A podcast about books, art & life — not necessarily in that order
Evidently, if you click through this
and order a Kindle 2 from Amazon, I’ll get a 10% kickback!
I really like my v.1 Kindle, and the improvements in v.2 aren’t significant enough for me to upgrade, but if you’re on the fence about whether to get one, you can read my rambles about the device in general here, here, and here.
My biggest complaint remains that the store doesn’t have all the semi-obscure (read: less commercial) stuff that I read, esp. that Everyman’s edition of Montaigne.
The temps are almost above freezing, here at the stately Virtual Memories manor! That means this week’s links are just about to thaw!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Jan. 23, 2009”
Merck gave a “state of the biz-nass” presentation today. Here’s their statement about it. As with every other major pharma company, they plan to
My favorite statement was this sentence on the company’s “focus”:
The Company is focused on developing novel, best-in-class or follow-on treatments for patients in primary care, specialty care, and hospital settings.
That is, they’re “focused” on making all types of drugs for all settings.
Let’s give thanks to a bunch of fun links! Just click “more”!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Nov. 28, 2008”
. . . unless you buy this report on the Global Pain Market!
It’s time for a post-racial collection of links! Whatever that means! Just click more!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Nov. 7, 2008”
From the biotech interview that I’m transcribing:
We can never say that there’ll be sufficient analytics to declare that one biotech product is equivalent to the other. That’s why they’re called biosimilars and not biogenerics. It’s the stuff you can’t measure that can kill you. Sometimes.
Are you ready for some linkage? I put in some hefty ones, to make up for last week’s hiatus (woop-woop-woop!). Also, because my brain was going to shut off if I listened to any more of the VP debate. Just click more!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Oct. 3, 2008”
In our previous installment, I chronicled the epic fail of our USB-drive suppliers. I know you’ll likely find this stuff boring, but I offer all these details so that you guys will have some idea of why this blog doesn’t always get the attention I’d like to give it.
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Our annual Contracting & Outsourcing show has two major components. One is our one-day tabletop exhibition, which features 125 pharmaceutical contract service providers, vendors, and other companies. Over the years, we’ve fine-tuned the schedule to make sure the attendees visit the exhibit hall numerous times during that day. Plenty of exhibitors have told us that our show is the best return on investment of any event they attend, because of the quality of the attendees they meet.
The main thing that can go wrong for the exhibitors is that one’s display or materials don’t show up. This happens almost every time. Several years back, there was a logistics provider whose materials never arrived at our show. I always laugh about that.
Miraculously, there were no major exhibitor complaints this year (as far as I know). We did have one surly exhibitor the night before the show, but he turned out to be one of those bullies who turns out to be a wimp when you stand up to him.
Now, the other part of the show is the conference, which runs a day-and-a-half. We have 4 speaker sessions the first day, and 5 the second. This year, I organized all the topics, speakers and timelines (with plenty of assistance from my conference advisory board) and felt very good about the lineup. However, it’s one thing to have the lineup down on paper; it’s another to actually see the speaker standing at the podium at the appointed time. . .
Continue reading “Tales from C&O 2008: Speakerboxxx”
Our 7th annual Contracting & Outsourcing conference wrapped up at noon on Friday, and the attendees, speakers, and exhibitors all went away happy, as far as we could tell! Success!
Our exhibit hall sold out in record time, and this year’s attendee count was up 50% from 2007’s; we chalked that up to a combination of going back to Thursday-Friday dates from last year’s Tuesday-Wednesday (the only dates we could get the venue, the fantastic Hyatt Regency in New Brunswick, NJ), and the lineup of speakers and topics that I assembled.
(This was the first year that I flew solo on the speaker lineup, following the retirement of the guy who used to moderate the conference and help us get FDA speakers. For months, I second-guessed almost every decision I made regarding the topics, speakers and scheduling. Except for the one that actually failed at the show. I’ve learned a valuable lesson: never let a panel discussion take questions from the audience.)
Having such a large number of attendees meant that our registration desk staff had to be very well coordinated. My associate editor runs that part of the event, and she did a great job of figuring out how many people we could add behind the desk before we reached the point of diminishing returns, where people smack into each other while retrieving badges, badge-holders, programs, USB drives, and bags, while printing up new badges for walk-up attendees. I think she gets tired of my “we couldn’t do it without you” praise, but that doesn’t make it less true.
Our show has hundreds of attendees, a dozen speakers, and 130 exhibiting companies (most of which send more than a single employee), and it’s set up and run by 4 full-timers who are also responsible for producing an ongoing magazine, with help from several marketing assistants, who have to divvy their time among our conference and all of the other magazines they work on. So we each have checklists and timelines of things we need to get done for the show.
In addition to assembling the speaker lineup, I’m responsible for making the 52-page conference guide (with heavy assistance from my associate editor), designing a dozen or so posters for the event (thanking sponsors for breakfasts, lunches, coffee breaks and prize giveaways, displaying the conference schedule, and giving directions for the sessions and the exhibit hall), getting the presenters’ Powerpoint files together and making sure they don’t have font problems, getting the speakers’ hotel-room comps ironed out, and a million other little things. (Oh, and we have to finish the 156-page October issue.)
The other 3 full-timers also have huge sets of tasks, some of which have to be taken care of months in advance and some of which can’t be completed till the day before the show. That’s event planning for you; there are a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong, but when it all works, you feel even better about making it happen.
Which isn’t to say everything was smooth sailing. . .
Continue reading “Tales from C&O 2008: Warped Drives”