MD Expo | Kristin Leavoy, Vice President of MD Publishing
Mar 21, 2022
Kristin Leavoy
Wed, 3/9 10:13AM • 25:16
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
md, expo, conference, exhibit hall, htm, great, attend, excited, event, nation, tech, people, rooms, attendees, sammy davis, med, called, industry, venue, website
SPEAKERS
Chyrill Sandrini, Kristin Leavoy
Chyrill Sandrini 00:01
Hi, welcome to HTM Insider, glad you came back to tune in. Today we’re gonna be talking about MD Expo, and we have a guest on from tech nation who’s very involved with MD Expo, my friend Kristin, Kristin, would you like to introduce yourself?
Kristin Leavoy 00:17
Hi, everybody. I’m Kristin Leavoy and I’m with tech nation, MD Expo, MD publishing however, you know us as but I’ve been with the company for quite a while, many years and actually since the beginning of MD Expo, when we founded it in 2002. So I’m excited to share a little bit of the history and how to get involved with our conferences with you today.
Chyrill Sandrini 00:42
You brought up something really great there because then is what is the difference between MD Expo, MD publishing, tech nation, and med ventures just throw them all together?
Kristin Leavoy 00:55
That’s a good question. So MD publishing is the parent company of the magazines that you may know tech nation, imaging community Exchange, which is our ice magazine, and also OR Today which a few people know which it’s for perioperative and registered nurses. How Med Wrench fits into that is we are co owners in Med Wrench, with a company in Canada called lab X Media Group. Some of you may know lab x if you’re at all involved in the lab world. But about 12 years ago, MD publishing and lab X joined together to create med wrench, and it’s basically a resource for those in the HTM world to help answer the questions they have on a day to day basis.
Chyrill Sandrini 01:44
So you go by different names, but you’re all one group, right?
Kristin Leavoy 01:48
We are one big happy family and tech nation. If you’ve noticed ever within MD expo, we put on our tagline powered by tech nation. Tech nation wasn’t actually around when MD Expo first had its inaugural event back in 2002. But since its creation in 2010, it is really become the print counterpart to what MD Expo brings to a live event. Because that was really the basis begin behind beginning in the expo years ago. It was to bring together the advertisers of our magazines with the readers. And so that’s that’s how Tech Nation is tied into MD Expo.
Chyrill Sandrini 02:34
That’s a great explanation. I’m glad to even here myself because I was like Yeah, I know. They’re all kind of similar. But how do they all go together? So we got a MD Expo coming up. In April, you I talked about the dates and what’s going to happen there in Atlanta?
Kristin Leavoy 02:51
Absolutely. We’re so excited about this event. We’re celebrating our 20th anniversary. And what’s even more special about that as we’re bringing it home to Georgia, which is where it all began 20 years ago, for years, from about 2003 until 2007. We held the MD Expo in Stone Mountain Georgia. I know a lot of the folks from way back in the beginning remember Stone Mountain Georgia fondly, unfortunately, we’ve outgrown the venue there so we won’t be able to be hosting this year’s event there. But we have a great property. The Atlanta Mariott, also known as the Waverly, it’s right across from Truist Park, which is the home of the Atlanta Braves happened to be the World Series winners last year. So we’re excited to be here in Atlanta. The dates of the conference are April 11. Through the 13th. We have been approved for CE credit through ACI. So any of you joining and participating in the education will receive continuing education for that we have a sold out exhibit hall including only a few tables remaining in our foyer. So you’re going to have an incredible opportunity to meet some vendors that can offer some solutions to the day to day issues that you have whether it’s meeting a tight budget or solving a problem with a particular PM. Really their resources are limitless on what they’ll be able to provide. And then of course, what MD Expo is most known for which is our networking opportunities?
Chyrill Sandrini 04:29
Well, MMS will be there like always, I’m going I’m pretty excited myself, I have a lot of family in the Greater Atlanta area. So I visit there often. So it’s kind of kind of nice. I get to visit some family while I’m in town. Let’s talk about the new bio meds, right because that’s what we’re trying to reach and who could really benefit from the educational platform. So if I’m a new biomed How do I register How much does it cost? Where do I go to find the information?
Kristin Leavoy 05:00
Absolutely, everything can be found on our website, which is Md Expo show.com. So if you’re new to the field, there’s so many opportunities at MD Expo that would really enhance your knowledge about the industry. We have a host of educational sessions, they usually cover topics, such as cybersecurity, preventive maintenance, credentialing and certification, compliance, these just to name a few. But some of the sessions that I think would be particularly relevant to anyone who is new to the industry, we have one particular session called filling vacancies in the importance of job titles. This is by Michael Heusser. He’s with Middlesex health, he’s going to be talking a little bit about if you’re coming into the role, how and what titles for your positions that you’re applying for that are relevant. We also have a great presentation that’s going to be presented by Dave Scott and Brian Wilson. It’s called career path guide. And what it really is, is about the tips and tricks that these seasoned professionals have learned over the years. And basically, if they had known 25 years ago, these tips and tricks what they would go back and tell themselves to make the path a little bit smoother. We also have, let me see, I’m looking here, I know there was another one. David Brodigan, he’s a very well known name in the industry, he’s going to be speaking about the future of healthcare and htm. What are we going to do when the baby boomers start to retire? How are we going to fill all these vacancies that are gonna result in those retirements? And then, I mean, gosh, there’s just so many things that are going to be key to your arsenal. Yes, so and we also one of the best things we have for new folks to the industry is our YP Group. This is our young professionals at MD Expo. Oftentimes they hold some sort of networking event during the course of the expo. You can follow their their newsletter, and updates online, just look for wipey and MD Expo. And then of course, just being able to talk and connect with all of the folks that have have been in the industry so long in their wealth of knowledge.
Chyrill Sandrini 07:37
Now, what does it cost?
Kristin Leavoy 07:41
The key thing, what does it cost so when you go to MD Expo show.com, you’ll see in the upper right hand corner, there’s a register button. And when you click on the Register button, there’s going to be three options that pop up. The first one is if you’re a hospital employee, so if you’re employed with a hospital, a health care facility, or you’re an active military or student, it costs nothing $0 to attend MD Expo, we even have the VIP code right there on the website that you can enter. When you go into the forum and fill out your contact information. When you apply that VIP code, you’ll see that the total is $0. We do this because we want MD Expo to be accessible for all and with the support of our vendors and our sponsors, we’re able to do this and we have done this for I think going on 10 or 12 years now. We realize that a lot of folks have to pay out of their own pocket to either fly gas to travel to the event, maybe if they’re spending the night for the hotel. We want to minimize those costs to them by providing the conference for free.
Chyrill Sandrini 08:54
Here is another good thing, if you’re coming on a budget which I understand a lot of people are they’re paying for it themselves. Is that MD Expo always offers food and some beverages.
Kristin Leavoy 09:04
Yeah, we do. We do so when the event kicks off, it’ll start Tuesday morning Tuesday, the 12th for the most part when education will have a kickoff event that we’ll have food at sort of a lunch that first afternoon the exhibit hall welcome reception. We’ll have for the most part an open bar and food in it. If you want to make it dinner you potentially could. We’ll have breakfast on Wednesday morning. We’ll have lunch in the exhibit hall Wednesday night. And then Wednesday evening for our finale party. I’m really excited about this. We’re going to be having an event over the battery which is the social element of Truist Park where the Braves play. There’s a great venue there called park bench and it’s dueling pianos. So we’re going to have our finale of events at Park Bench, and there will be an open bar and food at their this event
Chyrill Sandrini 10:05
as well. That sounds fine. I’m excited about dueling pianos, that’s good as always a good time.
Kristin Leavoy 10:11
Yes. For those that remember back in the Stone Mountain age, we would we would bring dueling pianos to their outdoor pavilion, which was a feat in and of itself. But it was always a great time had by all,
Chyrill Sandrini 10:24
that’s awesome. Now let’s shift to like, you know, supervisors and managers, I know that a lot of managers attend. So if you’re even a biomed out there, there’s job opportunities that you can find, whether it be with somebody like ourselves at MultiMedical systems, or numerous managers across the nation that attend that are always hiring.
Kristin Leavoy 10:47
Absolutely. I mean, you’ll you’ll see with the vendors that you visit, a lot of them, I mentioned that they are hiring. And then there are resources specific to those looking for jobs, one of which is our own product, which is htm jobs, their website, htm jobs.com, you can go to and you’ll see, I mean, currently, there are hundreds of positions all across the country that are open, and we have the specialists that can help pair you with the right job for your skill set. So you’re not alone in that search, just going to the website registering, that’ll put you in contact with one of our recruitment specialist, they will work to talk to you about what you’re looking for what part of the country you’re looking for what specialty and pairing you up with the organization that has the job to fit your needs.
Chyrill Sandrini 11:41
That’s an awesome resource. Now, this came up last week, I had somebody who wanted to attend, sent them to the website, and the hotel block is sold out. You don’t have to stay at the hotel. If there’s no rooms available, you can stay anywhere you want to stay, there’s no regulate. They thought they had to stay there.
Kristin Leavoy 12:00
No, no, no, no. And honestly, it does happen. We put on the website that there is a cut off deadline. But it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that rooms are available up until that date. Fortunately for the situation you encounter, we were able to add rooms to our room block. So there are rooms available now. But I can’t say how long they’ll last. That’s one thing that we we do try to make available to attendees is we’re very conscious about what the cost of our hotel is. Again, knowing that a lot of folks are coming out of their own pocket, we want to make it affordable. But even if the price point for the rooms are is still too high, or if they’re no longer rooms available, reach out to any of our staff, and we’ll be happy to refer you to hotels in the area. The parking in this particular hotel is I think $5 a day. So even if you’re staying somewhere else, it’s not a problem, you can come and park at the the Waverly inn there will be minimal cost.
Chyrill Sandrini 13:04
Do you think planning out your schedule is a great idea where you say just go wing it?
Kristin Leavoy 13:11
Well, the good thing is you have the flexibility for both. So when you register for the conference, you check off which classes you plan to attend, we will send you a welcome kit that has a letter and some things to note about the conference. And then it’s also included your your personal schedule. So the classes that you checked off when you registered. The nice thing is though, that you’re not obligated to stick to that schedule if you get on site. And you realize that oh my gosh, I didn’t know. Stephen Kelly from Piedmont Medical was going to be presenting, I am local, I want to go here his session, you have the flexibility to do that. And you don’t even have to let us know. We take the pre registrations just as a general counsel, we know how large to set the classrooms for but you’re not at all obligated to stick with the classes that you’ve registered for initially.
Chyrill Sandrini 14:03
One of my highlights of attending is always the keynote.
Kristin Leavoy 14:08
Yes, yes. And we’ve kind of changed directions over the past year, with what types of keynotes we offer. For many years, it was joint commission or DMV talking about the regulatory updates and how to prepare for an inspection. And that was all very relevant information that people needed to know. But it didn’t necessarily have you walking out of the class going, Gosh, I feel motivated to learn more. So the past couple of conferences, we’ve done some really unique and different keynotes in Dallas. Last spring, we had two authors of the book, positively outrageous service talking about whether you’re an owner of a company or a technician in a hospital. You are serving customers and how you can provide great service to those customers day in and day out. And then this past conference in Las Vegas, we had Sammy Davis who many don’t know the name except for the Rat Pack. But this was not that Sammy Davis. We had Sammy Davis, the character for which the war scenes in Forrest Gump were based after the Vietnam scenes from Forrest Gump, Sammy Davis was the metal, Purple Heart winner, recipient, I should say, Who saved so many lives during that that particular episode in in Vietnam. But coming up this year, we have a great speaker, his name’s Brian Parsley, he’s with the Constant Group. And he’s just going to be speaking about how to have meaningful relationships. And when you’re interacting personally and professionally, how to take the communication, aspects of that conversation and really go a little bit deeper. We’ve had him speak for us and other conferences and aspects of MD publishing, but never had an MD Expo before. He’s got a great story to tell. In fact, he’s got a YouTube video, I’m sure he’s gonna share, which was about his very first solo flight as a pilot, and what happened with that flight. But, again, our goal for these keynotes is, and the reason we offer them on the front end of the conference, is we want attendees to be able to come to that and really feel energized and excited about the rest of the conference. want them to walk away with a wow feeling and motivated to learn more.
Chyrill Sandrini 16:50
I agree. I mean, the past couple have just been great. I really enjoyed him. Excellent. So you guys schedule your conferences, like twice a year. Right? And so where are you going to be? If Atlanta’s too far more people look forward to maybe a different conference?
Kristin Leavoy 17:08
Sure. So our next conference will be in October, we always hold a spring and a fall MD Expo, they typically are in April and October. The October conference will be October 11th, through the 13th in Southern California, specifically, Temecula. Those from that area may recognize the name Pechanga, which is an Indian Resort Casino. Just not too far from Temecula. One of the reasons we chose this venue is because the nice thing about casinos is they don’t need to get the revenue from room rates. So we have an incredibly affordable room rate for the fall conference. It’s a spectacular facility. They’ve got six or seven different restaurants on property, beautiful golf course, spas, you name it, it’s all right there in one location. And even though Northern California and wine country is known for being the best of the best, there is a hidden gem in Southern California, specifically, the Temecula area about their wine country. We had the when we were out there doing a site visit had the pleasure of going to a couple of the wineries and scabbing them out for venues and was just blown away by the hospitality and the appreciation of the properties there.
Chyrill Sandrini 18:41
Yeah, Temecula is a beautiful area living in California, you know, just north of San Diego. It’s easy drive from San Diego or Ontario, so very familiar with the area. So I’m excited. There’s one close to home. Yeah, so overall, what do you think that if somebody’s thinking right now they’re on the fence like should I go or should I not go would be something you would say you got to be there because of?
Kristin Leavoy 19:09
Well, I’d say the networking. If there’s anything that the past two years have taught us, what you can do over the computer is not the same as what you do in person. There’s so many spur the moment conversations that pop up for attendees and vendors alike, whether it’s waiting for the elevator together or going down to get their morning coffee, exchanging between classes in the exhibit hall, you bump into people and it sparks a conversation. In the world of zoom in there’s nothing sparked everybody plans to be there and that’s how they show up. But there’s just the authenticity of those conversations and relationships that take place at the event and I think You know, particularly for our conference, it’s so easy. You know, even if you’re an introvert is easy to meet people and talk to people because we we kind of force you together. That’s part of the reason that we hold our conferences in hotels, instead of convention centers, we want everybody under one roof for the duration of the conference, we want all of those opportunities to exist. Whereas if you’re just coming to a large convention center for that day’s meetings, or exhibit hall hours, you’re in and you’re out, you kind of check out as soon as you leave the building. But what’s nice about the MD Expo is from the time you step foot on site, at the conference to the time you leave, you really are open to any spontaneous conversation or introduction that may occur. And
Chyrill Sandrini 20:52
locations to lunches and dinner. I got to tell you a couple things, I would say wear comfortable shoes. Yes, like business casual, casual, and, and be prepared with something to give your name and your contact information with, right, you know, biomed don’t typically have business cards. So I would say that’d be some key points of me just attending to say, again, comfortable shoes. Yeah, and, and a way to put your name out there, whether you just cut up little pieces of paper you print out, you know, off your computer or address labels.
Kristin Leavoy 21:29
Yeah, we’ve actually thought about doing that in the past for attendees, but the the numbers grew and the information changed so quickly, that wasn’t really ideal for us. But I have seen attendees do that. And I think it’s a great idea. I think they just went out. And you know, whatever it was 10 or 12 on a page with their name and their email address and their phone number and they cut them up and they handed them out. That’s a great way to exchange information so that you’re not having to write everything down from booth to booth. A couple other resources that I wanted to tell you about that are on our website. If you’re looking to get permission, I guess from your leadership, we do have an attendee toolkit online, it’s under our resources tab. And this has a letter that you can send to your manager as to why they should approve you to attend the MB Expo, we also have a template for how to estimate any expenses that may occur. And also networking opportunities that you’re gonna walk away with from going to the MB Expo, we also have our social media toolkit, this is great to let the world know that you’re going to be out there, whether you’re a vendor or an attendee, we provide social media graphics that you can share. Of course, on your social platforms, email signatures, you name it. And if you ever want anything customized, we’re happy to do that as well.
Chyrill Sandrini 22:58
That’s awesome. So we’d like to like close this up today and give you like an opportunity because you’ve been doing this a long time. I don’t know how long you’ve been with Tech Nation?
Kristin Leavoy 23:10
Well, MD publishing 20 years. Yeah. Wow.
Chyrill Sandrini 23:14
So you’ve you’ve seen quite a few things in this industry. So we’d like to learn from you now. So if you can leave our listeners and our viewers with just a few words of wisdom, we call them our Wow words. What would you like to share with everybody?
Kristin Leavoy 23:30
I think and I sort of touched on it briefly. It’s networking. And it’s just opening yourself up to the opportunity to hear from other people and learn from other people. Obviously, going to the conference you intend to learn from the educational sessions, but just keeping your ears open, and listening to what those around you have to say. It’s invaluable. I think whether it’s somebody who’s brand new to the industry, or someone who’s seasoned professional, there’s always an opportunity to grow and learn. I think it’s so much easier to do at a conference than it is to do you know, researching online or studying for an exam or reading a book or even a magazine because somebody’s sharing with you their personal experiences and what works for them. And I think that can go so far in helping folks understand more about this industry, but also how to grow within it.
Chyrill Sandrini 24:32
Yeah, 100% I really like that, opening yourself up to listening and learning. That’s it. So if you need more information regarding you know MD Expo, tech nation, you can reach out to Kristin we’ll make all your contact available. If you just search tech nation, you’re gonna find it. You can always reach out to me Sherelle your host MultiMedical systems, and we look forward to seeing you in Atlanta my friend.
Kristin Leavoy 24:57
Yes, can’t wait to see everybody smile faces
Chyrill Sandrini 25:01
all right we’ll see you again make sure you follow htm insider where you listen to your favorite podcast or just check it out online with tech nation and earn CEU credits for every time you listen so thanks again Kristin Thank you