Let me admit this – I’m among that techie crowd that e-mails everyone. I resist picking up the phone when I don’t absolutely have to. Much of my time spent with other people in our industry is spent either in e-mail or in on-line groups. But even I can tell you that this is a poor substitute for leaving your desk and attending a meeting. In my own blog, today, I was talking about the good experiences I recently had going out into the world and speaking directly with other human beings:
From going to give a free talk for a colleague to attending the Boston LIMS/Laboratory Informatics meeting, yesterday was a pretty good day. Both those events got me more information and excitement than I get from my on-line discussions or my e-mail.
A couple days ago, John Trigg was talking about conferences, YET AGAIN, in:
http://theintegratedlab.com/2009/09/conferences-again/
In fact, you’ll notice he and I talk quite a bit about getting out to conferences and how important that is. If you search TheIntegratedLab’s postings, you’ll find this out.
As I’ve said, before, I realize that many of you have had budget cuts that prevent you from going to the big conferences, but they don’t prevent you from going to local meetings. For example, in the Boston area, alone, there’s LIMS/Laboratory Informatics, ACS (American Chemical Society), ALMA (Association of Laboratory Managers), LRIG (Laboratory Robotics Interest Group). That’s just a very few of them! And, while a few do charge a modest fee, most of them are free to attend.
Just in the LIMS/Laboratory Informatics group, alone, we’ve had great speakers on biobanking LIMS, ELN issues, Wikis as LIMS, and on how to learn to run better laboratory informatics projects. The excitement at some of our meetings way surpasses the interest we show in any our our on-line discussions.
So, the on-line discussions are great for sharing information but just don’t have the same element of “chemistry” you get when interested people get together.
