Midwinter Meeting 2012: Day 3 begins

Day three of the 2012 Midwinter Meeting has begun in Chicago with the usual hustle and bustle as members of the global dental community are rushing to their various appointments, courses or -- as I plan on doing shortly -- are making their ways to the Dentsply booth in the exhibit hall to get their photos taken on Molar Mountain.

I'm still camera-free, which means I'll likely limit posting till I can secure a good way to grab images to accompany posts, but hopefully I can get some good shots of various booths in the exhibit hall that show more detail than the overhead shots I took yesterday. (The photo above is one of those photos.)

Some observations from yesterday afternoon's brief walk-through in the exhibit hall:

• There was a huge line wrapping about three-quarters of the way around the fairly large Opalescence Tooth Whitening Systems booth, so that's popular this year. For whatever reason, many of the people in line were wearing Burger King-esque crowns made of blue cardstock.

• Gendex brought a full-sized bus emblazoned with the words "Experience Gendex" on the side and parked it in the exhibit hall, which I'm sure would have been interesting to watch.

• Another long line was forming at the Philips Sonicare booth, where people were waiting for a chance to try something called AirFloss over sinks set up for that purpose.

• Something that may only be interesting to those outside the dental field, who aren't used to it: You'll never see more fake/model teeth than you will in the exhibit hall of a dental conference.

• Also interesting: There are a number of booths devoted to dental eyewear, often including funny-looking attachments -- presumably for magnification purposes -- that make them look like something straight out of a Tim Burton film.

• The number of comfy-looking dental chairs may make you want to take a nap partway through your walk-through.

• Then again, the number of sharp, torture-chamber-image-inducing dental instruments displayed in booths around the hall may be enough to keep you up till you can make your way to Starbucks.

• A number of booths were like jewelry counters -- I specifically noted the Hu-Friedy booth in my notes when referencing this -- with women gathered over the instrument trays as if they held diamonds, while dental reps explained the various ins and outs of each one.

Hopefully I'll get back to the hall soon -- preferably with a camera -- for some additional observations. Stay tuned.