Jul
12
Speaker Bill of Rights
Filed Under Editorials | 1 Comment
We believe that the best conference presentations result from consistently treating your speakers and their content with the respect they deserve, and I am constantly amazed by how some conference organizations try to milk every dime they can out a speaker’s material. I’ve seen videotapes, audiotapes, CDs, and hard-copies sold for an additional price at the meeting, as well as mass marketed to the industry at large without additional authorization. I’ve always felt that such practices dilute the value of the presentations and take unfair advantage of the speakers’ hard work.
Our conferences are known for their top-quality presentations in which the speakers provide real data and disclose more practical information than is available from most other meetings. We avoid commercial content and relative data that doesn’t provide anything useful. We also disdain “road show” talks that are given over and over again at numerous meetings. Anyone who has attended one of our conferences knows that he or she must give a solid and defensible talk to avoid being eaten alive by our incredibly knowledgeable audiences.
The bottom line is we respect the work involved in obtaining approval to give a quality talk with valuable information. We pride ourselves on protecting this material in any way the speaker requests, and we are therefore able to obtain presentations from all the top companies. To get the best talks, we have adhered to the following practices for over 14 years, which we refer to as our:
Speaker Bill of Rights SM
- We do not include presentation slides in the conference binder unless you have given us approval to do so.
- We do not distribute your presentation material in any other way than the conference binder, and possibly a CD, that are only provided to full-conference attendees and sponsors at no additional cost.
- We do not sell your presentation material through additional distribution following the conference. In other words, the conference binders and CDs are only available to the conference attendees, and we do not sell them to people who did not attend.
- We do not allow videotaping during your presentation.
- We do not allow photography during your presentation without your expressed permission and our supervision.
Please let us know if there is anything else we can do to help you obtain approval for presentations that provide valuable data. For more information on submitting a presentation abstract and giving a talk at one of our conferences, please visit our website at http://www.wilbio.com/speaker_information.htm
Keith L. Carson
Chairman - WilBio
Jun
29
We’re building a discussion center for each area of our technical interests, starting with single-use components and systems, which we are also covering July 16-18 at our 9th annual meeting in Concord, California. For more information on this meeting, please go to http://www.wilbio.com/SUB2007.htm
I have been a proponent of single-use bioprocessing components since the mid-80s when I worked with hollow fiber and ceramic core (Opticel) bioreactor systems. I also grew cells in a number of gas-permeable and non-gas-permeable bags on rocker platforms. I then worked on projects to design pre-sterilized, custom assemblies for fluid handling with bags, filters, tubing and fittings; which resulted in some of the earliest commercial, single-use systems.
Then in 1990, Stedim Biosystems was just starting up their US operation and moving into larger bags for bioprocess applications. They quickly captured the lion’s share of the media and buffer storage applications, but no one really knew how far this technology would go and how much competition it would spawn. The use of bags revolutionized the cell culture media business by allowing convenient shipment of ever larger volumes of liquid media. Buffers and high-purity water also became available in large volumes. All the major media manufacturers scrambled to capitalize on this technology, and either obtained their bags from Stedim, found other bag manufacturers, or figured out how to make bags themselves.
The next single-use milestone was in 1995, when Wave Biotech came out with their bioreactor system. While there was nothing novel about growing cells in a bag, no one had put together a complete, commercial system with the bag, filters, probes, gassing, agitation, and controls. But even with all its features and convenience, it would take many years for this system to gain wide acceptance. There continued to be concerns about how large you could go with this technology, how you could grow anchorage-dependent cells, and why more people weren’t already using it. Today, this technology is widely accepted and has been pushed to volumes it was probably never intended to handle. It has become a robust system for development, production at fairly large scale, and use as a scale-up device to feed stirred-tank bioreactors.
Now there are single-use stirred-tank bioreactors and a number of other designs that are quickly entering the market, plus bags are being used to line large storage tanks. More filtration applications are moving toward single-use systems, and even contain disposable valves and pumps. Chromatographic applications are still the hardest to convert to single-use, but most are at least dedicated to a specific product, and the pressure is immense on suppliers to make it economically feasible for their products to be used only once.
The advantages of single-use materials have always been to eliminate the risk of cross-contamination, as well as the need for intricate cleaning schemes and validation protocols. In addition, single-use systems significantly cut the time required to get into production, since so much time is involved in building stainless steel vessels and installing stainless steel piping. So I have to ask: “Why are single-use systems now the ’cause célèbre,’ and why did it take the industry so long to realize that this approach made sense?” The only plausible reason is that the biopharmaceutical industry is so conservative and takes so long to make changes. No one wants to be the first to do something, and the dominate question remains: “Have any biological products been licensed with the use of this technology?” My other favorite arguments include: “FDA would never allow that,” and “We’ve always done it this way.” If we could just use the recent adoption of single-use materials as an example of how the industry could act in the future. Maybe we all should be asking: “Why not try this approach?” or “What’s the worst that could happen if we tried this?” We need more products in the biotech pipeline, and we could advance much faster if we started thinking a little more out-of-the-box.
Keith L. Carson
Publisher - BioProcessing Journal
Jun
23
The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg
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First, I want to thank everyone who responded to last week’s email. Apparently a lot of people are experiencing similar frustrations and this email really hit a nerve. We’ve received dozens of wonderful responses and will certainly put the advice to good use as we move forward.I know you remember Aesop’s fable about the goose that laid the golden egg. The owners weren’t satisfied with the amount of gold in the eggs the bird would periodically lay and felt they could gain more by killing the goose and opening it up. However, there turned out to be no gold inside and this particular bird had laid its last egg.
I’m often reminded of this tale when I observe the numerous mergers and acquisitions that have been taking place in the industry. A small firm with a promising technology is acquired, but instead of letting the company continue to do what it does so well, it is turned into part of a big company that lacked this particular capability. In essence, the company is killed to reap even more gold, but the real treasure was in allowing it to produce its golden eggs.
As in most industries, the vast majority of innovation comes from small, entrepreneurial companies. These firms thrive on doing things that others haven’t done, and doing them in ways that others can’t. They take risks that larger firms would never accept, and move forward as fast as their cash will let them.
Before the latest wave of mergers and acquisitions became the standard business model, large firms were more interested in licensing technologies. They paid small companies for various rights as they could achieve predetermined milestones. The income allowed the small firms to keep advancing while providing product candidates to their benefactors at a more proven stage of development. Then if the products failed, the small firm was still producing viable alternatives in which to invest, and additional deals were available.
But today, it appears that if a company wants anything from a small firm, they want the whole enchilada or nothing at all. In far too many cases, they acquire the small company and try to turn it into something it was never meant to be, plus strip it of essential resources to help pay for the deal. Then what’s left is either moved, absorbed, or left to languish. I’ve lost count of the firms that have disappeared this way.
To put products in the pipeline, it’s possible that large companies should be using a completely opposite model. They may want to focus on spinning off innovative groups as subsidiaries, and then leaving them alone to do what they do best - innovate. Otherwise, they should consider going back to the model that worked so well in the early days of the industry, and form licensing and other collaborative relationships with the small, innovative firms.
Keith L. Carson
Publisher - BioProcessing Journal
Jun
15
Is Bigger Really Better?
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We really need your feedback on where technical conferences should go in the future. As you know, we have been organizing bioprocess technology meetings since 1994, and today we have 14 international conferences that cover all the major areas of bioprocessing and product development. In the early days, many people developed a strong loyalty for a particular conference and attended every year — or at least every other year. But things have changed. Today, many individuals can only attend one meeting each year, and they often seem to be more attracted to meetings that appear “new,” than those that are established. In addition, biotech travel money has become tighter over the last three years, primarily because there are not enough new products in the pipelines, and even fewer being licensed. Mergers and acquisitions have also taken their toll since companies must cut costs to pay for these deals, and in many of these situations the acquired companies cease to exist. As a result, overall meeting attendance has declined even further than what we first observed after 9/11/2001 when airline travel became less appealing, and many of the mergers tend to indicate that bigger is not necessarily better.
But with declining meeting attendance there has been a steady increase in the number of meetings. It has truly been amazing to see the duplication of successful meetings by all the major organizations, and the addition of obscure meetings that don’t seem to serve any particular market. Then recently, several meetings have expanded their offerings with three to five tracks, pre-conference workshops, post-conference workshops, during-conference workshops, and more — while of course charging à la carte for everything you might wish to attend.
While P.T. Barnum became quite successful by adding rings to his circus and achieving the “Biggest Show on Earth,” this concept doesn’t necessarily make sense for a technical conference. Although you can see all the rings at a circus, and shift your attention quickly from ring to ring, you can only attend one conference presentation at a time. Sure, you can walk out of a not-so-interesting talk and try to find a better one, but the next talk might be worse, and you may have just missed the best parts of both! Then with all the traffic and confusion, you don’t really get to spend any serious time talking to the people you want to see.
Now if you are with an exhibiting company, bigger might seem better since sales managers want lots of leads. However, what salespeople really need are “solid” leads that don’t waste time. In my opinion, I’d much rather spend more time with a smaller number of top-quality people than almost no time with any one person in a crowd. When I go to very large conferences, I end up not spending any “quality” time with anyone, and can often not even remember who I talked to.
For over 13 years, we’ve provided more intimate meetings with top quality content and networking, as well as wonderful locations, hotels, and food. Then over the past two years, we’ve combined a number of our meetings so that two are held concurrently, and we’ve done this in a way that we believe makes sense and offers the most value.
However, will all conferences have to follow the “Biggest Show on Earth” concept in the future? I’d really appreciate your comments and suggestions.
Keith L. Carson
Chairman
The Williamsburg BioProcessing Foundation
The Most Trusted Source of BioProcess Technology®
P.O. Box 1229 Virginia Beach, VA 23451
Phone: (757) 423-8823