Typically, morning of the day 1 is like at any other conference, filled with settling-in, registrations, and a few short presentations and demos from the exhibitors. These morning exhibitor demo sessions provides an opportunity for them to promote their OLSA related products and services. This year, there were presentations from BioPharm Systems, CSS Informatics, DBMS Consulting, and Innoventz Corporation. Also, joining this group of regulars is a new player called Satyam Computer Services, one of the IT services giants from India. I have arrived late in the afternoon and missed all these exhibitor sessions though I was interested in hearing what Satyam is doing with OLSA products. I plan to talk to them later on the exhibitors' floor.
In the afternoon, there are a couple of tutorial sessions from several product users running concurrently in 3 different rooms. I have attended two of these and spent rest of the time meeting people and in one on one discussions. I met a couple old Oracle colleagues - Phil Cestero and Kevin Shea and it was nice seeing and talking to them again. I found it interesting listening to couple of Phil's thoughts on the integration of clinical and healthcare data.
Speaking about tutorials, these are typically an hour-long in-depth sessions on a specific topic. Unlike the presentations in the morning, these are not to sell a product or service but rather to share experiences, to inform and instruct.
I attended the session "Do's and Don'ts of CRF design" presented by Lori Venable of BioPharm and it was packed with full of practical examples and advice. Lori showed a lot of what she considers bad examples of CRF design, which I found very insightful. She quite eloquently drove home the importance of consistency, need for standardization when it comes to designing CRFs.
Unfortunately as both were concurrent, I missed the session "Transition from RDC to RDC OnSite at LeoPharma". I heard they talked about the challenges with the existing RDC Onsite Solution and their anticipation for RDC 4.5.3. In retrospect, I wish I had attended this session instead. Back in the hotel room, I have downloaded and checked out their presentation and now understand their concern. Despite their troubles with the onsite product, I am glad to see their positive feedback on it. I can only imagine how glad they will be tomorrow (actually in two more hours from the time of writing this post) to know most of their concerns are already addressed in 4.5.3 :-).
The above and all other presentation handouts are available for downloading on the OCUG website. Even if you missed these sessions in person, I recommend going through the handout material, as most of it could be self-explanatory.
Coming in, I had a nagging feeling that I forgot something. Now I know! It is the USB card for connecting my digital camera to the computer. So, I guess pictures have to wait until I get back home :(
The funny picture on the right is taken from Leo Pharma's tutorial session I mentioned earlier, and it best captures the anticipation and the buzz I sense on the floor around the RDC 4.5.3 product. All I can say at this hour is - YES, RDC 4.5.3 is going to be heavenly :-)
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