Meetings can host several hundred
delegates from all over the world.
Image courtesy of LabWare.
user groups
Have it
your way
Stephen Mounsey looks
have put a squeeze on budgets in every difficult and time-consuming undertaking,
sector, but somehow participants are but the meetings have become a vital
at how LIMS products
still arriving in their thousands, having part of each LIMS vendor’s calendar. Kim
are shaped by users
deemed the events worthy of their limited Shah, director of marketing and business
themselves, and the
travel coffers. What is it about these user development at Thermo Fisher Scientific,
group meetings that keeps customers says that the company wishes to persuade
importance of user coming back? as many of its customers as possible to
group meetings
While the details vary from company come to one of the events. ‘We want to
to company, LIMS vendors each organise say “thank you” to them for their custom,’
a large face-to-face meeting for their he says, ‘and we want to give them an
A
gain and again, year after year, large customers on an annual basis. Those idea of what’s going to be changed in
groups of scientists, engineers, and vendors with a global customer base may the coming year. These LIMS are big
technicians descend on conference organise several meetings around the investment decisions, and it’s important
centres throughout Europe, the Americas, world. In any case, providing a meeting that the customer has a good idea of how
and the Far East. The participants hail on each side of the Atlantic is a common stable the product is, where it’s going,
from industries as varied as the nations approach. The core face-to-face meetings and any relevant change in the industry’s
from which they’ve travelled, but they are augmented as required by smaller regulations, operating conditions, etc.
all have at least one thing in common – regional seminars, by training days and, They want to hear what it is we’ve got
laboratory informatics software. more recently, by web-based meetings. planned, and they want to hear what
8
The economic troubles of the past year Organising a user group meeting is a we’re in control of. If, for instance, a
LIG10 pp08-11 LIMS Users.indd 8 19/11/09 11:03:36
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