National Meeting - In Review

Overall

- 54% increase in attendance from 90 students to 139 this year.
- 1st International Chapter attendance: Andrew Monchar from Royal Veterinary College and John Graham from Ross University.
- Students from across the country and the world had the opportunity to network, learn more about business education, and pursue their personal and professional goals.

Strategic Planning
Awards
Business Education
Networking

Strategic Planning

The National VBMA meeting gives the organization's National Officers the chance to work on strategic planning for the organization for the year.

2009 National Planning Projects:
- Building national infrastructure
- Brand promotion
- Increasing chapter communication
- Leveraging Regional Leaders

This year we launched our first Regional Leader strategic planning session, giving regional leaders the opportunity to meet, talk, exchange ideas and participate in discussions better defining their roles.

Awards

The National VBMA Conference gives the VBMA the chance to recognize those chapters that went up and above in the previous year. This year the VBMA had the chance to recognize these four chapters that went up and above in terms of hours of business education, membership, and compliance. Awards are based on those chapters that gained the most metrics points – a system which can be found here.

1st place University of Pennsylvania	2nd place The Ohio State University
3rd Place Auburn University	4th Place Tufts University

Simmons Educational Fund also recognized Nina Kieves as the winner of their $10,000 national business essay contest award at the National Meeting. More information is available on their student website.

Business Education

The VBMA had three major business education events at the conference this year.

• Dr. Mary Anne Vande Linde's discussion was well received. Her discussion was interactive and had us working in small groups together discussing what we felt was important to a team and a leader. She also spoke about the importance of leadership and communication. We delved into what it means to be a good leader and how to apply these skills in our lives now as students and in the future as leaders of our industry. She discussed the finer parts of communication skills and how this is such an important part of working with clients, members of your team and other people in your life. VBMA members can download her powerpoint from our website at this link here.

• Dr. Rick Debowes gave a presentation on the importance of business education in insuring compliance in your practice. This was one of the events that the students found most enjoyable. Dr. DeBowes described several ways that students could increase their value to the practices they go to work for by increasing owner compliance. He gave several examples of how a new associate veterinarian could bring additional income into a practice including recommending prescription diets to all patients that would benefit from it and encouraging owners to have a dental prophylaxis performed on their pet every year if needed. His main point was that by increasing owner compliance doctors can practice better medicine and their patients will have better outcomes because they will be receiving everything that they need to live a long life. This message was extremely important as many students and practitioners are concerned about being profitable in this tough economy.

• Elephant in the Room The students attended this second annual interactive educational experience discussion organized by Vet Partners. This year's discussion differed slightly from last year's as it included a panel discussion and 4 mini presentations on veterinary business myths such as whether women can be effective practice owners and whether graduating veterinarians can still afford to own a practice. Then students had the opportunity to discuss current veterinary business issues and how the industry can solve them with hundreds of professional veterinarians and industry consultants. Of the event, students said

• It's great to feel part of the veterinary community even as a student
• It really motivated me to get moving and spread the word"
• "Elephant in the Room—it really motivated me to get moving and spread the word."
• "It was fantastic to talk about issues with industry professionals.

The VBMA is excited about the continuing role its students can play in moving the profession forward. More information on the Elephant in the Room discussions can be found on the Vet Partner's Website.

Networking

Students networked with industry professions, sponsors, and one another. This is consistently one of student's favorite parts of the conference, with 47% of students stating that they would like to spend more time on networking events.

Traditionally the VBMA hosts its speed networking event on the Friday night before the conference starts. This year's event was a huge success, requiring a room twice as big as last year's. Students networked with the VBMA's national officers and over 50 industry professionals.

The VBMA doubled the opportunities for chapter officers to network with one another through chapter breakout sessions on Saturday and regional breakout sessions on Sunday. Students on the whole found these to be the two most useful portions of the conference. These sessions gave students the chance to talk with one another and share ideas and resources that they have used to make their chapters successful.

National Sponsors were tremendously vital to the success of this meeting, and we would like to formally thank them for their continued support.

The VBMA looks forward to increasing networking opportunities for its students and sponsors in following years of the NVBMA Conference.