PITTCON 2014: A Review, New Items, and the Future

CSols, Inc
March 20, 2014

 
PITTCON was held in Chicago, IL this March 2014 and has always been an event that CSols participates in, no discussion needed; and it’s easy to see why.

PITTCON is an annual conference and tradeshow that brings in thousands of analytical scientists of all levels and fills their week with a multitude of activities. Aside from the hundreds of vendor booths to visit at the tradeshow, there’s the technical conference which runs all week with over 7 tracks to join, networking sessions to facilitate information exchange and to encourage mingling. And to keep the mood light, PITTCON even sets up a photo booth and hands out promotional items.

Benefits Received by Attending PITTCON
This year, CSols was selected to participate in the Short Courses, Oral Presentations, and Conferee Networking Sessions. We saw a great turnout for our short course with 20+ registrants who came to learn about Selecting, Planning, and Implementing the right Informatics Solution (LIMS and/or ELN).

Our Networking Conferee Sessions allowed us to interact with a variety of end users and hear their experiences related to laboratory informatics. Topics discussed included; how a LIMS can be beneficial to their environment, how to justify the purchase of an informatics solution, scope creep and how to avoid it, and more technical topics such as authorizing access to different sections of the software. In one of the conferee networking sessions, we even discussed the business benefits of actively using social media and how this contributes to sustaining growth.

The oral presentations provided an opportunity for us to speak to a number of informatics solution topics, like: how to know whether LIMS or ELN is right for your lab and the lessons learned from implementing a LIMS and ELN. Although these were brief talks, we had ample opportunity to chat individually with attendees afterwards.