In the wake of HIMSS20 being cancelled, many people whose HIMSS presentations were accepted for this year’s conference are lamenting the fact that the sessions that they worked so hard to get accepted won’t be given.
Let’s face it, there is a ton of work that goes into submitting presentations for HIMSS, including the process of preparing those lengthy and detailed applications. As a colleague described in a previous blog, “the process is not easy and takes anywhere from 12-16 hours per proposal” and “HIMSS has a less than 30% acceptance rate.”
So, you might be asking, what do we do now? For many it feels like that opportunity is lost, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are some different ways to take the content you were going to present and still get it out there.
- Take advantage of HIMSS’ virtual conference.
- Plan your own virtual conference: You can conduct a webinar with the information you were going to present at HIMSS, with both a live virtual presentation and on-demand access after the fact.
- Use information from your HIMSS presentation to draft thought leadership articles and case studies. There are likely a ton of facts and statistics that were a part of the presentation that could be included.
- Look at other conferences for speaking opportunities later in the year or in 2021 that you can submit these completed presentations to knowing that some of the stats may need to be updated and the submissions will need to be customized for each opportunity.
The cancellation of HIMSS20 doesn’t mean that all the hard work that you put into your presentations must go to waste. The show can still go on, just a bit differently.
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