Category: Pharmaceuticals

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”

The majority of the Top Companies issue is just about done, dear readers! Still need to finish up some layouts and write the short intros to the two major sections (Top 20 Pharma & Top 10 Biopharma), but the finish line is actually within sight!

So I thought I’d take a break from my biopharma layouts and share with you a couple of odd laughs:

Inadvertent Pharma Phunnies

Boehringer Ingelheim sponsors a website on transient ischemic attack. It’s www.stroke-forum.com, and I bet it receives a lot of disappointed visitors.

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Astellas, a Japanese company, has a press release section with a link to archives titled “What’s New in the past”. Not quite Engrish, but close!

Advertent Pharma Phunnies

I needed a subhed for a section on how Enbrel has a strict warning about the possibility of TB and other infections among patients. Since Amgen has been hit with a lot of labeling and safety issues this past year, I went with “Phthisis Ridiculous!”

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Huge restructuring plans with portentous names were the norm this year, leading to this paragraph from my Wyeth profile:

In 2008, Wyeth transitioned from its open-ended and somewhat ambiguous Project Springboard productivity plan into Project Impact. While the notions of “springboard” and “impact” may evoke images of Wile E. Coyote smashed flat against a cliff face, this new initiative is intended to “adjust down our infrastructure and reduce our operating costs in response to loss of Protonix sales in 2008 [and] to facilitate long-term growth, as well as to address short-term fiscal challenges,” according to the company’s 10-K statements.

Okay, maybe I’m just punchy.

No posts today, dear readers. I still have to research and write 1000-word profiles for Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, Amgen and Genentech, and 350-word profiles for Merck Serono and Schering Plough. Then I get to lay out the issue over the holiday weekend so we can get it out to the printer by Monday. Joy!

But that’s the tradeoff for the money and travel opportunities. I’m not complaining so much as letting you know that you’ll be lucky to get some Unrequired Reading tomorrow.

Don’t blow (your own) fingers off this weekend!