Conference One: Done – Now, on to the Next

I’m finished with the Laboratory Data Management USA 2010 conference and taking a flight to Amsterdam later today to head toward the next conference. Doing a wrap-up of the conference is hard. So much has happened that I don’t know where to start.

First of all, the general feeling of the attendees seemed to be that we felt the small size to be appropriate for the way the conference was setup. Not only were there some really informative talks, but we had a chance to talk to anyone we wanted. It was small-enough, you could grab any speaker to talk about their presentation or start a discussion on just about any topic you desired.

I ended up in discussions including, but not limited to:

• Licensing laboratory informatics products for the Cloud.
• What conferences are worth attending and which ones will probably disappear – identifying where are we overserved. Also, we discussed when and for how long single-topic conferences are practical.
• Gaps in our conferences – identifying where are we underserved.
• Professional organizations that do an especially good job of serving their communities.
• Practical considerations toward making use of the cloud.
• Discussions regarding applying examples from what some of the speakers’ companies are doing to other delegates own situations.
• Social networking – what it is and whether we can get a benefit from it.

Some of the discussion was based on presentations. For example, there was an excellent presentation about using the Cloud. That sparked much discussion for me with others during some of the breaks.

Other discussions just came from the fact that some topics are important to those of us in the laboratory informatics industry and naturally come up when we’re together.

Anyway, this posting doesn’t do justice to it, but gives a brief overview just to give an idea of it.

Gloria Metrick
GeoMetrick Enterprises
http://www.GeoMetrick.com/