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Out on a LIMSThe Blog for People Who Risk Life and LIMS on a Daily Basis

More on Why I’m Telling You This

Volume IEntry 53 of 114 in 20114 min read5 comments ↓

Written by Gloria Metrick on . Published as written. It may not reflect how these systems work today.

I had planned to resume my post-IMACS blogging but I got a couple questions on yesterday’s post about “Why I’m Telling You This” that I wanted to speak more about: http://outonalims.com/2011/05/24/why-am-i-telling-you-this/

First of all, don’t be shy about asking these types of questions right to a blog post and I’d respond to them. But if you ask privately, I can still answer them, of course.

Question: Are you saying conferences are dead and pretty much a waste of time?
Answer:    No. My view of in-person conferences is that they remain the most powerful type of event we can attend if they apply to us. Meeting people in our industry face-to-face allows us a stronger interaction and better opportunities to get information than we get with on-line discussions and webinars. Nothing can replace the connections we make when we attend these events.

But there are so many conferences with the same topics and speakers that I don’t think it worthwhile to attend all of them. For someone who is a customer to laboratory informatics systems, the problem is more picking the right event as most customers will attend just one such event a year, if that. The problem for industry professionals such as myself is that we will probably attend enough of these to get a bit jaded about them and feel that we’ve seen the same thing too many times. The other problem is that we are providing more information than we are getting at most events so it becomes more and more difficult for us to select events where we get as much as we give. For an industry insider, it is nice that conferences offer us a free ticket to attend their events, but is not necessarily going to make it worthwhile for us to attend yet one more event to make use of that offer.

My real point is that there is no event that we have that is equally useful for everyone. Some events are great for customers who are just starting their laboratory informatics projects. Others are better for those that have their initial project work done but looking to go to the next level. Yet other events are more strategic in nature, looking not at specific implementations but at how everything fits together for the company’s overall strategies. And for industry insiders, there is no good place to get together. Consultants are valued enough to be urged to attend events and drag their customers to these events but there is no good purpose for them to attend past that at many events.

On top of all this, conferences continue to change. Conferences that we liked in the past are no longer well-attended and new conferences continue to crop-up. In this era of on-line events, it continues to amaze me the number of in-person private conferences that continue to be created -- and they're not cheap, either. So, there's a demand for them. However, I think we're attending them all because they're still new. As we've been to them all I think we'll find our favorites and some of them will be discontinued to force a true equilibrium of our long-term interest.

Question: Do you know of a way to improve that?
Answer:    Not really. Conference organizers focus on what they think will make money for the event. It’s a business and they can do nothing more than this. Where there are still pockets of non-profits around organizing events, there are still opportunities for small pockets of groups to all network and share their expertise but not on a grander scale. For example, Pittcon still allows everyone who wants to to come together and give presentations and network. But as the interest by the general laboratory informatics community in Pittcon continues to shrink, it’s not realistic to think of this event as a good way to get together with others in our industry.

I think that local meetings are a good strategy for areas where there is enough interest. We had successful meetings in theBostonarea in laboratory informatics, for example. However, because of the high concentration of people in a small geographic area inBoston, it works to have those types of meetings. In other areas where people are more spread-out and the interests vary, it is more difficult to have these types of meetings. However, for someone who is really interested, having an initial meeting for happy hour or dinner is a good start. In fact, in some areas, lunch or breakfast is actually better – part of the issue is knowing your area to have a feeling for what works best for people.

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

The conversation

5 comments from 2 people, May 26 to June 6, 2011. Gloria replied 2 times.

  1. John H. Jones

    For what it is worth, I do believe that local meetings is the way to go. They are not for profit and the focus is on the user, by users, for users. The point is well taken about the proximity of like minded folks in order to make the local event useful.

    To deal with the problems mentioned, I recommend that the local groups think outside the box and invite informatics professional from other areas to participate such as Health Informatics. That industry is HUGE and many, many times larger than lab informatics. Lab informatics folks have a lot to learn from the Health folks and I am not just talking about LIS.

    I think there is an insular group/community within the LIMS/Laboratory Informatics industry that has become so inbred that there is no innovation and it verges on the point of retardation.

    In order to address the issues of conferences being the same ole same ole and in order to bring more people into local conferences, I suggest going well outside of LIMS/LI to get community involvement.

    Again, just my opinion

  2. Gloria MetrickAuthor

    This is a particularly interesting comment. Here’s why: those of us in the industry all joke about how we go to conferences and see the same people but all in different booths, because people stay in the industry and just occasionally switch to a different employer. Some of those people will go on to start their own company within our industry, meaning they’ll still show up at the conferences be, yet again, be in a different booth. And, of course, I admit to attending some of the conferences not to get information but just to see people I know and catch-up with them.

    Here’s my own example: I’ve worked not just delivering LIMS and laboratory informatics services all these years, but with other software-oriented services groups, too, such as manufacturing and business services. In some of the other areas I’ve worked in, there have been professional services of a good quality available for quite a number of years. In laboratory informatics, our services weren’t at that level. As services have improved, services groups sell based on their great improvement. But “improved” isn’t the same as “high quality” and where there isn’t always competition or where customers haven’t worked with other services groups to know that these services aren’t delivered the way they should be, services continue to lag behind in our industry with regard to the quality they should be at, especially considering the prices charged for them. And for those customers who have received other types of services, they’re sometimes terribly disappointed by what they get for the high prices they’re paying to our industry, thinking they’ll get experienced people and well-delivered services when they pay the high prices.

    Note to customers: it’s a supply and demand market. Some of the high prices are due to that not to quality. Don’t try to compare the prices in the laboratory informatics industry to those you pay for your other IT services. Still, if you don’t get the quality you expect, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t shop around to see if you can get a higher quality for the prices you’re paying.

  3. Andy Levy

    Certainly agree with your comments. Would add that another way to give regional and national conferences a larger audiance--and therefore greater value to the sponsors and participants as well--is to stop treating them as discrete events. Integrate them with live video feeds to which people can subscribe (paid for by sponsors or for a small attendance fee), add interactive social media--not just Twitter burps but true information sharing and discussions that interact with live presentations. We should not think of the conference as soley in the four walls of a convention center/hotel or soley online--we need a mixed model.

  4. Gloria MetrickAuthor

    Andy, I remember going to a virtual conference a couple times in the past few years, and good information both streaming and sent as a presentation came out of that, with chat and the like.

    But like I think you suggested, I remember remember seeing an event that was an in-person event that also had a virtual aspect that sounded like it had lots of options for any budget and "attendance" preferences that really impressed me. I think it was one of the big software development conferences and I think it offered the virtual aspect at a more modest price than the actual event by telling people that it would be some good information but not like the "wow" of attending the event.

    However, as we talk about this, it's not always easy to put on an event, to start with, and every aspect does add more "things to do" so I don't want to criticize our current events, but would hope that those events that could add to it could do it. So, by the way, adding a webcam to a meeting doesn't solve the problem -- audio can be bad, the webcam can be grainy and the images unpleasant, so I don't want to make it sound "dead simple." Still, if a few people with some savvy on this worked together, it's doable.

  5. Andy Levy

    Just a final follow up. The Public
    Health Informatics 2011 is doing a combo live-virtual event this year.

    "Portions of the conference will be streamed live from the
    Downtown Atlanta location, allowing your staff to interact with
    attendees and vendors at the physical conference. The Public
    Health Informatics 2011 Virtual Conference will allow geographically
    dispersed participants to connect and collaborate
    online with speakers, vendors and attendees of the physical
    conference, and later access valuable archived footage and
    materials."

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