two main sections are two days of updates seminars. Those occur in the host hotel generally or in this case now that we’ve been using convention centers a lot, they happen in the convention center in the host city, says two days of updates seminars. And during that time we also have exhibitors going and posters being presented. So that’s the update seminars. Then the next two days, the last two days of the conference are workshops and those are generally how at the host institution in this case, University of Portland for 2019.

Kevin Patton: And we’re buses transported in some other way this time. They’re using buses and we’re moved out there as a group and we do our workshops out there. And so the updates seminars, those are usually given by outside speakers coming in and sharing their expertise in some particular area. The workshops are mostly all of us just sharing with each other things that we’ve learned or experienced or have questions about.

Musical Interlude: Greg Crowther

Kevin Patton: I know you’re getting tired of me talking and talking and talking, and so I thought I’d break it up by bringing on a musical guest. Yes really. Here is Greg Crowther, who you’ve heard from before in previous episodes. He’s an A&P teacher who also writes songs about A&P and other science related topics and he’s got a little song that he likes to do for his students, welcoming them to A&P and he’s going to share it with us right now.

Greg Crowther: (singing)

Kevin Patton: As I’ve mentioned before, Greg Crowther there is not only an A&P teacher but he’s also a musician and composer and he has a huge library of songs that we can incorporate into our own A&P teaching and learning. And those are available for you. So go to the show notes for the episode page to see where you can find Greg’s songs. The music files even has sheet music for some of them and worksheets for some of them. It’s really a fun thing to do to spend some time just exploring through them and I think you’re going to find all are most of them are very useful to interweave into your own course. Take a look and see.

Update Days

Kevin Patton: I already mentioned that the first two days of the HAPS Annual Conference are the so called updates days and there’s a lot going on there besides the updates. So let’s take a look at each of those and maybe look at a few ways that we can get the most out of it. So one of the things going on during the update days is just a lot of general networking, which is one of the great values of going to a HAPS Conference. Even if else happened, just the networking part of it is of great value in and of itself. And that’s going to start out at the opening reception that I described earlier and that’s on the evening before the first day of updates. And one of the thing that’s going to be happening there is that my friend Tom Layman who is a longtime HAPS member and leader, he started the T-shirt swap thing and he usually does this at the opening reception.

Kevin Patton: So he’ll be bringing a stack of T-shirts usually. And if you bring one or two T-shirts that represent your school or your institution or your organization or just you and bring those to the opening reception, you’re going to see a group of people gathered off to the side at some point the swapping T-shirts. So you’re going to be bringing T-shirts, you’re going to be coming home with different T-shirts and you’re going to be trading them off and get the one that you like the best or is most meaningful to you. Bring a shirt and see what you get in return. And of course remember I’m going to have those A&P professor pins at the opening reception too. So make sure that you swing by wherever I’m moseying around and make sure you get one of those.

Kevin Patton: And if you are not able to attend the opening reception or you miss me at the opening reception, try and find me sometime later in the meeting and see if I have any of those left and you’re welcome to have one. Another thing that’s happening is right before the first update speaker on that first day, if you’re a first-timer, you will be invited to the first-timers breakfast. If this is your second time at a HAPS Annual Conference, you’ll be invited to a separate event going on at the same time called the second-timers breakfast. And you’ll be seeing me at the first-timers breakfast because that is hosted by each President Emeritus who is in attendance. So there’s usually a group of us, sometimes they fill in with other leadership from HAPS and each one of us will be at a different table and you’re welcome to join any of the tables and join us for breakfast and it really is a very good breakfast.

Kevin Patton: So even if you don’t want to do any networking, just come for the breakfast, there’s no extra charge for it if you’re a first-timer or second-timer. And that way you get to interact with some more experienced people and you can ask those initial questions right there. Now, some of your questions hopefully will be answered by this podcast episode, but you’ll probably have some other questions that occurred to you before you get there or questions that occurred to right in that moment. And you get to meet some of the other first-timers. You get to meet some of the old timers like me because we’re hosting it and it’s a really great initial experience to have right after that opening reception. So don’t skip that if you’re eligible for it, please go to that. Another bit of advice I want to give in terms of general networking is don’t be afraid to tag along.

Kevin Patton: Now I am naturally pretty introverted and so I usually don’t just attach myself to a group and go along with them. If I were more extroverted, that might be easier for me. But what I’m saying is I’m giving you fellow introverts permission to go ahead and if you see a group going out to lunch or something like that, go ahead and ask them if that’s okay for you to tag along. And most of the time the answer will be yes. Now keep in mind that sometimes business’s going on in those in between times. So sometimes it’s someone who’s meeting with a vendor and it’s not really appropriate to bring someone else along to that launch or maybe there’s some committee work that needs to be done or something like that. So don’t be offended if that’s not a good fit, but go ahead and ask us.

Kevin Patton: Nine times out of 10 it’s going to be great and you might meet somebody who you’ll be really glad you met. Also a suggestion I have is to use the participant list. Now, they used to print this out and put it in our packet, but for a variety of logistical reasons, they stopped doing that because it’s now in the app. They don’t need to do that. So what I plan on doing is right before I leave for the conference, I’m going to download that list of participants from the app and I’m going to print it out and I’m going to keep that handy because what I’ve done, I learned this from some other friends I have in HAPS that what I do is when I meet New People at the next opportunity I have where maybe sitting in the auditorium waiting for the speaker to get started and so on.

Kevin Patton: I’ll go through that list and I’ll check off the people that I’ve met for the first time. I have a little code that I have. I put a line or dash in front of the people who I already know that are there on the list and I do that usually before the conference even starts, so I’ll know who to be looking out for, who is likely to be somebody I’ll run into and then I put a check mark every time I meet a new person. And remember their name. Of course that’s a trick, isn’t it? And I check it off there, but if I’ve collected their business cards, hint, hint, hint, please bring your business cards. Then I can go through my stack of business cards and that makes the checking off easy and it also, because it’s spaced practice that helps reinforce my memory is to who is who.

Kevin Patton: So win win, win, right? So it’s just if you want to do that, fine. If you don’t want to do it, fine. But it really improves the networking I think. At least it does it for me. Another thing that you might want to think about, and I think I do this because I am naturally an introvert. I make a commitment to meet new people. As a matter of fact, there’s a small group of friends that I’ve made in HAPS where we will often have lunch or dinner together and so on. And we started this thing years ago where we’re each assigned to bring at least one new person to some event that our little group is attending or participating in or something to drag somebody along. Usually it’s a first time or second-timer who hasn’t been sort of pulled away by somebody else that they’ve met.

Kevin Patton: And so we’ve committed to really engaging the new people and if a lot of people did that to say, okay, I’m committed to, I’m going to have lunch with at least one new person, or I’m going to sit down and have a conversation with the at least one new person and maybe get your little group. If you’re coming from an institution where there are several of you and so on, don’t just hang by yourselves, make a commitment to pull some other people in that each person is assigned to bring at least one person into that group and become part of your little smaller circle there. So it’s an idea that has worked very well for me and my friends and I recommend it highly. Another thing I want to mention about the update days is this is when the exhibit hall is open. Once the updates are finished, they close down the exhibit hall, the vendor’s pack up and go home and you won’t see them again.

Kevin Patton: Now, there are some individuals who will stick around in participate in the workshops, but they’re not going to have anything set up. So if you want to visit the vendors, make sure that you go to the exhibit hall and see the vendors during the first two days, but you’re going to find out that you’re going to be hanging out in the exhibit hall a lot. Why? Because that’s where all the socialization that goes on, that’s where the breaks are. So if you want to get a snack during the break, then the snacks are going to be available in the exhibit area. So you need to go in there. So it’s really a gathering place as much as it’s a exhibitor hall and you want to do that. And not only that, something I’ve found is that at other conferences, especially those big gigantic conferences where it takes a day and a half to just walk past every exhibitor, it’s not going to be that big, but it’s pretty big.

Kevin Patton: There are quite a few vendors there. What I find is that I’ll usually walk through once or twice and just kind of scope it out and get an overview of what’s there and who’s there and then I’ll start to visit this vendor or that vendor and ask them questions and so on. And then as I walked by the next time I’ll think there’s something I forgot to ask or they had other people they were talking to and couldn’t get to me right away. So I’m going to go back now and the vendors have said to me that they find that our HAPS meeting is really a pleasant experience for them because that’s where they really do get to develop relationships with the different users of their products and services or potential users of products and services.

Kevin Patton: And I don’t know about you, but I find that if I know the person who’s going to be answering the phone when I have a question about this product or this service or I don’t know who to ask, I’ll have the card of that one person that I spent some time with, maybe a couple of different times with at the HAPS Conference and there’s a place for me to start and I’ll feel very comfortable and taken care of when I actually know the person behind that phone call or behind that email.

Kevin Patton: So I really strongly suggest that you chat with the vendors maybe more than once. Another thing that’s going on during the update days is no surprise and that is the update seminars. So as I mentioned before, this is where we have experts usually from outside of HAPS, although sometimes it is a HAPS member who comes in and updates us in some area. Maybe it’s an area of pedagogy. More often it’s an area of science, often clinical science to let us know as A&P teachers what’s going on in that clinical arena. What kinds of things are we able to do now or what kinds of things are on the horizon that’ll help inform us and give us some good real life examples that we can bring into our course to explain why they need to know the fundamentals of anatomy and physiology in our course. Another thing that happens during the update seminars usually on the morning of the second day of updates is a general membership meeting and you’ll be a member of HAPS if you’re at the meeting, because that’s kind of incorporated it into the package price when you register.

Kevin Patton: So even if you weren’t a member before you, you will be for this and you want to go there because this is when you get to hear about all of the things that you wouldn’t have otherwise heard of that’s HAPS is doing. All of the travel awards and scholarships and HAPS exam and the HAPS learning outcomes and oh golly, just all these different things. There’s just too many for me to mention here. And they’re not easy to really get a good appreciation of that from the website. Even though the HAPS website is very well done, there’s just so much information. It’s kind of hard to really be able to find it all. But all the latest and newest things you’re going to hear about at the HAPS general membership meeting plus just what’s going on and you get to meet some of our leaders so that you can connect with different areas that you might have particular interest in, have questions about and so on.

Kevin Patton: It’s also during the update seminar days that we do our poster presentations and that’s an opportunity for some great conversations and networking as well. Another thing that’s going to be happening during the update days is a little bit different than what we’ve done in the past. For the past several years, we’ve had early in the morning I think it’s before the second day of updates. I can’t remember first or second day there would be HAPS, fun, run and walk. It’s a fundraising event, but for liability issues, they weren’t able to do that in Portland this year. And so what they decided to do instead is a fundraising event. Sounds like it’s going to be at least as fun as the fun run and walk and it won’t involve any running or not much walking. And that is the HAPS fundraising committee is inviting us all to participate in the first ever silent auction event.

Kevin Patton: So auction items will be donated by attendees and displayed on tables in the exhibit hall during the first day of the updates seminars. So that’s Thursday and that’ll be exhibited from 7:30 AM to 6:15 PM and you’ll have until 6:15 on Thursday to bid on your favorite items. And at the end of the bidding period, the individual with the highest bid will receive that item that highest bidder on. The items are going to be collected and paid for on Friday from 8.00 to 3.00 o’clock at the registration desk. You’ll be donating and bidding on them on Thursday. And then Friday is a day you’re collecting and paying up. So I would encourage you to bring some very small item to be donated. The item could be something from your hometown, from your home institution, anything small and interesting. By the way, HAPS wanted me to mention that they do not have the ability to receive or send shipped items.

Kevin Patton: So it has to be small enough to be able to travel with you to the meeting and you donate it in small enough to travel home with the winter after the meeting that they can put in their luggage. So see why I suggested you’ll leave a little bit of room in your luggage. So examples of things you might bring, maybe a copy of a book that you authored, maybe I have some handcrafted jewelry you’ve made or some other assessors or crafts that you’ve made. A school item, like a school sports item, like mugs or T-shirts or whatever. Or it gives certificate or well, it could be anything. It does not have to be A&P related or HAPS related. It can be just any interesting little item that you’d like to donate that you think people might be interested in. And we could use that to generate funds for the HAPS fundraising efforts.

Kevin Patton: So all registered attendees can participate in the auction irrespective of whether they donated an item or not. You don’t have to donate, but remember the more items donated, the more interesting and fun this auction is going to be. So bring your donated items to the registration desk when you check in and they’ll be at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland on Wednesday May 22nd from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, so it’s best to get it in there early and that’s during the regular general registration time anyway.

Sponsored by HAPI Online Graduate Program

Kevin Patton: Distribution of this podcast is sponsored by the Master of Science and Human Anatomy & Physiology Instruction. The HAPI degree, looking to power up your game and teaching A&P checkout this online graduate program at nycc.edu/hapi that’s H-A-P-I, or click the link in the show notes or episode page. The HAPI program will be one of the exhibitors of the upcoming annual conference. So stop by the table to visit with program director, Dr Bill Germano or faculty member, Dr. Frank Bell. Or you might even see me hanging out at the HAPI table chatting with HAPI alums and current learners. Fair warning though HAPIs will be swarming all over the place at the annual conference. We have a lot of our graduates and current learners coming to this conference as usual. So when you bump into one, you can ask them about their experience in this program.

Professional Development Approach

Kevin Patton: If you listened to last year’s unofficial guide to the HAPS Annual Conference, you’re already familiar with Kevin’s law of professional development. Now, I didn’t make this up, but that didn’t stop me from putting my name on it. So Kevin’s law, professional development states that if you get just one thing out of any professional development experience, then it’s worth it. And so you will often hear me saying or overhear me saying at the HAPS Conference. Well, that did it. There’s one more thing. I got out of the HAPS Conference. You’re going to find that you’re not going to get one thing out of the HAPS Conference, but you may find that you’re in a workshop or you’re in an update seminar or some other event and you’re thinking this is going to be life changing and it ends up that you don’t get as much out of it as you thought you would, but if there’s one little thing that you got out of it, even if that one thing is, I don’t ever want to do things that way or that will never work for me, then you’ve learned something, you’ve gotten something out of it and according to Kevin’s lab, professional development, then it’s worth it.

Kevin Patton: It’s worth your time having gone through that. But I will tell you, being a really old guy and a long time, a participant in HAPS Conferences that there are things that I have learned that a HAPS Conference or I’ve seen demonstrated or talked about at HAPS Conference and I think that myself, that doesn’t seem to work very well or that will never work with my approach to teaching or that’ll never work with my students or at my institution. My dean will never let me do that. My colleagues will laugh at me if I try this other thing. I’ve had that experience, I can’t tell you how many times and then a year or two year, five years later it suddenly comes back into my consciousness or maybe not so suddenly maybe gradually comes back into my consciousness and I think, oh my gosh, I remember that and I can go through my business cards or the checked off the attendance list from years past.

Kevin Patton: And by the way, I do keep a file of all the stuff I bring back from every HAPS Conference. So I can go back through those and find those people and contact them again and say, “Remember, five years ago you did a workshop on this or that or the other thing, and I’m kind of interested in that now and could you send me some more information or can we chat about that or whatever.” Let’s go back and forth and I’ve gotten a lot of free consulting from colleagues that really know what they’re doing. A lot of free consulting because of this networking that we do in HAPS and so don’t forget Kevin’s law of professional development. If you just get one thing out of a professional development experience, then it’s worth it. Now, one little tip that I always give that I use and I’m sort of infamous for using myself at HAPs conferences, is I carry around a stack of index cards with me.

Kevin Patton: I actually have a special little wallet that goes in my back pocket that has a couple of little slots in. It’s just the right size to put three by five cards in and on top there will be a stack of blank ones and then there’ll be some extra blank ones inside the first pocket. And then in the next pocket are all the ones that I’ve already written on. And at the end of each day I take out the ones that are written on and I set them out on the table in my hotel room and that stack grows day after day and I’m jotting down random notes all the time and people kind of get the hint that if Kevin pulls out his cards and starts writing something while you were talking, then that means that something you said probably sparked an idea that I can use or potentially can use or something that I want to look up myself or maybe a note to, “Hey, I got to talk to this person again sometime, one on one.”

Kevin Patton: And so I do that. Now other people have other ways of doing that. So if you already have a mechanism for that, then make sure that you implement that at the HAPS Conference. Some people use those little mole skin notebooks and they’ll have a notebook just for HAPS 2019 and then they’ll make another one for next year, HAPS 2020, and so on and keep the notes in there. Some people use a program on their device, like a OneNote or Evernote or something like that and keep notes that way. And then of course, one of the tricks of being successful with this is once the meeting is over, or maybe even at the end of each day, you go through and kind of sort them out a little bit and get that information to another more permanent location where you’ll be able to access it again, be able to find it again. So just a couple of tips for a professional development approach to the HAPS conference.

Workshop Days (with Jerry Anzalone)

Kevin Patton: Let’s talk about the workshop days, the two days of the conference of follow-up, the two update days. Oh, it’s the podcast hotline.

Jerry Anzalone: Hi Kevin this Jerry Anzalone and I’m attending a conference in Portland. This is my first HAPS Conference. I’m particularly interested in the workshops, there seems to be so many excellent topics being presented, but there just isn’t enough time to attend all the ones that interest me. I know you’ve attended a few HAPS Conferences, so I’d like to know what a first time attendees should do to get the most out of the conference. Thanks for your advice.

Kevin Patton: Well thanks Jerry for calling in, I swear I didn’t put him up to this. This is a question that he really had about the the workshop and it is a perfect startup for what I wanted to talk about in the workshop advice section. That’s because I do get this question a lot.

Kevin Patton: Its a question I ask myself a lot like what I’m gonna do because the HAPS Annual Conference has a lot of really interesting workshops. And in any one session there’s always going to be, at least for me, and I know a lot of people have this issue, there’s going to be a whole bunch of different sessions going on simultaneously and you want to go to all of them or at least half of them or at least more than one of them and you think, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? And there are some tricks to kind of help mitigate that, but we can’t really be in two places at once. So there’s no way to really get it all in. But here’s some ways for figuring out the best thing. First tip is because it looks like it’s going to be interesting. Does it mean it’s going to be as interesting as you think it is because of the way these things are set up and it’s not just in HAPS.

Kevin Patton: In any event like this, the abstracts are proposed months in advance and then a lot of time goes by and right before the conference the presenters put it together and they find out that what they had envisioned isn’t going to work as well or their thinking has changed or their interest has changed and now it’s going to take a little bit different approach than they first intended. And so it might not end up really being a reflection of what was in their original proposal. Well, it is a reflection of it, but it may not be it hearing is closely to it as you thought it was going to be as they thought it was going to be, So that’s just the nature of the beast. That’s something to think about. So if you have the opportunity to meet that workshop presenter ahead of time, like during the update days, maybe in the exhibit hall, or then ask them, hey, I’m interested in this workshop now, are you going to be doing this?

Kevin Patton: You’re going to be doing that. Tell me a little bit about what it’s going to be like. And then that’ll give you a really good feel for that person. It’ll give you a good feel for their objectives, what the message they’re trying to get across, and you can see whether it fits with what you thought you wanted to get out of that workshop. So that’s one tip. Another tip is ask around, especially to people who have been to HAPS Conferences before. There are people I know who they could be talking about any subject in the world and I’m going to go to their workshop because they are interesting people. They are dynamic and talented presenters. They are delightful workshop leaders and so I’m going to want to go to their workshop, even if it doesn’t have anything to do with A&P, I am going to go to their workshop.

Kevin Patton: There are other people, unfortunately who are great people, but I just don’t get a lot out of their style of presenting a workshop. And so I may put them further down on my list. So ask around, has anybody ever been to a workshop that Kevin’s done? And they’ll say, “Yeah, he always runs out of time.” So if that really irritates you, then boy, you’re going to be in trouble if you come to mine, so go to somebody else’s during that session. Speaking of which, I do have a workshop that’s going to be coming up on Sunday, May 26th in your list. And in the app it’s workshop B as in boy B505 and it’ll be held in Shiley Hall room 319. And the title of my workshop is running concept lists, a simple strategy to identify, connect and apply core concepts of anatomy and physiology.

Kevin Patton: Now if you already know what a running concept list is, first of all, you get a prize because not many people do. But secondly, even if what that is, I’m not just going to explain what it is. We’re going to go through some scenarios of how that might work and some different ways that it can work and really kind of dive into the theory behind why it helps at least some students in their learning. So there’s my little plug for my workshop, but ask around to somebody who’s been to one of my workshops and you’ll get a little bit more out of it. I think you’ll have a good feel for what my workshop is like because you listen to my podcast and they’re not all that different. I mean it is going to be different. It can be a little more interactive, but still, so there’s that.

Kevin Patton: So ask around also, some people give more than one workshop. So keep your ears open during lunch and during the bus trip to and from the campus. And ask people what did you do today? What workshop did you go to? What did you like about that workshop? Would you recommend that speaker? And or did you like about that speaker? In case they’re doing another workshop. And then you’ll know. And that’ll help you do some decision making. Another bit of advice is always have a backup. So maybe you’ve narrowed it down to one workshop during that session that you want to go to and that’s gotta be it. And then you get there and there’s a sign says there was a family emergency in that person is in here find another workshop. Or you get there and you find out that the room is flooded or I dunno, volcano has gone off, something like that.

Kevin Patton: And so you can’t go to that workshop or you get in there and find out that the room is full and they’re not letting more people in. That happens sometimes, especially with those who have given really well done workshops in the past. So make sure that you have a backup because if there is a last minute change or at the last minute you’re walking into the workshop and somebody says, Oh, I’m not going to that workshop because that person’s never prepared and think, oh my gosh, well maybe I shouldn’t go in there. Then what you want to do is have a second one ready to go because you need to get there before that next one starts and that’s another tip I want to give you and that is get there before it starts. Don’t wait till the last minute because there may not be room for you and you don’t want to walk in late unless it’s absolutely impossible for you to avoid it because that’s kind of rude to the presenter to just kind of mosey on in on your own time.

Kevin Patton: I mean you don’t like that when students do that. I mean I let my students do that. I’d rather them come in length and not come to class, but I tell them that it better have been an emergency. It better have been unavoidable for you to come in late and I think that we should give that same courtesy to our workshop presenters. Another tip is if you’re part of a group, let’s say they’re a bunch of you from the same institution or there’s a bunch of you that have been hanging out at this or previous HAPS Conferences and you’re all in the same dilemma of where there’s these three workshops all being held at the same time and you want to go to all three. What you might want to do is split them up and say, well, I’ll go to the first one.

Kevin Patton: You go to the B and you go to C and everybody goes there and tries to take good notes and figure out what’s going on and then at lunch or in the evening or some other time, then you debrief and say, okay, here’s what I learned in my workshop and here’s the information. If you wait until the end of the workshop and there’s leftover materials. If a handout was given out or something like that, ask the speaker, can I have some extras from my friends who were also interested in coming to this workshop.

Kevin Patton: And then you can distribute those to your friends after the meeting. So I’ve done that a lot with some of my friends where we’ve split it up between two, three, four people and go to different workshops. Sometimes we just say, no, we all want to go to this one workshop and we’re not going to go to another workshop even if that would help spread out the learning or increase the breadth of our learning. We just want to go to that workshop because we know we’re going to like that speaker or like that topic or whatever, so a few hints for trying to get the most out of those bazillion workshops.

Mindi Calls In

Kevin Patton: My friend Mindi Fried was a first-timer at the HAPS Conference last year and she’ll be a second-timer at this year’s conference and she recently called the podcast hotline with her advice regarding the HAPS Conference.

Mindi Fried: Hey Kevin, this is Mindi Fried. I am calling because I wanted to give you my input on the HAPS Conference as somebody who was there for the first time last year. The biggest mistake that I made was just going for the update part of the conference and not going to the workshop. I feel like I missed out on what is really the need of HAPS Conference not being in the workshop. I’m really excited this year to be at the workshop. If you are a first-timer and are just going the update part of the conference and can take us around and stay for the workshop I will highly recommend doing so.

Mindi Fried: The other thing I think the most fun that I had the HAPS Conference was in the exhibitors’ area. Getting to meet people and talk to people and seeing the text books, being all sorts of the plasticized bodies and everything like. It was really, really, really, there was a lot of really good stuff in there. So I highly recommend spending time in the exhibitors area and meeting people. I met people that I had been networking with. Is we met at HAPS. There is a whole rich community to be discovered not just in the workshops, not just in the classes, but also in the exhibitor hall. Lastly, the last thing I would say is go to the First Timers Breakfast because it is fantastic, the food last year was great but also the community again, meeting other people that were there for the first time and being able to network with HAPS president and so that knew a little bit about HAPS. Overall, really enhanced my HAPS experience. So that’s what I have to say about the HAPS conference.

Other Stuff at the Meeting

Kevin Patton: Okay. A few other things that are going on at the meeting that don’t fit neatly into the previous categories or topics that I’ve covered. One is committee meetings. Now those happen during the workshop days. There are times and places set aside for committee meetings and unless specified otherwise, whether you’re on a committee or not, you are welcome to attend any of the committee meetings you want to. Even you’re there just as an observer, you can kind of see what’s going on in that committee, what issues they’re tackling, what tasks they’re completing and so on in case you have an interest in it, either an interest in what they’re working on and you want to see where things are with them or maybe an interest in someday being part of that committee and to see what it’s like and what the dynamics are and whether you’d be a good fit on that committee.

Kevin Patton: So I strongly encourage you to go to those committee meetings, most of which are open to any member. I would introduce yourself to the chair when you come in and make sure it’s okay with them that you’re there. But like I say, that’s usually not an issue. Another thing that I want to mention about committee meetings is that the committee chairs, they formed something called the steering committee and the Board of directors and so on. They all are having meetings on that day leading up to the opening reception. And so if you’re interested in any kind of leadership position, bear that in mind that you want to take that scheduling into account when you’re making your travel arrangements. You’ll know that ahead of time, but I just want to put that bug in your ear that if you’re on that path toward really helping out your fellow A&P teachers by serving on committees and in leadership and so on, that that is going on.

Kevin Patton: Another reason why it’s helpful to know is if you have some issue or question that you think that the HAPS leadership or at least some committee needs to be looking at or dealing with or considering or whatever, know that some of them are going to be meeting before the HAPS meeting. You might want to get ahold of him by way of email or phone well in advance of the HAPS Annual Conference so that they can try to get that on their agenda. A lot of those agendas are ready to jam pack. So maybe that won’t work, but to have a chance of your idea or your issue or your question and getting in the works. Then I would do that and give it to them ahead of time because they’re going to be meeting ahead of time. At least the leader’s going to be meeting ahead of time.

Kevin Patton: And there are a few committees, full committees that try to meet before the opening reception because of, well a variety of logistical issues. Maybe they have just so much to cover. They can’t do it all during that designated time during the workshop lunch period. So you might want to look into that or if you’re on a committee, keep your ears open to see whether that committee is meeting on that afternoon before the opening reception. Another thing that didn’t fit well anywhere else is HAPS Institute Courses. Now, as far as I can tell, there are no HAPS Institute courses associated with the 2017 annual conference in Portland, but there are occasionally courses, HAPS Institute Courses. These are college credit courses that are offered through HAPS that are sometimes, at least part of the course has some activities going on at the conference itself.

Kevin Patton: So you’ll always want to double check that and double check the website for 2019 maybe I missed something, but it seemed pretty clear to me when I looked at there were no HAPS institute courses going on. Another thing that often happens, usually the day after the HAPS official activities are over and there will often be some kind of a field trip or special event that is completely optional and is not included in the registration for the HAPS Conference. For example, in Portland in 2019 there is a cadaver course that is being offered there. Right now it’s full. Or last time I checked online, which was yesterday there were still taking names for the waiting list in case somebody has to drop out at the last minute and having organized courses like that before. I know that there’s always people that have to drop out at the last minute.

Kevin Patton: All kinds of things happen. So it’s worth getting on the waiting list depending on how long that waiting list is, you want to keep your eye out. That was something that just kind of popped up suddenly and filled up very quickly. So this is another good reason why you always want to be checking at the HAPS website, particularly in the area around the HAPS Annual Conference if you plan on going because there’s always these opportunities coming up in a lot of them have limited availability. Sometimes it’s some other kind of field trip or some other kinds of events. So always look at that and make that part of your planning for your travel and stay in the host city.

Kevin Patton: Another thing I want to mention real quickly is that there are usually attendance prizes at the end of the update days, so as the vendors are shutting down, then everyone will gather and you have to be present for the attendance prize. That’s why they call it attendance prize. There’s a large variety of prizes that are given by the vendors and by other folks that are donated and you can get some, some really good and useful stuff, most of which has to do with teaching and learning of A&P, but sometimes it’s something else that’s really wonderful.

Kevin Patton: Here’s another musical interlude provided by our friend Greg Crowther.

NOTE: this music segment is available only in the YouTube version of this episode, available at youtu.be/G96bB_-5sQQ

Greg Crowther: (singing)

Kevin Patton: As I’ve mentioned before, Greg Crowther there is not only an A&P teacher but he’s also a musician and composer and he has a huge library of songs that we can incorporate into our own A&P teaching and learning. And those are available for you. So go to the show notes for the episode page to see where you can find Greg’s songs. The music files even has sheet music for some of them and worksheets for some of them. It’s really a fun thing to do to spend some time just exploring through them and I think you’re going to find all are most of them are very useful to interweave into your own course. Take a look and see.

After the Conference

Kevin Patton: Now you were thinking or at least hoping that that would be the end of this episode, but it’s not because I have some tips for what to do after the annual conference is over besides breast up such a wonderful adventure. After the meeting something I do that I found to be very useful is go through all of those notes I’ve taken and I mentioned that before and get those organized and putting the right place.

Kevin Patton: And as I mentioned before, I have that list of new people that I’ve met and have that checked off.And what I do with that is I’ll go through it again. Again, it’s spaced practice, so that’s reinforcing those experiences of meeting New People. And the next thing I do is I’ll go to Linkedln, in Twitter and I’ll try to connect with those people that I just met. So that is going to sort of reinforce for them that they met me so that if I come knocking at their door in a year or two and say, hey, we met at the HAPS Conference. As a matter of fact, when I invite people into my Linkedln, I always put in there little line that says, we met at the recent HAPS Conference.

Kevin Patton: So kind of jog their memory a little bit. Like, who is this guy that’s trying to link in with me on Linkedln? And so anyway that kind of puts them in my network in a very sort of real concrete way. So I look them up on Linkedln, on Twitter and so on and try to make them part of my business social network. And sometimes I’ll even drop somebody an email like, hey, I really enjoyed your workshop. You clearly put a lot of work into it. And I got a lot out of it. Don’t we as teachers really isn’t that mainly the kind of compensation we want to get for our teaching effort? Don’t we want to hear from our students and former students to say that one thing you did really helped me, that one thing you said really meant something, that work you did on our behalf it’s appreciated.

Kevin Patton: So you might want to follow up by email to the workshop presenters, update presenters, other people involved in your experience at HAPS, people you met and say, “Hey, I enjoyed meeting you. That was great.” So think about doing some of that followup stuff and then sort through all of the stuff you brought back with you, all those handouts and catalogs and samples and things like that. And of course you want to call your insurance agent to get your A&P professor pin insured because I’m sure that the value of those, even though it’s free to you, the value of those is going to increase exponentially over the years. They’re going to become valuable collectors’ items. So make sure that that gets onto your insurance schedule as a valuable piece of personal assessors.

Kevin Patton: I always put links in the show notes and at the episode page at theAPprofessor.org in case you want to further explore any ideas mentioned in this podcast. Access to this podcast is free. Thanks in part to the support from our sponsors, AAA, HAPS and the HAPI Program. If you want to get connected and be informed of each new episode when it’s released, there are many ways to do that. The easiest way is to go to your devices App Store and search for The A&P professor and download the free app. Or you can listen in your favorite podcast or radio app or ask Alexa to enable The A&P Professor podcast or go to theAPprofessor.org/listen and find all kinds of direct links to these services and other options for staying connected. And don’t forget to call in with your questions, comments and ideas at the podcast hotline. That’s 1-833-LION-DEN or 1-833-546-6336 or send a recording or a written message to podcast@theAPprofessor.org I’ll see you at the next HAPS Conference.

Aileen: The A&P Professor is hosted by Kevin Patton, professor, blogger and textbook author in human anatomy and physiology.

Kevin Patton: This is an unofficial guide, so I make no claims about the accuracy of the contents of this episode.

Last updated: September 23, 2021 at 19:55 pm