Vision Expo East 2016 Recap - All of the Major Highlights

Once again, doctors, staff, and vendors had a fantastic week of education, entertainment, and making long lasting friendships.

For anyone who wasn't able to attend, here is a brief summary of the major highlights from Vision Expo East 2016, which might hopefully give you enough reason to attend next year's event!

The Young Professionals Club events at Vision Expo began on Friday with the annual YPC lunch. This year, the lunch featured education on dry eye and how to treat and manage this condition from an expert in the field, Dr. Dave Kading. If that wasn't enough, we had the honor of listening to Tom Sullivan, a musician, actor, entertainer, radio show host, and an accomplished author delivers an absolute emotional and riveting talk on what it means to as eyecare professionals to provide sight and vision. It just so happens, that Tom Sullivan was blind at birth.

I cannot recommend enough that new grads join the Young Professionals Club. Being a member of the Young Professionals Club truly helped facilitate networking, attending education, and forming strong relationships with leaders in the profession!

Friday evening, the annual OD's on Facebook Party kicked off the festivities! Dr. Alan Glazier's well-known Facebook group turned out in massive numbers to kick back and relax with fellow OD's, and enjoy the atmosphere at B.B King Blues Club & Grill. It is always a can't miss event that everyone attending the show finds time to make!

It could not have been planned any better, as the Vision Expo Opening Night Party picked up exactly where things left off at B.B King Blues Club & Grill. Although the OD's on Facebook Party concluded, the festivities continued late into the night as the Bad Habits "Eye Docs of Rock" took the stage and put on an absolutely killer performance. Young professionals and established docs alike danced, sang, and mingled the night away. These guys are really good!

As expected, the YPC did not disappoint, and hosted an awesome party that weekend! This event, which was held Saturday evening at Sky Room NYC, allowed YPC members to enjoy appetizers, drinks, and each other's company and killer unobstructed views of the NYC skyline from the roof deck. Most members stuck around even after the event was over to continue networking and meet new faces!

Aside from networking and entertainment, Vision Expo East proved to be the ultimate destination for education. We are all required to complete a certain amount of continuing education each year for licensure renewal.

Vision Expo East, as usual, had more than enough continuing education hours available to satisfy any state requirements. Topics including contact lenses, ocular disease, billing and coding, as well as practice management were in abundance. Classes were offered at all times and all days throughout the conference catering to anyone's busy schedule. As a member of the Young Professionals Club, you are afforded six free hours of continuing education!

Vision Expo East has enough exhibit hall space to allow for booths from almost every vendor imaginable. If you were looking to purchase optical supplies, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and or just learn something from our contact lens and industry partners, there was ample opportunity to do so. Attendees could easily spend hours in the Vision Expo East exhibit hall, and I'd highly recommend checking it out in 2017.

In addition to the commonly recognized names such as Essilor, Allergan, Johnson & Johnson, etc., there are countless up and coming companies for you to get to know.

NewGradOptometry.com had the pleasure of interviewing many of our key industry leaders from these companies, as well as other very influential figures in this profession.

NewGradOptometry partnered with Covalent Careers to have our very own booth. We utilized Vision Expo to connect with industry partners, as well as some of the "top dogs" in the profession to generate amazing video content on topics that all new grads and older grads alike could benefit from. We will be releasing this video content of the course of the next 12 months, so stay tuned for incredible stuff coming your way!

It's hard to believe Vision Expo East 2016 is already over, but I'm happy to say it was a great success.

The good news is, Vision Expo West is fast approaching! So, make your plans to be in Las Vegas September 14-17 now!