TOUR the AIDS 2026 Conference in Rio w/ me!

Hey guys, so I'm at the International AIDS Conference in Rio 2026 and I just wanted to give you a quick tour of what it's like to be here for those of you for most of you who can't come to events like this. Just want to give you an idea. So this is the entrance walking into the conference center and I'm going to switch the camera around so that you guys can see better. >> [music] >> This is actually a really big facility and there's this huge [music] atrium here with these beautiful murals on the walls. And that's pretty gorgeous. There's always people coming and going to sessions to the global village which is the primary [music] community-led um area of the conference. There's the exhibition hall which is all like industry pharmaceutical companies and then there's the actual like conference sessions and stuff and those are in their their own section, too. So first, I will take you into the global village. And the [music] global village is special. It only happens once every 2 years. >> [music] >> So on what on odd years, this conference is primarily like science-based so they don't have the global village, they don't have this community component and then on even years, they do and I'm going to show you what it's all about. >> [music] >> So I mean, this place is huge. And you'll see all these different booths for different organizations. Right now, this is GATE, it's a trans organization and they're having like conversations, panels, workshops. Here's another one. This area of the conference is open to everybody. You don't have to be registered to the conference itself. This is the most accessible to people. Uh she's not here today, but if you saw my other video on uh Bean Apps, Gail Brodsky, she was here yesterday. She's with the organization that's putting on this zone. Here we have Impact. They're having a conversation right now as well. There's Axel Bautista in the green shirt in the middle. You might recognize him. >> [music] >> More conversations happening. This one having to do with feminist power. This is like the youth pavilion. They've got their own program of things to do. This is Impulse, which is um something that AHF has all over the world. So, they have their own activities here. Super fun. I don't know where they are. For Ukraine because Ukraine has a growing problem with controlling HIV with all of the instability that's going on there. Celebrating women living with HIV. Black gay men. And then ViiV is the primary sponsor. ViiV Healthcare is the primary sponsor for the Global Village. And um so, they have this giant booth that they made here. And a Positive Action is a program that they've had for years where they fund events around the world. Here's the sex worker networking zone. I mean, literally everything you can think of that might need representation you're going to find here. This is AVAC's zone. They don't have anything going on right now, but yesterday they had conversations happening here with local Brazilians about HIV cure and um translating science, letting people know what they can expect to see in HIV cure in the coming months, years. Oh, I see Doreen. Looks like Doreen's having a little conversation with Viv. And then next to her is Monique of Prevention Access Campaign. She just became the new president of Prevention Access Campaign. This is Ben. Ben's awesome and Dustin. I work with these guys a lot. They're the best. Yay. >> Are we live? >> Not live. >> I'm not live. >> You will be once I post it. >> Yeah. Yeah, yeah. >> You see these like big igloo-looking things? These are inflatable rooms where they have screenings and conversations. You can go in there and watch certain films that they have on. This is the HIV Unwrapped project. So this is really cool. This is a collaboration between scientists and designers, local designers. And so [music] they collaborate. The scientist talks to the designer about the research that they're doing and then that inspires the designer to create this outfit. So each one is motivated by a different form of science, a different form of research. And so there were local Brazilian designers that paired with scientists to create these amazing outfits at the opening plenary, with the opening session, basically the opening ceremonies of the conference. [music] There were models. They came out on stage and modeled all of these outfits. Gorgeous, gorgeous. This is the one I wore. This tours around the world. And the next one is going to be New York Fashion Week. And I've been asked to model something at New York Fashion Week. So I'm super stoked about that. That'll be really exciting. Can't wait. There's more booths over here. I'm not going to go to every single booth cuz that'll take a very long time. The Silver Zone. So, this is representation for our aging cohort of people living with HIV. Having another good conversation here. There's [music] And so, the thing about this conference is that you literally cannot >> [music] >> attend and participate in everything that's going on here. It's impossible. If you get FOMO, you will have non-stop FOMO here. I have non-stop FOMO cuz there are so many amazing things happening all the time that you just can't You just can't do it. Oh, let me give you a little sneak peek of this area. So, this is like the media studio primarily where Plus Life, you know Plus Life, is doing their interviews. So, they have it set up here. I can enter because I have a media badge. [music] There's one of my producers, [music] Mike, trying to focus and stay concentrated editing things in real time. Doing his best to ignore me. And there are my wings that I will bring out in a little bit. And then over here is the beautiful studio setup. Let me see if there's anything going on. No, empty. Okay, great. There's my other executive producer, Brent, and Keith, who mans the cameras. These guys are super focused as well. But, isn't that pretty? So, that's where they film a bunch of interviews. This guy. Hey. >> Hi. >> How are you, man? Awesome. >> What? He's is advocate I met um when I was at the Prevention Access Campaign Gala a few nights ago. Hey, hey. There's Mr. Mark Wagner. Um what collaboratory are you part of? >> [music] >> Uh the I4C. >> I4C, which is one of the 10 Martin Delaney collaboratories that I've told you guys about. Mark is such a wonderful human being, >> [music] >> the biggest heart. We went on a safari together when we were in Kigali, Rwanda. And actually my angel wings had an accident and they were torn and he got me tape. He got me tape [music] to fix it. So, I was fixing it earlier. Thanks to Mark. Again, look at these beautiful murals. There's this beautiful area right here. A lot of people have been filming interviews here. Beautiful murals. So, from here there's basically two areas that you can go to. You can go to the right, which has your registration, exhibition hall, which is where I was telling you all the industry is, big pharma, all of them are over there. Or you can go to the left, which is where the sessions, presentations, um positive lounge for people living with HIV if they need a little break, and the media center for all the media here. So, we'll go here first and check out the area where there's sessions going on constantly all day. It's insane. Again, never ever could you even see a frac- a small fraction of all the sessions that are going on. It's impossible. Fortunately, IAS uh records a lot of this. And so, if you get like a virtual registration to the conference, you can you can watch these after the conference is over and potentially watch all of them. Here, I'm going to sign in. Have them scan my badge. Hi. These are all volunteers helping to make this thing beautiful thing run. There's constantly people going in every direction. Sessions, going to get food. So, here I'll just take you into some of these rooms. Room 101. Nothing going on at the moment, but you can get an idea of what's going on in here. Cool. We'll go upstairs where there's a bunch of rooms as well. Also, let's take a moment to look at this beautiful view. Oh, gorgeous for a conference center. Beautiful. Probably the most beautiful conference center I've been to. So, there's all these rooms up here. And basically, there's an agenda online. They also give you little booklets um letting you know all the sessions that are going on, what time. And you can track them and go to the respective rooms here. There's Ms. Christine Dubé. She's amazing, always doing uh scientific research on community. You you just it's So, there's Sharon Lewin. Sharon Lewin was president of the IAS also. She's a fantastic researcher from Australia. The like it's just I can't describe to you what it's like to be here. Um and just constantly running into people who are just amazing people from all over the world. Scientists working on cure research. That's Sharon's expertise. I'll just show you the really quick the media center. I'm going to be quiet though because there's Lindsay. >> [laughter] >> Lindsay's amazing, too. I've worked with her a bunch. This is the media center. I'm going to be quiet cuz a lot of people are in here working, but I'll just show you. So, these are all like journalists and people from different publications. A lot of them you probably heard of. Some advocates too, some scholars for media. I'm going to go say hi to Mark really quick. Mark, say hi to my audience. Hey. Mark S. King, [music] he's the one who actually initially kind of like opened his arms and and welcomed me into the world of advocacy at my first conference which was USCHA in DC years ago. I forgot how long ago that was, maybe 2019? Um, such a fantastic person. Oh, and we've done some interviews on my channel, so you should be able to see his videos, too. And he has a book out. Yeah, I mean just to give you an idea, if you see the sheer number of rooms and imagine that there's something going on in each room at the same time simultaneously, you can get an idea of just the sheer volume of stuff going on. >> [music] >> And this is the positive lounge that I was telling you about. I'm not going to show people in there because, you know, not everybody is out with their status. Just want to give them the privacy. Okay, now we're going to walk back out. More rooms [music] in this hall. We don't need to go down there. So, these rooms behind these black doors, they actually all merge, like the walls come down and merge into this giant room that can fit thousands of people for their huge uh sections that they do for the whole conference, they do them in the mornings and there there will be a closing one too once the conference is over. And now we'll make our way to the exhibition hall. Um, this plaza outside here lined with food trucks all the way around to the other side. So you can get a bite while you're here. Into the exhibition hall. Now you can see you'll see a lot of big company names that you'll recognize. Here's Gilead. And so they'll create these booths in a way that they can have conversations, networking, do some meetings on the spot. This is very corporate obviously in stark contrast to how the Global Village was. Here is GSK / ViiV Healthcare, their booth. There's Judy Audi right there with the orange bag. She's a phenomenal advocate I've worked with a bunch on some advisory boards as well. There she is, Sarah. Say hi to my audience. I'm recording for YouTube. I'm I'm showing everyone a tour of the conference center so they get an idea of what it's like. Not at all, you're part of it now. >> [laughter] >> Sarah's amazing. Um, Sarah works she does the Last Gift. She just created a a documentary that's Emmy winning. Emmy award winning. So, yeah. Anyway, I don't want to disrupt you. Um, yeah, Emmy winning The Last Gift, based in San Diego, and basically they work with um, people who are near the end of their life, living with HIV, who want to donate their body to science, so that their body can be used to help further um, HIV science around the world, towards cure, towards whatever, anything HIV-related. And so, it's really moving and it's touching and they just do such a good job of being respectful and caring for the person that's passing and also for their family. Incredible documentary. If you'd like me to interview her on the channel about her work and what she does, please let me know. Oh, by the way, since we're here, let me just show you the sheer volume of posters that are here this year. Unfortunately, I haven't really had time. I'm not sure if anybody's going to be presenting their posters tomorrow. If they are, maybe I'll try to get some interviews, but I just haven't had time to do interviews this year. Let me just show you what real quick. I don't know if you can tell on camera or get a sense of just how massive this area is and how many posters there are. Again, you can never see all the posters, learn I I just want you to get an idea of just how much research must be going on at any given time all over the world for there to be even that many posters. [music] And that's not even including the research that's presented in sessions and workshops. It's nuts. There's another fantastic advocate, Bridget Picou. She's brilliant and I have to interview her on my channel, too. We're overdue. >> So, there, I'm coming. [music] Whenever you call, I'm coming. >> The Well Project. It's coming soon. I I never heard of a lot of these companies. OraQuick, that's a familiar name. She gets around. We know about OraQuick. And I'm slowly going to make my way my way to Merck because I am going to talk to them about some potential interviews we could do. If you haven't seen our recent interview with Luis Santana, you should. It's about their latest It's a new drug that they have called Isentress. And we also talk about some other upcoming potential medications and research. AHF, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Transgender Law Center. Okay, well, anyway, I hope you guys who always feel FOMO when I go to these conferences and say you wish you could go and you can never attend, that you at least got like an idea of what it's like to be here. Um, how the layout is and just the kind of connections you make, the people you meet, the advocates, the scientists, all of that. All right. Well, I got to get to it. So, I'll see you guys soon. Bye. >> [music] [music]