Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. I have a very, very special guest this week, Petrina Pellet. Please say hello. Welcome back. Hey, guys. Thanks again for having me, Tom. And, also, I told Tom that he needs to have me on the podcast this week, so I kind of forced this. Well, I love having Patrina on, so it was a no brainer. And this is gonna be a really, really amazing episode because so many people that wanted to go to maps and weren't able to do that got FOMO, and they were like, hey.
What did I miss? So we're gonna do an episode really just to talk about all of this year's twenty twenty five maps meeting so that you don't have to feel like you missed out. It's gonna be great. Before we do that, this episode is brought to you by Fierce Pharma Engage, which used to be Mass West. It's different now because this event actually brings together cross functional teams from marketing, PR communications.
Obviously, medical affairs has its own section and then business development and licensing. It's on September it's I'm sorry. April 29 to May 1 in San Diego. It's gonna be awesome. So check them out at Fierce Pharma Engage. And then, Petrino, you're doing a session. You're gonna do that. Tom and I are going to be there, so you guys should definitely come say hi. And, also, I'm doing a session with Ralph Rueers on AI, and we are going to come in hot with a bunch of live AI demos.
So if you're kinda feeling uncertain and don't know what AI can do, definitely stick around for that. And it's the very last session, so that means no getting the ticket home early. Stick around to the edge. Yeah. I'll be there. I will be there. And I hope you guys will too. Mask West was has always been one of my favorite events. This is supposed to be really awesome, so I'm looking forward to it. Maps, guys, was a lot of fun. It was awesome.
And I can't Katrina, I can't tell you many people came up to me and were like, oh my god, Katrina. Like, she has the best downloads and tools and, like, all this fun stuff. So, like, before we start, like, what what what do you have right now that you can offer people? Like, what's the latest? Yes. And thanks so much to everybody that comes on to both of my blogs, so medicalaffairsvalue.com as well as mslmastery.com.
Both of these blogs are jam packed with tons of downloads, like a progress tracker for medical affairs, a time audit for medical affairs. And what we've started recently that you guys need to sign up for is our weekly newsletter. It's called the medical affairs spotlight newsletter. It comes out every morning at 8AM. Sorry. Pause because I was like, is it 8AM or 7AM? Comes out Friday morning. Doesn't matter. It's seven or 8AM my time. And we go into all kinds of things like Tom's takeaway.
So we bring you behind the scenes stuff and additional information from Tom's Tom's podcast. We give you lots of tips. What else, Tom? Lots of great stuff in there. Yeah. Well, there's an expert corner. There's there's a theme every week, which is awesome, and there's there's just really good practical takeaways. But the one thing is there is it's definitely a this stuff is you know, we don't just give it away to anybody. This is definitely proprietary kind of stuff. So Oh, yeah.
Yeah. That's right. We have exclusive content. If you guys wanna sign up, it's mslmastery.com/newsletter. I'll say it one more time. Mslmastery.com/newsletter. Totally free to sign up. Yep. You get the exclusive content and a lot of really great practical tips. Awesome. Good stuff. Okay. Maps. Let's set the tone. So where was it? How many people were there? What was the vibe? Like, give me the whole lowdown in your opinion. Yep. Alright, guys.
So if you're new to the industry, MAPS stands for medical affairs professional society. This is one of the big medical affairs organizations that really specializes on, obviously, medical affairs. This is one of several industry events that if you are looking to uplevel in medical affairs, you should go to this. And Tom and I, we've been going forever. I didn't go to Puerto Rico last year, but you went.
So medical affairs professional society, this was their America's meeting that was held in New Orleans. The weather was great, wasn't it? It was, like, I think seventy, eighty degrees. It was super nice. It was at the Hyatt Hotel next to the superdome. So imagine you go into this hotel, and it's like a big complicated maze. There's, like, all these escalators and stairs everywhere. They had it well marked, but then the vendor part was down these stairs kind of in the basement.
And when you entered the vendor space, imagine this huge space with a ton of different vendors in there. In the front, they had some tables. Then right away, you saw the Viva booth and some other booths. I was hanging out with the Carolyn group booth. We were in the back right. And then over in the back left, there was puppies. Puppies. With yeah. Literal puppies. I was like, brilliant move maps. Interestingly, though, it was so spread out.
I didn't even know about the puppies till, like, the second day. People were like, oh, what? I was like, there's puppies? What? Yeah. What else would you add about the Yeah. I I didn't organize a little too spread out for me, and it was a little fragmented. I guess the only like, if I had to say feedback for next year is to keep it a little they've always had it a little more together, and it's been very exhibitor vendor friendly.
This was a little tough for the vendors because I think a lot of people didn't make their way down there. But at the same time, I it was just a part of what that hotel situation was. Another thing that I kept getting confused about, I got lost several times, literally. Because the way you came out of the vendor floor, you either took stairs up to the next level or you took the escalator to the third.
And then sessions were on those two different levels, and I was always taking the wrong one on accident. Yeah. Don't worry. By the end, I figured out where to go. But there was we were hanging out with Devita White, and she kept saying, where are you going, Katrina? You're completely turned around, and I was. Go. Yeah. It was like, I'm so But all good, though. I mean, it's it's not no knock. No knock.
Yeah. Yeah. It was a small thing, and once you got it figured out, and there were there were signs, just trying to lay the land for you guys. A little bit more spread out this year, but really well attended. There were Yeah. Tom, what was it? 1,400 people or so? Hundred people registered. Yeah. There was a lot of people there. It was huge. Yeah. Yeah. And there were a lot of people that, like, reached out to me after, and they're like, I I didn't get a chance to see you, but I was there.
I'm like, really? Yeah. It it was definitely well attended. Let's talk about the themes that were evident at this year's maps. Every year, there's, like, these kind of new themes. What what stood out to you? I think the one that really stood out to me the most was bringing storytelling to patient centricity. I've gone to several maps, and we always talk about patient centricity. Right? It's such a medical affairs thing.
But a lot of the panelists or the keynote, for example, brought these patient stories that made it feel really real, and it really resonated. Like, Kalynn Taylor Clark gave the keynote, and she was talking about her family's patient experiences and her own. And I was like, I was getting goosebumps. I was like, wow. This stuff, it feels so real, and it felt a lot different because we weren't just talking about it like, oh, we need to be patient centric. There were examples.
Tom, did you hear anything like that or feel that as well? I did. Yeah. That that was definitely I heard actually, it was the buzz how how a lot a lot of people felt like, wow. It's really nice to see that the patient's at the forefront of a lot of these sessions, which you don't always see. You don't always get that, but that was definitely one of the things I heard as well. Before I even read your your recap, your article, I heard that as well.
Yeah. I thought that was really cool, and it it just also underline or emphasize the importance of storytelling. I think we hear this a lot at these conferences about showing impact. Right? Like, all these top medical affairs leaders will go on the stage and say, oh, to demonstrate impact, you need storytelling. And I think what was really cool about this is it brought storytelling to patient centricity and really made it feel real.
Yeah. Any other themes that like, as you were going through the content and going through some of the offerings that stuck out? Yeah. So I had to just look at my article because I had to remind myself what I put in there. But seven years ago, when I got into medical affairs, there were two topics that were coming up all the time, impact and insights. These are still coming up all the time. This was the topic of a lot of different sessions.
I feel like we've been talking about this since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Right? Like, we were like Yeah. How do we show impact in medical affairs? How do we get insights across the finish line? What was really cool about this year's sessions was that they felt very practical to me. I think other years again, I didn't go to Puerto Rico, so not a good data point on that. But other years, it was more, like, high level talking about the problem versus this year.
I really like that it felt like there were a ton of frameworks that people were presenting. For example, I went to showing impact in med tech, and this was ran by some folks at Veeva. And if you guys haven't seen that, they put out this framework for demonstrating impact. And then during this session, we discussed, will this work for med tech or not?
And it was really cool to hear the conversations between pharma and med tech, what's similar, what's different, how do these impact frameworks work. And then I really like that it's it's super practical. Right? These are the things you need to do. As another example, I went to a I forget the title of it, but coaching for insights. This was with Linda Traylor, Melissa Santiago, and Marsha Walkup. And it was so cool because it was so practical.
They really had a framework for how to coach MSLs on insights and then had really practical exercises you could do. That that one was probably my favorite session. Plus, you know, I'm biased because I like insights. You're the insights queen. You are known as the insights queen. Everybody knows that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's always still about how does medical affairs bring value, show value, and insights are a huge way of Yeah. You know, showing impact and therefore showing value.
So let me see. What okay. Other than the sessions that you attended, you mentioned the patient centricity piece. You specifically mentioned that in, in your article. So can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I didn't attend that one, but I am curious to hear a little bit more about it. Well, as I mentioned already, the keynote where she discussed some of her own patient stories from her family and from herself, I think that was really cool.
Also, Anna Waltz, she was in a panel session towards the end. I think it was on the last day, and she just was harping on this and bringing in those patient stories again. And I thought that was really, really cool. Yeah. I wish I saw that one. I definitely wish I saw that one. Mean, they wish you were there too. They wish you were there. Yeah. I I feel like I was just you know, I was out there just blabbering and talking to people the whole time, and I missed a lot of the sessions.
But, you mentioned med tech, and you said in your article that there was a heavy presence of med tech. Can you talk about that? Yeah. This was a big difference for me this year. In prior years that I've been, people have been like, what's med tech? Oh, isn't this just the wild west? And, yes, that's true. But this year, you could feel John Praesick's influence all over it. Right? He he was up on the stage a lot. I mean, that's normal.
He he's talk he's a president of MAP, so he's talking about it a lot. But it was in sessions. We had sessions dedicated to med tech. We had so many people from med tech companies that I feel like a couple years ago, it wasn't like that. What what was your experience on the med tech side, Tom? Yeah. So it's it's interesting because the first time I met John, we had a meeting. This was, jeez, this was many years ago.
Robin Wintersbury introduced me to to John, and he asked me what's my experience with med tech. Where do I where does where do I see it fitting into the medical affairs landscape? And and is it something that would be accepted or acceptable, to develop you know, have it as a part of of the meeting? So we actually talked about this was probably about five years ago.
And now it's it's like, the the amount of companies that I saw on the the the attendee list as I was going through it from med tech is way more than I've seen. So I guess the answer is that, yes, definitely, med tech has arrived. If you're in that space, I think you should consider going. Yeah. And welcome. Yeah. And you know what? It's I you know, I think that that's such a great thing to see because it shows that the industry is expanding. It means a lot more opportunity, for folks. You know?
And I think it it's good for people like John that have been in it for a long time because I think it's just a, you know, kind of a sign of the times. Yeah. It there were so many so many med tech people. I was like, who who are all these people? But it it's great because same problems, different people. Right? And we can learn a lot from each other and transfer those best practices.
And, also, I thought it was a really great opportunity for more creativity in big pharma or small pharma because you could hear what these more device folks focused groups were doing, and the discussions in the sessions were so awesome. I think kudos to John for getting us to bring all these med tech people to maps because that was a really cool flavor to this year's meeting. Yeah. For sure. What about AI? I know that you're huge in the AI space.
You know more than than anyone I know and of most people. How is AI represented? That's scary. Right? I can't I love AI, and I definitely know a lot. But, man, I could see all the real AI experts out there. But hey. Thank you, Tom. Yeah. Interestingly, I expected there to be more. Right? It in the recent meetings we've been to, like, even Mass West, it was dominating everything. It was it had a presence at maps, but it wasn't as much as I was anticipating.
I didn't even go to AI any AI sessions, which is kinda weird. It came up in some of them. But Yeah. Additionally, what I did hear around the floor and talking to people was a lot of hesitation. I thought that this was really interesting that it wasn't so gung ho. Like, oh, we've gotta get more AI and bring AI to medical affairs. There was a lot of skepticism. What did you see, Tom? Yeah. Well, I think that I think that people are starting to use it. I think people are starting to adopt it.
There is a lot of skepticism. But I will say this. So Vera, your buddy Vera Kuchenko, she did a session. It was standing room Yeah. Pack. And it was the loudest when she was done, she got, like, this huge ovation. So shout out to Vera. She's, like, amazing. So smart. And as I was talking to some people that are interested in AI and are starting to use it, I think they're just a little confused. Which tool do I use?
I I'm I'm not that good at at, you know, the the prompting and the prompt engineering part of it. So I think people are getting a little disillusioned because I don't think they're good at it. I also and it's interesting, but Sarah posted about AI today. And she was talking about and the topic of AI hallucinations came up. And the and that's a very real thing where you you're you're looking for something, you put in a prompt, and then AI just gives you this crazy, like, what?
I don't this doesn't make any sense. So I think that there's we're in this kind of growing pains portion of of the AI evolution. Am I am I explaining that right? Yeah. I think so. And, yeah, people have gotten in there. They're they feel uncertain. They see a hallucination. It freaks them out a little bit. This is something that we really address in our AI excellence training as well. How to spot hallucinations, but more importantly, how to think strategically about it.
And I don't wanna derail the whole session to talk about our training. Yeah. But I I agree with you, Tom. I've been feeling this and hearing it as well. As an example, I was in a session, and and they were talking about prompting. And then this MSL was like, why would I ever do that? The example was to write an email to write a follow-up email. And it was his reaction to it was really interesting because he was like, I could do that so much better. Why would I even bother doing it in AI?
So, yeah, I think there's a lot of this, like you said, confusion and concern and mistrust around the hallucinations, but it's gonna be really interesting to see how we evolve Yeah. In 2025. Yeah. It already has. When you look at the so when you look at maps, we talked about a lot of things that were, that went well. Was there anything that stood out in your mind that you thought didn't go well? Well, I had a session on time management, and there was, like, 20 simultaneous sessions.
So I think next time they should put my session by itself so everybody attends. That would be that was definitely another thing. In addition to what we mentioned with it so spread out, there were so many amazing sessions. It was really hard to choose. So when I was looking at the program, I actually had AI create a conference plan for me. It was listing all these sessions all in the same time slot, and I was like, how can I go to all of these?
So I think I just wanted to go to everything, and so it was kind of a bummer that I couldn't. What about for you, Tom? Yeah. Well, for I mean, I I talked about this a little bit before, but the one thing that wasn't great on the vendor side is that it we were so far away from where the sessions were that it was an effort for people to go from the sessions to the exhibits. The other part was the food wasn't so great, and there was no breakfast.
So that meant that people started to catch on that they would go all the way down to the exhibit hall, and they would just be disappointed because there wasn't a real good selection of food or any food at all. So then they stopped coming. So the traffic wasn't as good. Now granted, I don't like, we we met a lot of really awesome people. There was a really nice reception, the first night, and then they did this amazing event on on Monday night. We could talk about that next. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. You know? But I just think that it wasn't as vendor not and it was totally unintentional because they're very good to vendors, but it wasn't as advantageous to the vendors this year because of the logistics. So that kinda stuck out. Yeah. I actually so I when I travel like this, I wanna make sure I'm well fed. Otherwise, I'll get grumpy and not wanna go to sessions. So I have this little bag of granola bars. I gave them all away because people were hungry. Yeah. Right? I was like, oh, hey.
Do you want a granola bar? Do you want a granola bar? And then there was a bunch of us in the front row of a session with all our granola bar wrappers crinkling. Right? But but, yeah, I hear the only one. Yeah. I kept going up. There was, like, a little convenience store on the Second Floor, and I kept going in there and grabbing bars. And then Amy Penelli was like, dude, you bought all the bars that I wanted. They're gone. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. But talk about Monday night.
What did you think of the event on Monday night? So Monday night, the big networking event was that we did a parade over to the Superdome. And what was really cool about that is they handed out costumes is a strong word, but, like, masks and beads and stuff. So very New Orleans feeling. And then we all marched out, and they had a marching band, a really cool marching band. And I swear we took the longest possible route to get to the Super Dome. Right?
Because it was right next door, but we marched for, like, thirty minutes. I swear. But that was really cool just to have the kids there. They had, you know, the marching band people dancing and the band playing, obviously. Obviously, I'm not a marching band person. I don't know what the right terms for this. But then we got to the superdome, and when we went in, everything was set up on the floor.
And so it was pretty cool to go into this huge stadium and see I was surprised it actually felt kinda small because I think that stadium holds, like, 50,000 people. Right? It it seems small. And because the was ripped up. Not ripped up. The field wasn't rolled out. So it was concrete. So you're walking on what you think should be a grass turf field, and it you were on concrete, and it that really tightened it up.
But then again, there were a lot of, like, events and displays and stands and clues. Like and stuff. Games. They had these lit lit up swings. There was a stage. Some people were dancing. They had this really cool photo thing, which, Tom, we messed up. We didn't get one of those three d photos. Yeah. Photo thing. Super cool. I'm sure some folks have seen that on LinkedIn. Also, it had a bunch of food. When you walked into did you notice there was that Dodge Ram or that Dodge truck in the front?
I was like, why did they park that truck right there? By the thing. It's like, it delivered the food or something. Yeah. Yeah. But it was I thought it was pretty cool going in there. It felt pretty special, right, just to be kind of in the middle of that where most likely, you're not down on the field, but more in the stadium or in the stands. So I thought that was that was pretty cool. MAPS does a great job every year with details.
There's always really finer details that they you mentioned it before the puppies. Like, you could actually go and adopt a puppy. Three puppies got adopted. It's amazing. Yeah. When thinking about details, if you looking at next year, future year and you know what? This could be a question for any conferences. Like, what's your advice? You go to enough conferences. What would be your advice to the planning committee committee for next year's conference?
This is completely biased, but I would say invest heavily in good coffee. I you could just keep everybody really hot happy with really good coffee. Yeah. We were calling this coffee devil juice. It was so bad. I would say coffee would be a good one for me. What about for you, Tom? Yeah. I I think, like, coffee and food. You you want people and I know that the food gets expensive. I know that that's a big part of it. And I'm sure this year, it probably wasn't cheap renting the Superdome.
I have to imagine that that was a huge huge number. But, you know, at the same time, I think that even a continental breakfast in the morning where people can go and grab some yogurt, grab some fruit, grab some granola bars, good coffee, and just be able to know that when they're going to the the networking sections Yeah. That there's gonna be something to snack on. The lunch, make it it's just make it a buffet. Let people have options.
That's better than I think what they tried to do is provide more of a grab and go kinda concept or the head to you know? It it just I I didn't think it worked well. But, you mean, again, there's there's probably a a reason behind it. So. Yeah. Well, guys, you can see what Tom and I clearly care most about. We're like, give us good food and give us good coffee, and we're happy. Yeah. I But, overall, I think it was so great. It was It was great. It was great. And the they had a really nice app.
I think it's important. You have to have a good app for your to support your conference. I thought that they did a good job with that. They had a gaming. There was a gamification thing where people would go come to your booth. They'd scan a QR code, and you got entered into this contest for prizes. So the more $500. Right? Bucks. Yeah. I think the top person got $500. Yeah. That's legit. So, I mean, you know, I appreciate that.
If when you look at so would you say that next year, would your advice be to have less sessions or how or do it differently? Oh, man. I don't know. That's a really good question. I think, yeah, maybe no. The session, I was my brain went to shorter sessions, but in a lot of the longer ones that I was in, that was good amount of time. Like, we needed that amount of time. So yeah. I don't know. What do you think? Yeah. I think it was everybody that I talked to was like, too many options.
Too many sessions. Yeah. So maybe fewer. Down based upon what I heard. When you if you look a year ahead, right, so it's a year from now, and we're recapping from maps. As fast as everything's moving right now in this day and age, what do you think we're talking about a year from now as far as, like, content? What's gonna be the what are gonna be the themes, do you think? I don't think insights and impact will ever go away. Okay. Like, I think that will still be there.
Hopefully, we continue to evolve towards more practical application and also more stories. Right? I noticed what a lot of people want is they wanna know how other companies are doing something or how other teams are thinking about something. Yeah. And that was happening a lot this year. There were more actual stories and practical frameworks that you could go away with. And, I mean, of course, AI is gonna be there. Right? I I don't know where it's going to be.
Maybe, you know, it'll be all about custom GPTs and no more prompting, but I don't know. What do you think is gonna come up as the hot topics for Denver? One of the things well, Denver is gonna be like a home game for them because that's where they're based. Gonna be awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I think it is. But one of the things that that I hope is different next year is that there's less job seekers in attendance. I noticed a lot of people Yes. Were there because they were out of work.
Yep. I saw the I noticed the same thing. Did you notice that? Yep. And it's very high level people Yeah. As well. It wasn't like aspiring MSLs, which those folks are always great to meet. This was VP level people looking for jobs. Yeah. A lot. And a lot of them are on faculty. I had a lot of meetings, a lot of conversations. There was a lot of resumes being, you know, passed around, so to speak, obviously, digitally. Yeah. Tom was texting all his friends for a couple yay.
Yeah. I actually, we had, like, three or four people in our Aspire MSL program that were there, so it was good to see those guys. Yeah. So proud. Yeah. Representing. I I really hope that next year is gonna be different. The, you know, the market continues to reap. It's trying to rebound from a very bad 2024. Yeah. And, hopefully, 2025 is gonna be a much better year. We're gonna see a different scenario in 2026. Yeah. I hope so. I totally agree.
I think for 2026, I hope MAP keeps on this trajectory of creating this great content, making it more practical, bringing these groups of people that weren't talking before together to have these conversations. And to your point, Tom, not so many job seekers out there that the market picks up. Yeah. Alright. I don't wanna put you on the spot, but I'm gonna put you on the spot. You already have. Again I know. I can't help it. That's why people listen to this podcast.
Like, we don't know what Tom's gonna say next. Yeah. Yeah. So Now I'm scared. You did a session this year. It was awesome. Amazing. I was there. Are you gonna do a session next year? And if so, what's the topic? What are Cool. What are some of the potential Katrina topics for next year? I would say because I'm so excited about AI right now. I just think it is a complete game changer. Of course, I would love to do an AI session.
All the stuff I've been doing recently, and it's really been resonating with folks, is on practical stuff. So if you go on to my blog, I give prompts that you could copy and paste lots of different use cases. I really want people to appreciate it for the creativity tool that it is. Like, it can just really boost your creativity. I would say another thing I'm really excited about are the workshops and frameworks that we've been developing at MSL Mastery on Insights.
I know this is my background, but Tom, Sarah, and I have done some really cool revamps is the wrong word, but development of new sessions. So what we've been doing is really listening to the people that are in our communities that we interact with on LinkedIn and figuring out what the problems are and then building workshops for that. So it's almost like we're solving problems in real time, and I keep seeing these recurring themes come up with insights.
And so I'm really excited about our new insights framework that we've been workshopping with different teams. It's amazing. And it it just keeps getting better and better, and I and the response has been overwhelming in how effective it is, how impactful it is. So that's I'm I'm also very proud of that. But you guys are the creators. You guys are the, I mean, geniuses, guys, that I get to work with. Geniuses. I just barely I'm just trying to keep up. I'm just trying to keep up. It is so fun.
We just hear a problem or notice a pattern or a trend, and then we make something to help people with it. It's like, we're in such a cool position right now, and huge thanks to everybody that's following us and supporting us and working with us. We're so excited about these innovative training programs that we're bringing. Hey, guys. Seriously, Sign up for the newsletter. Check it out. It's free. You follow Katrina on LinkedIn. Follow me. Follow Sarah. You'll see us.
You know, it's in there, and it's free. You can expect to see it every Friday morning, and it's really great takeaways. And thank you guys for all your support. Thank you for your support of this show. Thank you for for your support of us on LinkedIn. And, yeah, anything? Final words, Katrina? Sign up for the newsletter at MSLMastery.com/newsletter and share your feedback with us. We really take this seriously.
And like I just mentioned, the content that we build and all this great stuff we put out is because of what people tell us and what we're hearing out in the field. So Yeah. Please feel free to reach out to me, Tom, or Sarah. We love it, and we really, really appreciate all you guys. And we hope that we see you in Denver in 2026 for maps. Next year. Guys, once again, maps folks, you guys did a great job. Crushed it. John and team, Pedro and Travis and the whole crew. Yeah. You guys are great.
Everybody. Twenty twenty six, baby. Denver, we'll see you there. Yep. Yep. Awesome. Thanks. Bye, guys.