July 30, 2025

This blog begins with some thoughts about conferencing.

This past week, the European Music Therapy Confederation hosted their triennial conference in Hamburg, Germany. The organizers reported close to 1000 attendees, including 250 online. While it was a face to face conference, I was allowed to share my 4.5 hour pre-conference workshop, accredited for continuing education credit through the German Music Therapy Society online. I was thrilled to share my supervision stage model, soon to materialize in a book (Spring 2026), online. There were participants from Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Estonia, Turkey, Taiwan, China and New Zealand.

I have been in the music therapy profession for 45 years and have attended at least that many conferences, more recently all international. Social media flooding my facebook feed included reports about a great variety of content, so much so that frankly I cannot name it all here. I did not, however, that the content seemed sufficiently specific to be of great interest to many.

Why do participants attend a conference? I would suggest the following: dissemination of your professional work, social connection, professional networking, exposure to new information and, last but not least, travel to a new venue. What have your experiences been like? While it may surprise some of you, I consider myself an introvert and the flood of participants and new information can be daunting. The last conference I attended was in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. While I truly enjoyed the panal I had put together to present different components of my 2023 edited book on education and training (see Books on this webpage), my efforts for professional networking sometimes had to be arranged at times I might have been in workshops. So there may be a time crunch at these conferences.

I also observed what I will call ‘professional cliques’ which can sometimes feel like high school so this is another aspect of conferencing. Then we come to the issue of the book and organizational displays. Do you see books you want to purchase, materials you did not know about, advertisement for forthcoming professional events?

I am considering going to Iceland in 2027 for the Nordic Music Therapy Conference but right now I am so behind with my own professional work that I am going day to day. How about you?