Attending TEDMED2012

Apr 6, 2012

Next week, I’ll travel to Washington, D.C., to attend TEDMED2012, where I’ll be an invited blogger. I’m looking forward to these three days of talks and conversations that “explore the ideas, innovations and challenges that will help shape the future of health and medicine for 300 million Americans…and the world.”

Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, will be one of the speakers. I’m sure the thousand other delegates will vie for his attention, but if I happen to run into him, I’ll thank him for taking the time to sit down with me (and Erin and others) in Chapel Hill back in 2000; I’ll explain to him that his willingness to listen to a graduate student inspired my attempts to combine my journalism background, public health interest and new media skills. Soon after grad school, I started my collaboration with Bora Zivkovic — Bora will attend TEDMED, too, along with ScienceOnline’s executive director, Karyn Traphagen.

It’s through ScienceOnline2012 that we met a couple of the TEDMED organizers, who invited us up to Washington to experience this gathering. We’re excited to see what we can learn, and what we might bring back to ScienceOnline.

Ivan Oransky, who has attended all six of the ScienceOnline conferences, will also be a TEDMED2012 speaker, along with Jonathan Eisen, and Diane Kelly, also scio12 alums.

While I’m at TEDMED in Washington, TEDMED will be at Duke via a live simulcast sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges (it was an AAMC meeting, for communications, marketing and development folks, that I attended last month in Palm Springs).

One reason I’m jazzed about attending TEDMED is my 40s-decade focus on narrative. I’ll be listening for the different ways that the speakers tell, and show, their stories.

[Edited to include Diane Kelly; HT Ben Lillie]

Anton Zuiker ☄