Feels like it’s been a while for me but hopefully I was able to prepare enough material ahead of time so that you didn’t have to notice. And the reason it’s been a bit for me is because of the 2024 International Conference on ADHD which is a collaborative event put on my CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder), ADDA (Attention Deficit Disorder Association), and ACO (ADHD Coaches Organization). always been.
The conference caters to adults with ADHD, educators, coaches, organizers, clinicians, therapists - really anyone who is effect by ADHD either directly on indirectly. There are all kinds of presentations at the conference - workshops, peer-to-peer discussion groups, networking opportunities, and there’s also an exhibit hall.
And this year was my first year presenting at the conference.
So in this episode I’m going to go into some of my reflections of attending this years conference - things I did, things I learned and of course some stuff about my presentation.
Now, before I get into anything, let’s talk about what the conference is actually like. This year, it was held in Anaheim, California—so basically just down the street from Disneyland. That said, mid-November, southern California has much nicer weather than a lot of the rest of the country. And I have to say, location-wise, this year was great for me since I didn’t have to deal with any time zones.
In general, the conference has a fantastic atmosphere. Basically, everyone there has ADHD or is at least quite used to the people who have it. There are lots of friendly faces and people excited to talk to you. I had countless fun conversations with people I just happened to be sitting next to in one presentation or another.
That said, the conference can also be a little intense. The schedule is jam-packed with presentations, workshops, and all sorts of things that my ADHD brain says, “Oh yeah, do this one, too.” One of the most important things I’ve learned from attending is to pace myself and be okay with missing stuff. Plus there are all the people I want to talk with that I only get to see in person once a year.
This year was also fun because by the time I got around to booking my hotel arrangements, all the conference hotel rooms were booked (mind you, this was months after my proposal was accepted, and I planned on attending). And so I found a place that was basically right next to the Anaheim Conference center. I was pretty proud of how well I adjusted, which should have honestly been a red flag for me because it turns out the conference wasn’t being held at the giant convention center but at the conference hotel. It turned out fine since I was only a 15-minute walk away, but it definitely felt like a moment where the ADHD won.
I started Thursday with Dr. Carolyn Parcells’ presentation, “Management of Medications for the Treatment of ADHD,” which I know sounds like a real banger. Honestly, Dr. Parcells did an amazing job with the presentation. It provided lots of good information about the specifics of what kinds of medications are used to treat ADHD, as well as a lot of stuff about assessing what’s working and when you need to think about changing things up.
She’s definitely someone I need to get onto the podcast at some point because I’d love to be able to put out some stuff on medication, but since I’m not a doctor, I’m not that comfortable putting all that together myself.
Other highlights from Thursday included Dr. Avraham Oren’s presentation on his new function-based method for diagnosing and treating ADHD. The idea behind his approach is to focus on five key brain functions (attention, organization, working memory, activity level, and decision-making speed) and use those for a comprehensive clinical assessment based solely on patient self-reports with family and teacher input. It definitely looked like something that was worth looking into since current assessments for ADHD often focus more on how the individual is disruptive to those around them instead of how their ADHD is actually effecting them.
And once the general conference started I basically lost my mind and it’s mostly a blur. The day started with a Keynote from Penn Holderness, who is an online content creator and recently wrote, with his wife, The book ADHD Is Awesome: A Guide To (Mostly) Thriving With ADHD. I’m going to be honest that I was fairly apprehensive about this as a keynote since “ADHD is Awesome” sounds like another ADHD superpower thing, which is something I’m not all that on board with. So I was pleasantly surprised when he mentioned this idea and how someone brought up to him the idea that ADHD superpowers tend to only be a thing promoted by white men because of the support systems that they get from spouses and parents. And that’s a message I can get behind, that we can thrive with ADHD if, and this is a big if, we have the support systems in place that let us do so. While there can be great things about ADHD, more often than not they are completely overshadowed by all the things that ADHD makes so much harder. Because yeah, if I didn’t have to worry about all those things, well then of course ADHD isn’t going to be a huge problem. I mean it’ll still be a problem, but if I didn’t have any serious consequences from all the things I was late for, didn’t finish or just completely forgot about, the management side of things wouldn’t be nearly as big of an issue.
So I was happy with that keynote and I think Penn might be a fun person to eventually try and have on the podcast. Seems like a fun genuine person who is very open about his struggles with ADHD.
Also on Friday, I recorded interview with Brendan Mahan for his Influencer Lunch Chats that I believe he is eventually going to be posting on his podcast, ADHD Essentials. It was actually a great interview that gave me a lot to think about for the rest of the day (that along with the other interviews he did in the series that included Seth Perler, Ron Capalbo, Jessica McCabe, Lucia Miri Echavarria and Inger Shay Colzie).
Of course, there were a ton of other people I talked to and events that I attended, but the big thing for me this year was that it was also the first year that I was presenting. And so that took up a considerable amount of my mental focus because I was also trying to make last-minute updates to my slides and presentation—in fact, I didn’t finalize my slides until an hour before the presentation. Although, to be honest I kind of think that’s kind of expected for a lot of the speakers at an ADHD conference.
I wasn’t expecting too much of an audience for the presentation because it was late in the day on the 3rd day of the conference and I know by that point a lot of people have gone to enough sessions to really be feeling it. Instead I had an entirely full room of people and they had to turn people away at the door. Sorry to anyone who missed the presentation.
Anyway, the presentation was titled “Outsourcing Executive Function with AI,” which, if you follow the podcast, you may know is also the title of an episode I put out earlier this year. Writing and publishing that episode was actually part of my prep for the presentation. I figured that if I did an episode, I could base the slides I made off of that. It worked better in theory than in practice, but it was definitely helpful to pull on.
So how’d the presentation actually go?
I don’t want to be too critical here because it did seem like the audience enjoyed the presentation, but while I was going through the presentation I felt like there were a lot of things that I could have changed or done a better job explaining. So not saying it was bad, but I am disappointed with the end result. And again, I don’t this too come off as too critical because I do think what I presented was good, just there were parts that I could have made much better.
And I wanted to mention this because in a lot of ways for me this felt like the ADHD winning.
If anyone is interested, there is also an online version of the conference happening March 7-8, 2025. The online conference is completely different from the in-person conference and will have a whole new set of presenters. I had considered also putting a presentation together for that one, but uh, I didn’t.
If you’re interested in the next in-person conference, that is going to be in November 2025, and I believe it is going to be in Baltimore, but I’m not certain about that, and it’s not up on the website yet.
I also wanted to quickly include a section about Disneyland, which you may be asking, “why talk about that at all” but it is relevant, because what I mainly want to talk about is the Disability Access Service which is designed to assist guests with disabilities that make waiting in line difficult. And ADHD fits the bill here. While there is no official list of what qualifies here, it seems like it is primarily for cognitive/developmental conditions like ADHD, autism, or anxiety.
Basically the way it works is that after you’ve signed up for this service and have been approved, when you are at the park you can use the app to sign up for rides via with your DAS pass and use the lightning lane. But here’s the thing, you don’t actually skip the waiting part, you just don’t have to do it in line. So I look on the app, and it says that Space Mountain has a 45-minute wait; I sign up with the DAS pass, and it’ll book me a time that I can use the lightning lane in 45 minutes.
And I wanted to talk about this because this is a fantastic way to make an accommodation. Because while I’m looking at some of the wait times for these rides they are things I know I just wouldn’t do if I had to regularly wait in line. And that’s not even considering that I have my ADHD kids with me. Even if I was playing with my phone the whole time to distract myself, there are a lot of things I would completely skip.