“I always enjoy meeting old friends at this meeting.”
“Me, too.”
“Learned anything?”
“A few things, but there doesn’t seem to be much new.”
“I know what you mean.”
“It just seems to be the same old researchers and companies. But there's just so much more over-the-top marketing going on. God, if I see one more 256-color mapping system with little dots all over the left atrium, all claiming to be better than the next system, I'm gonna puke! There must be huge budgets to promote this stuff – most of which does help a rat’s ass at fixin’ the frickin’ afib – it looks more like a radiology meeting than an EP meeting. And did you see? Boston Scientific miraculously got their new devices approved by the FDA three to four months earlier than expected they said and yet, boy, somehow they had all the displays up already – like they “knew” all along! What a crock...."
* * * Laughing * * *
“Hey, do you know what that (Medtronic) ‘Vision 3D’ on that go-cart over there means?”
“No. Do you?”
“No clue. But man, did you see it’s plastered on the sides of the buildings and the stairs and frickin’ everywhere?. I heard someone say they got pissed that they were out-marketed by the other guys at last year’s conference, so they decided to go all out this year. I do kind of like those little go-cart thingies... maybe they should use those as shuttles to the hotels..."
“The commercialism just seems over-the-top. The *&#$*# poster sessions were like an afterthought – HRS gave more convention floor space to the companies than the poster display areas. There were so many people, I couldn’t even walk between the rows of posters! All that work – overshadowed by corporate displays.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. The abstract sessions today – you know, the good, stuff – I heard there were 23 different sessions running concurrently. How could we even see a small portion of that?”
“You know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think that if they keep this up, that lots of folks will stop coming and just wait to see the presentations online.”
-Wes
