Conference Confessions

And a field guide to the human moments that linger long after the sessions end

The little moments? They aren’t little. - Jon Kabat-Zinn

The conference story everyone tells… and then the real story

Sure, I could offer the usual post-conference narratives: the “electric energy,” the “brilliant speakers,” the “game-changing insights” everyone seems contractually obligated to mention in their post-conference LinkedIn posts.

But what kind of fun would that be?

I have always loved looking at familiar things from a slightly off kilter angle. Guess it’s why I loved Madeline Miller’s Circe and The Song of Achilles so much. She takes myths you think you know (the stories of Odysseus and Achilles) and rotates the camera ten degrees capturing the point of view through the eyes of an unexpected, vibrant character. Suddenly you see the whole story through a different lens.

So I’ll let everyone else cover the usual stuff.

My story? I didn’t come home from the Behavioral Health Tech conference energized. I came home f&^%ing exhausted. The kind of coast-to-coast jet-lag-meets-conference-extroversion tired because you wake up at 3 a.m. thinking you’re still in Boston. Or the smiling blankly through 9 p.m. hallway conversations kind of tired at a hour when I’d normally be fast asleep on the sofa with Guy Fieri colorfully describing a cheeseburger in the background. This extrovert ran out of gas.

But here’s the other confession. I didn’t attend a single session, not a panel nor keynote nor breakout (sorry, Solome!). It will come as no surprise to anyone that the best part of a conference for me is the people, or more precisely, the interactions. It’s not what happens inside the rooms, it’s what happens outside them. What will stay with me long after the expo hall is dismantled are the tiny, awkward, sweet, unscripted, deeply human moments. The things don’t photograph well and certainly don’t fit neatly into a highlight reel. They are messy, tender, and, unsurprisingly, the most meaningful part of any conference.

The human petri dish

Conferences are like human petri dishes, with little organisms floating around in a nutrient-rich medium. Without the conference, people would not convene, ideas would not be exchanged, growth would not occur. It has all the elements: extroversion, insecurity, ambition, selective memory, recycled ideas, LinkedIn performance art, real expertise, pretend expertise (because well let’s be real conferences run on money and money sometimes buys you a seat on the podium…), caffeine, and the occasional crisis of confidence. Put them together in a warm environment with some key nutrients and things start to grow.

The encounter types

Once you start seeing a conference as a petri dish, the little human organisms swimming around become impossible to ignore. You start to notice the different phenotypes of the ways people bump into one another. These tiny moments make conferences feel alive, deeply human, and worth the discomfort of the financially driven reality underneath it all.

So from my slightly off angle camera lens, here are the types of interactions that shaped my week.

The “Do I Know You?”

This conference classic happened to me within the first few minutes of arrival. Someone walks toward you with the delighted confidence of a golden retriever puppy. They absolutely know who you are. Your brain, however, is a blank PowerPoint slide. Nothing. Nada. Zero data retrieved from your mental CRM.

And so begins the try-to-get-eyes-on-the-badge dance. The subtle downward glance. The cough and cover your mouth so you can peer at their belly button (this is why, by the way, I cinch my lanyard so my name tag sits just at the level of my sternum). Then there’s the mental cursing upon discovery that the badge is flipped backwards!

Eventually the memory clicks, or you just embrace the ambiguity. Either way, it’s awkward and humbling and somehow endearing. A reminder that our brains are doing their best in an environment designed to overwhelm them.

The Safe Harbor

Every conference has at least one person, and hopefully several, who serve as your emotional charging station. No performance required. No strategic small talk. No pretending you slept well. This year, someone I know well walked up to me and said, “You are my island.” That might be the sweetest thing I’ve ever been told at a conference.

It reminded me of being a kid when we’d pretend the carpet was a hot lava field and the sofa cushions we tossed on the floor would be safe zones. Conferences are the adult version of that. Lava everywhere. And a handful of people who provide you safety and a moment to breathe. These safe harbors make the week survivable. They remind you that some connections are not transactional; they are literally a lifeline. Sometimes you just need to land on a cushion and exhale.

The Matchmaker Moment

I climbed the escalator with an executive from a large health plan in front of me and a clinician founder/CEO of a digital health company behind me, both of whom I know well. Without thinking I said, “You two need to know each other,” followed by “You need to work with her company!” to the health plan exec.

One of the gifts of being farther along in my career (I’ve apparently achieved grandma status at BHT!) is realizing you know enough incredible people that introducing them feels like a real contribution. It’s a small bit of cross-pollination that just might end up shaping something meaningful and new.

The Quiet Coaching Moment

I had a catch up meeting with a friend who is new in their role, loving it, but also 100% drinking from the fire hose. We began with business: hiring needs, product decisions, patient engagement challenges. But the conversation quickly unfurled into the more personal, what’s feeling deeply overwhelming, what’s exhausting, and what feels untenable.

I was in my happy place: in coaching mode. Normalizing, reflecting, sharing stories, offering lessons from having seen this movie play before, the good parts and the messy stuff. And in a highly unscripted moment, I even found myself offering a bit of marital advice. A private exchange about someone’s marriage will never show up on those glossy recap posts, but it might have been some of the most meaningful work I did all week.

The Nudge

Some conversations are quietly catalytic. Not business development. Not coaching. Just a seed being planted.

One friend asked whether I was still thinking about a wild entrepreneurial idea I had shared long ago. It felt like encouragement or even license to slap one more layer of paint on a still-unfinished canvas. It’s an idea that’s just nascent and not ready for public consumption, but maybe, just maybe, it could turn into a masterpiece one day.

These nudges are subtle, but they shift something. A little spark lodges itself somewhere deep inside you. Who knows? One day maybe I’ll remember this as the “Bartlett for America” scribbled on a napkin moment, the beginning of something.

Final reflections: beyond the content

After four days in this human petri dish, I came home tired in the way only conferences can exhaust you. Everyone else is posting about “incredible energy,” and I am over here grateful my Garmin body battery finally crested 80, up from a bleak morning 37 earlier this week.

But I also came home reminded that conferences are rarely about the content. They are about the coming together, and all the content, the rah-rah, the swag in the expo hall, and, yes, the money, only exist to enable that.

The real story lives in the interactions. When you squint from a few steps to the side, the beauty of the petri dish might just unfurl right in front of your eyes.

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