AAMFT Reflections

Today is the last day of the annual American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) that was in Portland, Oregon.  My wife and I enjoyed our trip to Charlotte, North Carolina last year that we named our daughter Charlotte!  No kid on the way this year, so I doubt we'll be naming one Portland, but I sure did enjoy this trip.  In a lot of ways I enjoyed this conference more, in some ways less.  The biggest thing that I enjoyed less was I didn't see any family and I've missed my wife and daughter.  The other reflections are:


1.  AAMFT made a shift to "go green" this year providing all handouts, evaluations, and conference guides primarily online (only on paper if you make a big stink about it).  While I totally support "going green" and am committed more than any of my family members would like to recycling, reducing, and reusing the "going green" effort at the conference seems less about helping the environment and more about helping the conference preparation--but this is a minor issue and not the focus of my point.  The point I have to make is that the AAMFT app that includes all useful conference information is not as easy as having a paper guide that is huge.  Half the time the app doesn't work because it is frozen or stuck and needs to be reset--which I learned how to do finally.  The biggest problem was the app requires an internet connection (or phone signal) to provide any useful information about the schedule or location of sessions.  This works well at your hotel room, but barely down in the rooms of the conference.  Seems like the schedule and room list could be included in downloaded content.  The other huge deal is that the app is annoying to navigate.  Each page should have an Ipad-like square that can be clicked on at any time to open it rather than having a wheel to cycle through that after one use bugs out so that you must cycle through it blindly.  It seems that the same team that built the AAMFT website built the app.  I avoid using both at all cost due to the annoyance factor.
Also, the AAMFT team kept pushing the site m.aamft.org as a guide which was very useful, but not when the was no connection in the bowels of the conference center.

2.  I volunteered this year and loved it.  Conference registration was much cheaper and I met a lot of other MFT students in the process.  I would absolutely recommend other students to volunteer if they have the chance.  In addition to meeting students it helped me to meet members of the AAMFT board and presenters at the conference.

3.  It seems that the schedule of the conference was a little erratic.  Sometimes we'd have 3 hours for lunch, others only an hour.  I'm sure there were other meetings going on, but not available to the general population attending the conference.  Along with this schedule issue:  The AAMFT Showcase of accredited programs was on Thursday night (the first night) and the "Cutting-Edge" poster session was on Saturday (the last night) and each was only 1 hour long, but the unattended "fun night" is 4 hours long.  Each year it is difficult to kick people out of the Poster session and the AAMFT showcase because there are so many people wanting to stay longer than an hour.  Why not give these a little more time?  I know I have never had enough time in these--especially during the AAMFT showcase where each program has a booth that's easy to find.

4.  Along with the poster session, it seems like there were fewer posters and a lot more posters from Professors and fewer from students.  What's up with that?  Also calling them "cutting-edge" doesn't mean more people are interested because research bores most clinicians (that make up the majority of attendees).

5.  Along with this topic of most of the population being bored.  Why is this the case?  Why are the keynote speakers not more familiar with MFT fields research?  (Because they are not in the field)  Some of the keynote speakers even seemed to bore themselves to sleep while presenting.  A lot of the presentations are boring lecture-like classes of being at college where paying attention in class OR reading the text allow the same outcome as doing both. 

6.  Network!  Last year I met a few people, and most that I did meet left no lasting impression because I was too timid to ask more probing questions.  This year, I came to the conference with a purpose--I want to get into a PhD program and I want to meet as many people as possible.  So rather than just having lunch and dinner and talking with friends that I already know, I did my best to constantly be talking to new people.  It was great!  Through talking to so many people I have really gained some direction in my PhD quest that was largely nebulous before this weekend. I think the best example of the benefit of my networking was shown to me during today's seminar when a PhD student tracked my down because he had talked to someone else that I had met at this conference.  It was great to see my network referring people to me without having to make any effort.


In summary, I have loved this year's conference and can't wait for next year in Milwaukee!