We're taking your favorite magazine to everyone's favorite convention city next fall for what we expect will be a can't-miss conference for surgical facility leaders. When we pack up Outpatient Surgery Magazine for a long weekend in San Francisco to launch the first annual OR Excellence meeting (www.orexcellence.com) at the San Francisco Hilton from Sept. 30 to Oct. 3, 2009, we'll be doing so with one thing in mind.

You.

Like everything else we do here at the magazine, you, the reader, will lead us on our first foray into the meetings business. You helped us select the host city, and your input is helping us stack the ORX syllabus with the subjects and speakers in which you're most interested. The talks at ORX will be extraordinarily practical. Experts will help you improve your outcomes, expand your caseloads, grow your business, protect your employees and assets and more. We're planning more than 30 accredited courses tuned in to the real challenges and opportunities that surgical facility leaders face.

We pledge two other things. You won't hear canned speeches at ORX. Nor will you hear commercial speakers selling from the podium.

They say that a good trade magazine is like an industry talking to itself. Why not apply that thinking to a trade show? Not only will ORX offer a free exchange of practical ideas between attendees, lecturers and vendors, but the exchange will be highly interactive. Each attendee will receive an easy-to-operate "audience response" remote that lets you communicate in real time with the speaker as the speaker communicates with you. With the press of a button, you can participate in the discussion rather than simply being a spectator.

We're also planning a series of fun, organized events that encourage networking and camaraderie, including a free wine tasting, a morning stroll across the Golden Gate Bridge and the OR Excellence Tournament of Champions, where teams composed of audience members will compete with each other to see which one can answer the most surgical questions correctly. Those remotes will really come in handy then.

In the evenings, of course, we'll share, relax and recharge with colleagues, enjoy delicious dining and shopping, ride the world-famous cable cars and take in the sights to see in the City by the Bay.

Regardless of whether you work in a hospital, ASC or physician's office and regardless of whether you belong to this association or that one, you're all members of one community, all members of one family. Consider ORX to be a family reunion, just a little gathering of you, us and hundreds of your closest friends.