More Thoughts on Conference Season

As Kerri mentioned in a previous blog entry, it's pretty much high travel season here at ADVANCE. We like to hit as many lab meetings and conferences as possible. Although we can't make it to every meeting, I feel like we do a pretty good job (with our staff of three) to travel and rub elbows with our dear readers. In fact, when I was at AABB a few weeks ago, I was sitting at a lunch table in the exhibit hall when the woman across the table said, "I actually found my job through ADVANCE." Thrilling! Even after 5 years of working at ADVANCE, I still I get so psyched when someone tells me that.

The woman across the lunch table found a pretty sweet position at the University of Tennessee at Memphis. Come to find out, she knew Linda Ross, Diane Wyatt and Linda Pifer ... all great women who have contributed greatly to our magazine. Small world, as they say.

I've been to California many times this year: a great vacation to San Francisco and wine country; to our Pasadena, Sacramento, Anaheim, San Jose and Ontario ADVANCE Job Fairs; and to AABB in Anaheim. Most disturbing was while at AABB, we could smell the smoke (even in our hotel rooms) from the wildfires. Because I have traveled all over the country for Job Fairs, meetings and conferences, I can attest that we really do live in a small world.

When things happen like the bridge collapse in Minnesota, I couldn't help but wonder about the readers and my contacts there. When an 5.9 magnitude earthquake hit San Jose a week after we hosted a meeting there, I couldn't help but wonder about the folks I'd just met there, hoping their houses sustained little damage. In that respect, it makes it much harder and emotional for us when we hear about tragedies like wildfire in Southern California. Like I said, it's a small world, and even smaller when you feel tears well up in your eyes when you're fairly certain readers of your magazine are impacted by tragedy.

As the wildfires die down, here's hoping our California subscribers are doing well in the wake of the terrible fires. And now that I've written this blog, I'll circle back to my original thought -- I'm traveling to Los Angeles on Wednesday for the Association for Molecular Pathology's meeting. It's the end of my back-to-back-to-back trips to California. After that, travel slows down here ... but we're already planning for 2008!