Any worries I had that lab folk are dull have been dispelled. I had the pleasure of attending the BC Society of Laboratory Scientists (BCSLS) 2016 Congress in Harrison Hot Springs, and it was a blast!
Thanks to the kind people at BCSLS, I won the chance to attend the conference through a poster contest. My experience wouldn’t have been possible without both the event organizer and the volunteer coordinator, so a big thank you goes out to them! They and their wonderful team worked tirelessly to make the event a success.
The location was perfect for the intent of the conference: to soak up knowledge. It was an amazing experience full of learning and fun, and I met some of the warmest, most engaging people.
I was also pleasantly surprised to see a lot of my teachers from BCIT there. Being in school you tend to compartmentalize: school things only happen at school. But this experience reinforced for me how connected instructors at BCIT are to the professions they teach, and how important those connections are.
There were so many awesome presentations, it was hard to choose which ones to attend! I ended up going to Biobanking and Pathology. It was an interesting look at how biobanking feeds into health research, and how it is changing to accommodate and improve such research.
I also attended Connecting the Links – Monitoring Moms with Maternal Antibodies in Vancouver Island. Using numerous interesting case studies involving mothers with significant antibodies, the presenter spoke about a project she undertook to improve how hospitals on Vancouver Island communicate with Canadian Blood Services and hospitals in the Lower Mainland.
In the evening I volunteered at the Amazing Race, a nightime social put on by the organizers. One of the themes of the conference was teamwork, which is essential to the laboratory, and this competition put participants to the test! The evening ended with dancing, and lots of it.
If you’re interested in learning more about the event and presentations, take a look at the BCSLS website.