By Michael Porat
ADVERTORIAL
Seeing is Believing 2013 (www.sib2013.com) is optometry’s first virtual conference designed to bring high quality, dynamic content to practices across the US and Canada. The two-day conference, Jan 30-31, 2013, will bring optometry the value of virtual conferencing experienced by many other industries that have used the technology for many years now. Cost savings are the obvious value but the return on investment does not stop there. “We can achieve a very high quality presentation with video and other multimedia elements,” reports Daniel Rostenne, co-founder of Seeing is Believing and CEO of EyeCarePro, the conference operator. “By having our speakers pre-record, we achieve a higher level of quality that is beneficial to both our speakers as well as our attendees–and frees them up to answer questions ‘live’ during their presentation.”
While ongoing staff education and training is often touted as the secret to a smooth-running, successful practice, optometrists struggle to provide their staff with high quality education that fits with the needs and time constraints of the practice. Staff education has many, many values including heightened retention, increased staff satisfaction and a smoother running, more productive office. But many optometrists are also perplexed by the few options available and the high cost of training, food, lodging and transportation for their staff associated with training.
The conference is already exciting optometric practices. “We are incredibly interested in using SiB to provide training for our staff of 37,” says Heather Glass, director of business operations for My Eyes Optometry, a five-office practice in North Carolina. “It would be impossible for us to take 37 people to a conventional conference.” Often, practices do without any kind of formal training for their staff because of the disruption to the office schedule when staff members are not at their jobs. “We believe the flexibility of the conference will give several of our staff members the ability to participate,” says Anita Dozier, business operations director at Coley and Coley Eyecare in Murfreesboro, Tenn., who will have four to six staff members participating. “Time constraints with families and obligations can make it difficult to take the staff to offsite conferences,” she says.
Seeing is Believing 2013 offers a robust selection of training and education that staff can access throughout the day from their desktops. “The topics are diverse enough and allow numerous areas of the office to benefit,” says Ms. Dozier. The content of Seeing is Believing (SiB) is also geared more towards the operations of the practice, and therefore, has numerous presentations that all staff members should attend. “We are also interested in the classes focused on online marketing and competing with online optical,” says Ms. Glass. In fact, most of the courses at SiB can be attended by optometrists, opticians and staff alike.
Virtual conferencing means little to no interruption in the workflow of the office. Hours of the day can be set aside in advance to have staff members attend various presentations and exhibits. Conference educational sessions can be divided across the staff with each employee, or pair of employees, attending a different presentation with the assignment of reporting out what they learned to the rest of the staff later. At Coley and Coley, pairs of staff members will be assigned specific presentations to maximize their time. A hybrid model will be used at My Eyes Optometry, assembling staff to view some presentations together while also assigning specific presentations to certain staff members or groups of staff members to report back on at a later date.
Virtual conferencing need not be an isolating event. Dinner can be brought in to make the in-service day a little more social and fun. Seeing is Believing 2013 even offers a virtual food court where practices can order Domino’s pizza to be delivered to the practice during the conference. It doesn’t get much easier than that! Dinner is a great time to discuss the presentations attended and those that will be attended later that evening. Dinner together as a staff also means socializing and teambuilding which is an essential ingredient to a successful practice.
But the learning does not end at the conference. Practices can extend the learning opportunities in several ways. “For those sessions not attended by all staff, we have asked staff members to report out via e-mail what they learned in assigned sessions,” says Ms. Glass. The effect of this reporting extends the conference benefits many times over. Additionally, it has been shown that staff members who are asked to report or to teach what they learned have significantly better retention of the material provided. At Coley and Coley, information from the conference will be shared at their monthly staff meetings.
For registered attendees, Seeing is Believing 2013 also provides access to recordings of all educational sessions for 30 days in the SiB library. “We are offering over 35 sessions from some of the top thinkers and experts in optometry,” says Alan Glazier, OD, FAAO, co-founder and planning board chair of Seeing is Believing 2013. “Like any conference, it is impossible for attendees to see all, or even most, of the presentations over two days. We hope everyone will take full advantage of the continuing education this library of recordings will provide well beyond the conference dates.”
In all, SiB organizers have seen a trend towards entire practices registering for the event, not just individuals. “We thought there might be an interest in using the conference as a staff training event,” says Michael Porat, Seeing is Believing’s conference coordinator. “So we created a special single price of $219 for the entire practice which is less than the price of one plane ticket anywhere.” SiB organizers are anticipating over 1,000 participants at the event which takes place on January 30-31 from 2 pm to 10 pm EST, with the keynote address by Edward Zuckerberg, DDS, whose son, Mark Zuckerberg, is the founder and CEO of Facebook.
Michael Porat is conference coordinator of the Seeing is Believing Conference. To contact him: michael@eyecarepro.net.
