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May 14 - 16, 2010

Safety Harbor Resort & Spa

105 north bayshore dr

Safety harbor, fl

888-237-8772 or 727-726-1161

Resort & Spa Information

Great Location and low Hotel Rates: After each day of top-quality continuing education, you’ll have time to enjoy gourmet or poolside dining, Spa services, recreation or just relax at the beautiful Safety Harbor Resort & Spa that is located on 22 acres over-looking Tampa Bay. 

The Safety Harbor Resort & Spa is offering the much reduced “Professional Opticians of Florida" rate of $99 single/double plus tax with an $8 a day resort amenity fee to all guests completing reservations before April 22, 2010. Call toll free at 888-237-8772 or 727- 726-1161 for additional information or to handle your room reservation over the phone. For additional hotel information, see the Accommodations page.

Plus, we are offering some new features to this year's conference line up. POF has added more educational options for you to attend including hands-on workshops to enhance your skills.

HANDS-ON WORKSHOPS

Spanish for Opticians Workshop

Saturday 10:00am - 12:00pm

Earn two hours elective CE credit while you learn and practice your Spanish language skills in a course specifically tailored for Opticians. This is a great opportunity if you want to learn the basic language commands, statements and questions necessary to communicate with the growing Hispanic community.

Opticians that are native speakers of the language will conduct this lively session. They have designed this unique learning opportunity to be interactive, fun and relevant to your needs. This course will allow you to progress at your own pace while in real life scenarios created to increase your confidence to speak Spanish while in the optical.       

Register before April 22 and receive in advance a copy of the 56 page workbook Spanish for Opticians, with an audio CD (a $35 value that is included in the price of signing-up), to get you started on your learning prior to the workshop. Seating for this workshop is very limited and only an additional $49 with your registration to the West Coast Conference.

NOTE: If you are attending this workshop the Medicare Errors course will be available to you as a home study course.

Reducing Remakes: Tips, Tools, Tweaks & Rules

Two hour Hands-On Workshop - Available at three different times

Having to remake eyewear for whatever reason, costs the optical industry billions of dollars each year (yes, that’s Billion with a B!). We invite you to do your share in reducing the costs of redo’s, errors, and non-adapts by attending one of the three - two hour, hands-on trainings sessions at this year’s conference. You will gain hands-on skills with time-tested techniques for fitting today’s lenses the first time. These skills are not only good for you to know or brush-up on, but by attending, you will learn how to train others in your office with these proven methods.

These advanced hand-on sessions are designed for opticians at all skill levels who want to learn, and then share these value skills, that reduce remakes, headaches and heartaches for everyone. Most of all, it will reduce costs, save time and put more back into your pocket.

Make the commitment to be the best optician you can and attend one of the Reducing Remakes Workshops. There are only three sessions and they have very limited seating and best of all they are FREE, when sign-up for the conference. (Because there is limited seating, there will be $25 no-show fee, for signing up and not attending or not providing advance notice.)

Make your first choice of the session your want when you register- with the limited seating, your session placement is not guaranteed.

Session A - Friday 4:00pm – 6:00pm
Session B - Saturday 8:00am –10:00am
Session C - Saturday 3:30pm –5:30pm

PREREQUISITES – KNOWLEDGE OF:

Optical measurements and dispensing procedures
Decentration calculations

Vertex and working distance calculations
Prism applications, verification and calculations
ANSI tolerances
Frame and lens designs, styles and materials, and uses

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course will present an overview of optical measurements and calculations. The course will identify common causes of remakes and their solutions while presenting troubleshooting procedures as well as enhance the optician’s skill of taking measurements, performing calculations and applying techniques to reduce remakes of eyewear.

Upon completion of this course you should be able to:

• describe and obtain the necessary measurements for various lens and frame designs
• perform calculations for various lens and frame designs and their uses
• identify and use the common causes of remakes and their solutions
• understand what to look for when verifying, neutralizing and/ or duplicating
• understand the application of standards and tolerances