Trying To Do #JPM23 From Afar: A Pale, Dry Imitation
Eight years ago, STAT's Adam Feuerstein decided not to attend the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference. For reporters and communicators, Adam is one of the godfathers of the conference, a reporter who helped establish the idea that ignoring the meeting was media malpractice.
The idea of J.P. Morgan without Adam Feuerstein was hard to contemplate, so Real Chemistry tried to help Adam attend the conference virtually. We commissioned a bobblehead of Adam and made sure that "Mini-Adam" was able to get to the right receptions and watering holes. (Through the magic of Twitter, you can still see @fauxfeuerstein's conference experience.)
Eight years and one pandemic later, the idea of doing J.P. Morgan virtually seemed less extreme. This year, competing priorities kept me away from the meeting, but I figured that the magic of modern technology could allow me to "do" #JPM23 from afar. Even without a bobbleheaded doppelganger.
Unsurprisingly, JPM is a different experience from afar. And unsurprisingly, going virtual makes the networking-heavy meeting a substantially worse one. But the specifics about what I missed and what I gained did have some surprises.
There is an advantage to being removed from the hurly-burly of the conference. It makes trends, in some ways, easier to pick out when you view the activity from 30,000 feet, freed from the need to have an immediate opinion on everything. I'm particularly interested in drug pricing, so when Endpoint's Zach Brennan tweeted that the topic of the Inflation Reduction Act was absent from the meeting, I was disappointed that JPM wasn't going to deliver insight on my favorite topic.
But it turns out that Zach was wrong or, at least, premature in his assessment. The myopia of the meeting — the omission of Inflation Reduction Act comments from a couple of key CEOs — forced Zach into a first impression that was clearly wrong. And while Zach (and nearly everyone else) ended up finding plenty of drug-pricing news to cover, it was fascinating to see the adjustment in real time.
In terms of taking “L”s by skipping out, I figured I'd miss the receptions and the hallway gossip, but it turns out that element — while helping make everyone feel like an "insider" — didn't generate much FOMO. Instead, it turned out I was blind to the collective body language of ten thousand executives.
After the meeting, I debriefed with Real Chemistry's founder, Jim Weiss. Jim was taken by who was confident and who wasn't. Who was comfortable on stage. Who wore an easy smile.
Twitter might not have been rosy, and the wire wasn't filled with many optimistic stories about dealmaking, but Jim said he saw fire in the eyes of industry vets who had seen the boom/bust cycle before — think new Biogen CEO Chris Viehbacher — who didn't need to be at JPM. They could have been coasting through retirement, booking flights to Chamonix or St. Barts. Instead, they were getting soggy in San Francisco.
None of that was particularly clear sitting behind a monitor, streaming presentations and refreshing Twitter. And though I tried to create the magic of networking by reaching out to old friends and would-be collaborators, it turns out that catching up via Zoom is a pain to coordinate, small talk just isn't the same went it's apportioned in Outlook calendar-sized chunks.
Still, not being at #JP23 gives an appreciation for the investment — of time, of money, of energy — required to make the most of the meeting. (Avoiding the circus meant my productivity soared.) It's too early to make the call as to whether the tradeoff will be worth it in 2024.
Maybe I just need a bobblehead.
