Partying on the Exhibitor Floor

The Exhibitor floor always feels like a party but on Tuesday, the festivities really kicked into gear as everyone loosened up and booths brought out their stashes of food and drink. The Australians and New Zealanders seemed to kick things off early with wine bars while the French brought out to die for desserts.

Music groups popped up in booths from Ontario and Korea but the group that really rocked the place was the band at the Puerto Rican pavilion. The island-flavored music was the perfect ending to a long day of standing and walking at the convention.

I stayed longer than I should have before moving to the the reception hosted by Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher. The Kentucky reception, held for the last four years at BIO, is said to be one of the nicest among the state receptions. The food and drink were terrific but even the bartender seemed surprised at the devotion to bourbon at the event. Everyone took home a silver mint julep cup to remember the evening, compliments of the Governor.

Tuesday Day 3: Groovin' Right Along...

I was intrigued by the title of this morning’s business development tract – Risky Business: Risk Reduced Models for the Biotech Industry – so I jumped ship from my finance focus and was not disappointed. What a lively and interesting dialogue by the CEO panelists (Steve Kelly – Innovive Pharma, Scott Cormack – OncoGeneX, Jay Lichter – Akesis Pharma and the very entertaining Rajesh Shrotriya – Spectrum Pharma) and moderator Robert More of Domain Associates.

Had an opportunity to speak briefly with Jack Wheeler founder of MicroPhage and new chair of the Colorado BioScience Association. Congratulations Jack!

Listened to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announce his plan to make Massachusetts the global leader in life sciences by unveiling a 10 year, $1 billion investment package, the Massachusetts Life Science Strategy.

I had been aching for some science therefore I jumped into the afternoon bench-to-products tract to listen to Vaccine Development: What We Don’t Know. Was very excited to see Alex Franzusoff, co-founder and VP of R&D of Colorado-based GlobeImmune.

My exclamation point on the day, rather than attending the social, was to take advantage of the beautiful weather and finally do the two mile Human Genome Trail. It did not disappoint.

Sights and Sounds:

The HypoSurface system is a visceral display medium - a huge billboard where the screen surface physically behaves like a precisely controlled liquid: waves, patterns, logos, even text emerge and fade within its surface.

Harvard-MIT HST BEP

Now here is a uniquely fantastic program…the Biomedical Enterprise Program is jointly administered by the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and the MIT Sloan School of Management, it exposes students to an integrated curriculum focused on the complex process of product development and commercialization in the health care industry.

Today I met some great folks in the program, Julie Yoo, Brian Newkirk and Michael Magnani, also had a great talk with Traci Anderson in the HST academic office.

Colorado: And Action!