Attendance at AMWA-DVC Freelance Workshop

This is a conference/workshop I have been wanting to check out for a couple of years. It’s put on by the American Medical Writers Association’s Delaware Vally Chapter. Now that I have gone freelance on a full-time basis, it seemed like a perfect time to attend. I was not disappointed.

Unlike many of the other conferences I attend, where this is a mix of freelancers and those employed by others, everyone at the Freelance Workshop is very interested in networking and staying in touch with people. They understand that they need to know other freelancers in order to have others to refer work to, whether it’s because they are overbooked or because they get a request that is not in their wheelhouse, and to have others who can refer work to them.

I liked the combination of sessions that everyone attends with a couple of roundtables in the afternoon where people could choose sessions that fit their needs. I was especially interested in the Medical Editing roundtable, and I ended up meeting other medical editors who I hadn’t ended up chatting with during the rest of the day. A couple were even actively looking for additional freelancers to add to their businesses, so I followed up on those and one has me on her list for work later in the year and I am putting together a proposal to work with another.

It was a Saturday workshop, so I drove the 5 hours to get there on Friday and gathered with others for dinner the night before, which provided a nice introduction to the workshop. For medical writers and editors who are freelancers, this was definitely a worthwhile investment.

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