Here at APhA headquarters, everyone is finalizing preparations and gearing up to get on the road to the 2017 APhA Annual Meeting & Exposition in San Francisco on March 24–27. I’m very proud of the work our staff is doing to make this a fantastic meeting full of lively discussion, opportunities to connect with peers, outstanding education sessions, and spirited advocacy.

We also count on a dedicated network of volunteers consisting of pharmacists, student pharmacists, scientists, pharmacy technicians, and others from all over, in various stages of their careers and representing diverse practice settings. They’re some of the people we’ll recognize in the annual APhA Awards and Honors Program, who make tough decisions in our House of Delegates (take a look at some of the topics they’ll be deliberating on in San Francisco), and who run for and serve on our Board of Trustees, Academies, and other affinity groups (get to know some of the candidates at the meeting).

This meeting is not a spectator sport. Attendees are INVOLVED! This year we’ll have a new and improved audience-response system called Poll Everywhere. Poll Everywhere is an app that lets you respond to speakers’ questions by texting from your mobile device. The results appear in real time on the speakers’ PowerPoint slides.

APhA’s Annual Meeting is the meeting that supports pharmacy. APhA hears your voices, and your feedback helps us design the meeting around your needs. This year, for example, we took prior input to create the APhA Pain Institute—also new this year—a full day of interactive education sessions dedicated to one of the most important issues facing our patients, our communities, and of course, our profession. After all, our mission is to support you in your ability to serve patients and communities and take advantage of new opportunities emerging daily!

There’s still time to register online at www.aphameeting.org. I’m really looking forward to seeing all of you!

P.S. We’ll miss you, but for those of you who can’t come to San Francisco, we’re bringing the Annual Meeting’s highlights to you through Video on Demand—12 of our most popular education sessions, worth approximately 24 education credits. For more information, visit www.aphameeting.org.