So what is the “Synapse Bowl”?

I will be on vacation for a while after today, so I wanted to post something in my blog before I sign off for a week and a half.  But, because I am looking forward to time off, I am in a light-hearted mood, so cannot come up with a really serious educational topic, so how about something fun!!

I thought you all might like to know what the “Synapse Bowl” is! You may have seen this announced in our annual conference brochure.  For the past two years, we have run this as the closing event of the meeting.

Here is a picture of one of the teams, and one of the “game show” hosts, our own Board of Trustees member, Scott Blodgett, seen here as “Vanna White”.  The team is from the Central Society, and you can see the team name is “The Central Nerdy System”.  By the way, they won the completion this year.

This is a college-bowl type competition, with Jeopardy style questions.  Teams of four compete, two at a time.  Question categories are related to neurodiagnostics:  “I See You”, Polly Somm, E.P. Call Home, and the like.  Judge Judy (our current ASET president) presides and determines if a questionable answer is correct.

After tallying all the participant evaluations for the annual conference in St. Paul, I can say that this event got rave reviews!  This event awards ACE credits and provides a comprehensive review of many topics.

We’ll be looking for teams for next year, so please be thinking about this!  There is lots of fun and laughter and learning!

You can have fun learning!

I have been back from running the ASET 2012 Annual Conference in St. Paul for a couple of weeks, but have not had time to update my blog in a while.

I am still riding the wave of energy created by the wonderful experience.  There was lots of hands-on learning and lots of positive energy!

We tried a new three-day meeting format, dropping the Wed. afternoon session from years past.  We managed to pack everything into three days, and it seems like attendees gave us a “thumbs up” on this new program schedule!  So, we’ll be continuing on with this next year for the 2013 Annual Conference in Reno.

At this conference, we seemed to capitalize on “hands-on” interactive workshops and learning!  This picture is from the IONM Minimally Invasive Sundown Seminar.  You might call it “You are the surgeon”!  There was a simulated model of an open spine surgery with a full array of surgical instruments.  Techs were able to see and feel what the surgeon feels as the spine is manipulated. (Special Thanks to Medtronic for putting this together!)

We also had a great ICU EEG Trending Workshop!  Every participant with a laptop received a flash drive with trending software worked along with the instructor to trend EEG patterns.  (Special Thanks to Persyst for providing this workshop!)

In other sessions, techs were trying out Trans-cranial Doppler, NCS and all three modalities of Evoked Potentials.

All this and we still had time for the opening reception in the exhibit hall and a great Saturday night riverboat cruise with our own ASET band, “The Dendrites!”

Over the next two weeks, I will be tallying the attendee evaluations from St. Paul.  I  will use the feedback from the comments to help me plan content for next year.  I rely on feedback to ensure that the annual conference program has meaningful learning experiences for our members.

Thanks to all of you who attended the conference in St. Paul!  It was great to see all those smiling faces and I hope to see you all next year in Reno!