APA Takes Step to Reduce Overcrowding of Popular Sessions

APA’s Office of Scientific Programs works hard to minimize the chance that meeting registrants who want to attend popular sessions will be turned away due to overcrowding. Using data from previous Annual Meetings, staff create a model that tries to predict which sessions might have overflow crowds and then assign sessions to specific rooms based on size. The information is provided to the “room and space subcommittee” of the Scientific Program Committee, which is composed of APA members with expertise across the field of psychiatry. This group reviews the schedule and makes manual adjustments to the model. After further analysis, sessions on related topics are scheduled in the same geographic area of the convention center so that if one session is filled, meeting registrants can attend a nearby session on a related topic.

“Since we have put this process in place,” said Tristan Gorrindo, M.D., director of APA’s Division of Education, “we have seen a great decrease in the number of sessions with overflow crowds. In the event that a session attracts more attendees than allowed by the room’s capacity, however, we will have six overflow theaters at the Moscone Center that can pull in live feeds from most sessions at the Annual Meeting.” ■