 |
||
  |
||
| Pittcon – How to Get the Most Out of It | ||
| Pittcon
is next month (as most of you know). I’m
speaking in the Laboratory Informatics Project
Management session on how to prepare to purchase
a LIMS. When I wrote last year about Pittcon in this newsletter, it was such a popular topic (the number one topic among all my newsletters by a wide margin), I thought I’d write a bit more about this event in this issue. Should You Attend? Customers and other consultants often ask me if they should attend Pittcon. For those of you that have attended Pittcon before 2003, I want to point out that most LIMS-related vendors all exhibit in one area at Pittcon, called “Laboratory Informatics,” so it’s easy to find most ofl the vendors you need to see. A few vendors can be found outside that area, however because: 1. Space is limited in the LIMS-related area. Once it fills up, the rest of the LIMS-related vendors end up wherever there’s open floorspace. 2. Some vendors with competitive products do not want to be next to each other. They have the option of moving, and sometimes that means they are out of the LIMS exhibit area. If you want to see the vendors outside this area, you have to know who to look for in order to find them. If you are looking for a LIMS, attending Pittcon is the easiest way to get a lot of information about LIMS in one place, at one time. You will not find every LIMS vendor at Pittcon. Depending on your industry and the size of your laboratory, your particular needs may not be met there, but all the “big” vendors will be there. You should also check out industry lists of products to see what’s available that you might have missed at the conference or that might not have been exhibited there. I don’t want to suggest that your product selection will suffer if you don’t attend. You still have to go through the same amount of work to determine the best product to meet your needs whether you go to Pittcon or not. Sometimes, however, you’ll immediately know that a product isn’t appropriate for you just by seeing the general demo at Pittcon. That said, make sure you ask the software vendor if the demo they’re about to show is appropriate for you (i.e., if you’re from a chemical company, you may not want to sit through the demo intended for pharmaceutical manufacturers, depending on how specific the demo is). If you are new to LIMS, Pittcon presentations can be useful. There’s usually a range of various topics on selecting a LIMS, validating a LIMS, work-flow analysis, and other topics people volunteer to speak about in any given year. For the more experienced person, I suggest that focused workshops on a particular topic are more cost-effective. In the amount of time and/or space given for the talks or posters, someone new to LIMS issues will find a few good overall tips on a wide variety of topics, but this is exactly what prohibits the experienced person from getting too much out of it. It’s the fact that there are so many 20-minutes talks and brief posters, which give lots of high-level tips, but can’t get in-depth due to limited time or space. You can find plenty of interesting topics covered as part of your Pittcon admission fee, even if you don’t spend the extra money to go to the Laboratory Informatics Conference-Within-a-Conference that is held within Pittcon. If you are looking for a job in the LIMS industry, this is probably the best place to go. Everyone looking for new professional employees does not necessarily advertise on industry job boards. Pittcon is the one place you can go to talk to them face-to-face to find out about job opportunities available in their organizations. Most of what I’ve just said applies more to customers than to consultants and other service providers. For the rest of us, the considerations are a bit different, but even people who are new to providing services and/or consulting to the LIMS industry should consider attending to get quick, high-level information and the latest in industry trends. Getting the Most Out of Your Attendance See my February 2002 newsletter for this information; it hasn’t changed: http://www.geometrick.com/n_l_get_most_01.html |
||
| If you are not on the distribution list for "Out on a LIMS" but are reading this newsletter, you have probably stumbled across it via an Internet search. To join the list of this free, monthly newsletter, see the Newsletter page. For more information on GeoMetrick Enterprises, see the Home page. | ||
| Production
of This Newsletter Assistance in the production of this newsletter was provided by Teich Technical and Marketing Communications, which can help you find your new clients through marketing communications, technical writing, editing, indexing, and Web content services, along with training and educational materials development. Thea Teich, owner and principal, is currently the immediate past president of the Society for Technical Communication. Contact: Thea@TeichTMC.com |
||
| © GeoMetrick Enterprises 2004 | ||