Don't forget that HIMSS is more than a vendor show

We're just three weeks away from the annual HIMSS conference in Atlanta, and if you're going, by now your schedule likely is pretty full for the duration of the meeting. Personally, I'm still filling out my calendar and trying to balance all the meeting requests with the sessions I'd like to cover and the parties I'd like to go to--including FierceHealthIT's own MixIT! networking party on Tuesday, March 2 at the World of Coca-Cola.

As is usual with the largest health IT gathering of the year, the meeting requests keep on coming, perhaps even more so than in the past now that I have this rather high-profile gig as editor of all three of Fierce's health IT publications. I know that most vendors appreciate the fact there will be something like 900 exhibitors at the trade show part of HIMSS and that it's impossible for every reporter to hit more than a few of them.

Notice how I hesitate to call HIMSS10 a "show," and that I just use that word for the portion of the event that takes place in the massive exhibit hall. That's because HIMSS is much more than a vendor show. In fact, I tend to get more story ideas out of the many educational sessions than I do out of some vendor meetings.

I'm not putting down the vendors here. Without them, there wouldn't be much of a health IT industry now, would there? I'm just making the point that the educational sessions are pretty valuable to a reporter like me. Which is exactly why I generally don't schedule vendor meetings that conflict with such sessions--and why the exhibit hall is closed during much of the session hours.

To the vendors out there: If you have any openings in your tight schedules--and I understand that you try to spend as much time as possible schmoozing prospective clients--I recommend that you have some of your executives avail themselves of the sessions, or at the very least try to get to the keynote addresses. Often, when I do sit down with vendors and their clients, they say something that one of the speakers touched on. It would be nice to be able to have something in common to talk about.

See you in Atlanta. - Neil

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