Summer’s not over just yet, but with September approaching, it means that conference season will soon be upon us. I’m reminded of Gloria’s earlier post on The Value of Attending a Conference. Despite all of the outstanding ways technology offers us to communicate, collaborate and generally keep in touch, there’s nothing to compete with the face-to-face networking and conversations that occur around the breaks (and bars) at a conference.
The season kicks off (for me) at the end of September with IQPC’s 8th annual conference on ELNs and Advanced Laboratory Solutions. This seems to be one of the most established conferences on ELNs, although it relocated to Brussels from its original home in London 3 years ago. Over its lifespan, this conference has undergone incremental change from its early days when the ELN market was very new and few attendees had much hands-on experience, to the current situation in which an established group of ELN warriors can pass on their experience and war stories, and speculate on the influence of changing business and technology trends. I sometimes wonder how much more there is to say about ELNs, but for those who are already down that route, the emphasis is changing towards the topic of integration. And of course, there are still a significant number of organisations who have yet to convert.
The IQPC conference programme does a good job of satisfying both of these communities by incorporating a pre-conference focus day which is targeted at those new to, or in the early days of an ELN project. The main part of the conference brings together a number of case studies and opportunities to share experiences, concerns and discuss the changing laboratory landscape. And of course, there’s the opportunity to catch up with colleagues old and new, have a beer and put the world to rights – a priceless benefit.
