Dan O'Connor
EDITOR'S PAGE
ORX VI
Join us in New Orleans for a truly meaningful, memorable conference.
I wanted to touch base with our leadoff speaker, so I called his cell phone 20 minutes or so before he'd give his talk to open up OR
Excellence.
"Hey, it's Dan. Just making sure you're all set."
The pregnant pause was my first clue he wasn't.
"Umm, I'm at the airport."
"The airport? Wow, you'd better hurry up. You're on in 20 minutes."
Now you tell me. If you heard "I'm at the airport," wouldn't you assume that he was a cab ride away from taking the stage? So did I. Wrong. Turns out he was about to board a plane hundreds of miles away. Thanks to an epic mixup, he thought he was speaking the next morning. I begged him to tell me he was kidding, but I knew I was knee-deep in a hair-raising, heart-racing moment. Gulp!
Thankfully, things worked out. We were able to slide 2 facility leaders who were scheduled to speak the next day into our wayward speaker's spot. They were neither properly dressed nor fully rehearsed, but in the spirit of "the show must go on," they stood and delivered. We'll never forget them for that.
Such are the trials and tribulations when you're hosting a live event. Not to say that we haven't published our fair share of mistakes, but unlike producing a magazine, where you have the time and luxury to edit, rewrite and correct typos before they make it onto the page, your false starts and warts are out there for all to see when they happen live at a conference.
In this issue, we're proud to unveil the program for the 6th OR Excellence (orexcellence.com) on p. 69. This year's show is Oct. 14 to 17 at the New Orleans Marriott. We've lined up great sessions and great speakers for surgery's friendliest, funnest gathering (trust me when I tell
