Hello my friends,

For my INANE week, I planned to be at the conference from Sunday through Wednesday, then take Thursday and Friday off to catch up and recuperate. We had tickets to see Mary Poppins at the Ogunquit Playhouse last night and I have to say, the show lived up to Mary’s song of being practically perfect in every way.

Although I am not one to blow my own horn I have to say, reflecting back on INANE 2014, I think the conference was also practically perfect in every way. Yes, I know–the Atlantic Room was a tight fit (I knew that going in), and there were a few A/V glitches. Graham Scott, please forgive me for your missing lobster at the lobster bake! But in the big scheme of things, the positives far outweighed the negatives and the evaluations I have received so far bear this out. I am very, very proud of what the Planning Committee helped me and INANE to accomplish this week. This was definitely a peak moment that will remain at the forefront of my memory for years to come.

Shawn Kennedy made the comment that the sessions fed both the left and right side of our brains. I hadn’t thought of it that way (I kept using the words “art” and “science”). But one thing that struck me was that when you stimulate your right brain with some beautiful pictures of art or words of poetry, the other side opens right up and lets the information pour in. What a wonderful feeling that is!

In my very first nursing class way back when, Mrs. Lona Moore stood up and said that all of nursing can be described in six principles. The first was “Teaching and Learning” and the sixth was “Infinite Creativity” (I have forgotten numbers 2, 3, 4 and 5). Infinite creativity has informed much of my nursing work over the course of my career and this conference was proof of that. But I have to be honest and say that I often see the creativity afterwards, not beforehand. For example, an evaluation comment said, “Having poet Richard Blanco come to INANE was an INSPIRED choice.” Yes, he was, but when we extended the invitation I was thinking more along the lines of, “He’s a poet, he lives in Maine, and he’s sort of famous right now. Do you think he’d want to speak to us?” My point is that the creativity is often there but sometimes it needs to emerge like a butterfly from a cocoon for everyone to see it.

I also have to say that you, my INANE colleagues, are an amazing group of women and men who also stimulate my brain to receive new ideas and information. I realized that I worked so hard on this conference because it is truly an honor and a privilege to be part of this group. We all deserve the very best, especially for our annual meeting!

With this post, I will be shutting down the INANE 2014 blog and moving to the INANE 2015 site. My thanks to Karen and Jackie for their live blogging posts–I enjoyed reading them and Jackie, I especially loved your pictures! At the new site we will be setting up a regular posting schedule (this past year it was every two weeks) to keep people informed about conference details and deadlines. While I am on the planning committee for INANE 2015 I am going to step back from being “in charge” and work on other initiatives including INANE white papers (which I would like to publish in Nurse Author & Editor) and a possible revision of The Editor’s Handbook with Margaret Freda. If life is true to form, Amazon will release a new Kindle in September and I will spend the month of October scrambling to get the latest edition of Kindle for Dummies written in time for Christmas sales! The fun never ends!

Thank you, everyone, for the trusting me to be the conference chair for 2014. It was an amazing experience and I learned a tremendous amount. I look forward to seeing everyone in Las Vegas next summer and many of you at the Academy of Nursing meeting in October. Until then, onward and upward!

All my best,

Leslie