AMDA’s Journey to Meeting Back In Person

The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine’s annual conference has undergone several transformations since 2020.Here’s what the society’s meetings manager, Kristin Pichon, has learned about her members as a result.

Author: Casey Gale       

Masked participants at 2022 AMDA conference

Though AMDA held its 2022 annual conference in Baltimore, the meeting’s digital component was also well attended.

Convene editors reached out to a handful of organizations to see how they are incorporating lessons learned from the ways the pandemic affected their audiences, stakeholders, and members into their go-forward strategies. This is one in a series of stories from the January/February issue of Convene.

When the world was in lockdown, many organizations whipped their in-person events into virtual versions in short order. But the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine (AMDA) may have set a record: In 2020, organizers moved its annual conference, PALTC, scheduled for the first week of April, from an in-person to virtual event in just three weeks.

“We jumped on Zoom,” said Kristin Pichon, CMP, meetings manager at AMDA, which represents a community of more than 50,000 medical directors, physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and other practitioners working in post-acute and long-term care settings. “At the time, we were probably one of the first organizations to completely go virtual and not just cancel, because after our program, we had other organizations reach out to us and ask how we did it.”

Pichon had never organized a virtual event before, and so her team was just “learning as we went,” she told Convene. And her attendees were learning, too — many of them, she said, “aren’t very savvy when it comes to the computer.” But since AMDA’s members primarily work in nursing homes — one of the hardest-hit sectors at the beginning of the pandemic — they needed a forum to talk with their peers.

“Given everything that was happening in the world, they were all just so thankful to be able to connect and share their stories and their pain of what they were going through in their facilities,” Pichon said, adding that most speakers who were scheduled for the in-person event still spoke over Zoom, and some networking events were offered online as well.

Since that time, AMDA’s annual conference has gone through several transformations. In 2021, it returned in the virtual format, but with much more planning time behind it — AMDA partnered with event tech company Cadmium to provide a full digital experience for nearly 1,200 attendees.

“Cadmium themselves came a long way during that year where everybody was going virtual,” Pichon said. “I think our attendees learned a lot, too. They were better at it; the speakers were better at it. But again, being able to have that connection, even though it was online, was so important to them.”


When I walked into a convention center or even a hotel in the past, I didn’t really pay attention to how much furniture was out in the hallways or the lobby area. Now that’s something I really pay attention to because our attendees are really looking for that space where they can connect on their own.”

Kristin Pichon, CMP, meetings manager at the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine (AMDA)

In March 2022, AMDA held a hybrid event in Baltimore and online, with attendance at about 950 in-person and 527 digital attendees, Pichon said. That hybrid experience gave Pichon the opportunity to see for herself why members attended an in-person event and how she could use that to model AMDA’s events moving forward: They just want to talk with one another.

“So many more people were sitting out in the hallways and just having conversations or networking with each other,” Pichon said. “When I walked into a convention center or even a hotel in the past, I didn’t really pay attention to how much furniture was out in the hallways or the lobby area. Now that’s something I really pay attention to because our attendees are really looking for that space where they can just connect on their own or have private conversations. It’s not just about the education. … We need to make our in-person meeting more about being back together.”

Pichon also realized that some of AMDA’s audience will likely never travel to physically attend the annual conference, because its virtual programs captured “a huge number of people — several hundred — who had never come to our in-person meeting in the past.” For that group, AMDA has rolled out new online offerings, including the EDGE Virtual Symposium that covers cutting-edge issues in the industry. That virtual program is not connected to its annual conference, which is planned to be held entirely in person in Tampa, March 9-12, 2023.

“I think from the pandemic, we learned that we need to evolve,” Pichon said. “We’re definitely offering some more networking opportunities and cutting back on some of the education.” For example, AMDA’s annual conference used to run nine concurrent sessions at a time, but feedback from attendees at PALTC22 event indicated that all that programming felt overwhelming, Pichon said. “They’re not able to see it all, and they really want to be with their friends,” she said. “So, we are really trying to give them that opportunity to just meet and be together.”

Casey Gale is managing editor at Convene.

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