I attended the 5th annual Massachusetts Association for Applied Behavior Analysis conference yesterday. I’ll get right to the point and tell you that I thought it was great (except for the Friday night traffic on the way home). I’ll have more posts that are specific to some of the talks that I attended, but I’d like to start with sharing a five general observations:
1. From a demographic perspective, the attendees seemed to skew towards a young, female population. If you’re looking for more substantive data to back up my observations, let me just say that the mens' restroom that was located right outside the main ballroom was, how shall I say, “re-purposed,” as a women’s room, leaving us guys to trek across the lobby to use other facilities (I guess that would count as a permanent product?). I was going to take a picture of the paper, “Womens” sign (and associated international bathroom symbol) to post here as proof, but I worried that other people, upon seeing me take a picture of a women’s room, would get the wrong idea, and throw me out on my ear.
2. More on the attendees: I don’t think that I was expecting otherwise, but just from talking with people, and overhearing conversations as I was waiting in line for this and that, it seemed as if there was quite a bit of sophistication in the work that the attendees were doing. So on a general level, I was really excited for our practice flourish in this manner.
3. The event was sold out. According to the President of MassABA, there were 700 people attending the conference. Here’s another fun fact I learned: in 2010, there were 250 BCBA’s in Massachusetts, and now there are 1300! This makes Massachusetts the most dense concentration (per captia) of BCBA’s in the world. Amazing!
4. The registration/Continuing Education process was really smooth. The only thing that slowed down my registration was me not having my certificate number handy. This was a way more civilized process than the antiquated and frustrating process that I experienced at ABAI last year (and years prior as well).
5. It wasn’t an Autism-specific conference. As someone who was originally trained in the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, I was glad to see that there were talks on a variety of subjects. In fact, the three Keynote addresses covered topics as diverse as drug taking, gambling, and the application of behavior analytic principals and methods in other scientific fields. I work with individuals with a wide variety of presenting problems, so this was a pleasant surprise.
Until I get a chance to write up some additional thoughts on the event, I’ll leave you with this hilarious Youtube clip that was part of Dr. Carl Hart’s morning keynote address, “Thinking About Drugs Through a Socially Conscious Lens.”