ELNs, Conferences and Blogs

More thoughts from Brussels…..

Last week’s ELN conference in Brussels seems to have generated more post-conference comment than any other I have attended. With posts appearing on this site, on Simon Coles’ ELN Blog and on the ELN Group in LinkedIn, the conference has acted as a catalyst for sharing opinion and maintaining a dialogue long after everyone had gone home. The content of the blogs centres on the thoughts and opinions of attendees, and emanates from everyone having had some time to put these thoughts and opinions in perspective. It’s not as if there is any great controversy or major difference in opinion amongst the bloggers; it just reflects that there are uncertainties in the ELN market, and where its boundaries lay with other laboratory software solutions.

The more philosophical point to come out of the blogs is that conferences tend to act, in part, as showcases for ‘successful’ projects. So if you come from the school of thought that says you learn more from your mistakes (or in this context, from other people’s mistakes), then what you hear at a conference may not provide you with all of the ammunition you need when you kick off your own project. On the other hand, would any conference organiser plan an agenda full of stories of failure, blame and recrimination? No, I can’t believe they would, but I bet we would love to attend if they did.

In my opinion, the blogs have added value to attending a conference. So is this where the value of the blogs comes in? Last week’s conference demonstrated that presentations occupy a fixed place and time, but opinion and comment can continue to be shared and debated in a constructive manner for days, weeks and months afterwards. We all have access to the tools to be able to participate in these debates; somehow we need to develop the culture that makes it important to contribute.

If you are a consumer in the laboratory software market, you are at the mercy of the vendors, consultants, journalists, conference organisers, and anybody else who seeks to make money out of this market. Other markets have demonstrated how consumers can come together around a common cause to exert influence on the suppliers; check ‘Here Comes Everybody’ and ‘Tribes’ for examples.

As a user community that is traditionally application-centric, we know we have some immediate concerns about matching solutions to problems. Furthermore, as integration becomes the next big challenge, there will be more issues to face. In fairness, I’ve spoken to laboratory software vendors who are frustrated that the market, as a whole, does not express its requirements, other than at a relatively low, and company-specific level. Web 2.0 and social tools offer us an unprecedented opportunity to put that right in a way that can serve the interests of the community as a whole.