How Big is Too Big?

Reflections on the Mexico City IAC 2008
by Janine Schooley, PCI's VP for Technical Services & Program Development

This conference is huge! I’ve never been to such an event. They say there are 25,000 people here, but it feels like more when you are trying to make your way anywhere in the conference center, buy a sandwich, use the rest room, or get on a shuttle bus back to one of the hundreds of hotels participants are using all over this huge city. It is rainy and grey here in Mexico City, but the conference participants don’t seem to mind. There is an energy and a critical mass-ness about such a large group of people all coming together for a common purpose, to Stop AIDS Now!

But is the meeting too large? It’s so gargantuan that they can only hold it every other year. In 2 years it will be held in Vienna. Two years ago it was Toronto. The logistics are mind boggling and so I choose not to boggle my mind with them, simply thanking my lucky stars that it isn’t MY job to organize this monstrosity. The program book (and that’s without the supplemental program which is quite large itself) is the size of a good sized city’s phone book.

But it is the World AIDS Conference and the world’s eyes are upon us. The size and scope is a good thing when you have President Clinton speaking and the paparazzi’s cameras buzzing, sending images and messages around the globe. This conference may be too big for me, but it isn’t too big for the topic of HIV and AIDS. HIV and AIDS needs a meeting of this size to attract the attention of the media and the politicians. The energy and the scale of the conference is helping to ensure that this unprecedented humanitarian crisis does not go unnoticed, does not fall off the headlines, and does not fade from the consciousness of the planet.

So is this monstrosity too monstrous? NO! It is just the right size for the job, the job of helping us all tackle HIV and AIDS, raise awareness, keep the funding flowing, keep the folks in the trenches motivated and uplifted, and keep us all reminded that size does matter, particularly when the dragon we are trying to slay is as huge and monstrous as it is…

Let’s just hope Vienna is big enough for IAC 2010!