RSNA 2007

Yesterday, I spent the whole day at the annual RSNA (Radiological Society of North America) meetings and exhibitions in Chicago. My company was nice enough to rent a 50-people bus to transport employees to Chicago for the exhibitions. However, there were only 6 of us on the bus. Lots of people just somehow could not make it. The traffic was quite bad in the morning. We left the company parking lot in Milwaukee around 7am and did not get to Chicago until 10:30am. It was only about 99 miles and should only take about 1.5 hour usually.

Anyway, there were already very crowded in the McCormick Place when we got there. RSNA is the world largest radiology commercial show and conference. This year, there are 7800 booths from the companies all over the world. More than 62,000 radio logiest, medical doctors, hospital chairman, university project leaders, etc etc will be there. As you can imagine, there are Dr. A to Dr. Z all over the place. And every hour, there are usually million and million dollars of medical equipment ordered. Just take a look at the palace size of the booth from the major companies such as GE, Siemens, Phillips, and Toshiba, it is not difficult to understand why medical cost is so expensive. The meeting basically takes over all 3 main buildings of the McCormick Place. Just to give you an idea of how big this show is, here is the size of McCormick place:

2.7 million sq. ft. of exhibit halls
1.2 million square feet all on one level
175 meeting rooms
700,000 square feet of meeting room space
Ceiling heights up to 50 feet
Easy access to 5,000 parking spaces

Since I used to work for one of the biggest medical equipment company, I could never walk into other companies' booth without being yelled at or escorted out. It is a very competitive industry. This year, I finally can walk freely and check out all the different products from various companies since the company I work for actually is the supplier for all big companies. Anyway, it was very interesting to walk around and gather some new information. However, the food service there was not impressive. Since the Chinatown was just 5 blocks away, my co-workers and I just took a taxi to there ( only 5 minute ride and cost $5 with tip) and enjoyed a nice spicy Chinese food lunch. And we headed back to Milwaukee around 2:30pm to get away the rush hour. This time, it only took about 2 hours. Quite an interesting trip. By the way, sorry about the quality of the pictures. It was my first time to use the new cell phone to take the pictures so it did not turn out that well.