BIO sideshows
Exhibitors try all sorts of ways to lure visitors to their booths at the BIO 2008 International Convention. Some use doughnuts. Others use puppets. Or electric car races. Or magicians. Or massages.
Some just use science in hopes that passers-by will pause at their booth. BORING!
Anyway, above and below are some of the various ploys that exhibitors are using here. I’ll post more later.
Business Reporter
BIO party pix
Roy Williams, president of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, addresses a crowd of about 150 people at a reception hosted by the Oklahoma BioSciences Association on Wednesday evening in downtown San Diego. The event included the Oklahoma delegation and invited guests from among biotechnology partners, including several from foreign countires that included India, New Zealand and Australia.
Business Reporter
BIO 2008: Day 2
It was show-and-tell day at the Oklahoma pavilion at the BIO 2008 International Convention on Wednesday.
Six state companies and organizations made PowerPoint presentations throughout the day that provided insight into their activities and told passers-by that something definitely is happening in Oklahoma.
I caught the first presention, which was by Craig Shimasaki, chief executive officer of InterGenetics. Shimasaki is a first-rate speaker and his colorful PowerPoint presenation only served to further draw in people wandering past the booth.
I stood at the back of the audience and watched as a number of people paused and listened or even took at seat in the audience. The presentation was eye-opening for me, because I didn’t realize until seeing it that InterGenetics is ready to launch their OncoVue genetic cancer tests for forms of cancer beyond breast cancer.
Scientists at InterGenetics are working on tests that assess the genetic predisposition for ovarian cancer and several other forms of the disease, Shimasaki said. That’s him in the photo above.
Other photos below shows a wide aisle on the floor of the San Diego Convention Center with exhibition booths on either side; an audience that numbered well more than 1,000 listening to industry analyst Steve Burrill in a morning session; people enjoying a refreshing “oxygen bar” experience; and a booth for the Illinois Medical District that plays on the Route 66 theme.
Business Reporter
Ad pitches Oklahoma to BIO audience
I opened my copy of the BIO Show Daily publication Wednesday and was surprised to see a full-page ad near the front of the magazine showcasing Oklahoma bioscience.
The Show Daily is a slick magazine produced every day of the BIO International Convention here in San Diego.
“Oklahoma: Healing Through Discovery,” the ad read. It also included a few bullet points, including on that said “$1 billion research endowment.”
I guess that’s not stretching the truth too far since the Governor has set $1 billion as a goal for his EDGE endowment. The endowment is somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 million at the moment, though.
Jennifer Seaton with the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce told me the Oklahoma Bioscience Association bought a deal that included a full-page ad in each of four editions of the Show Daily. They got three “editorials” thrown in with the deal that Seaton said were written by Chamber personnel.
She did not tell me how much the ads cost, however.
Whatever the cost, the ad claims some very visible territory in a magazine that is widely distributed to the more than 20,000 people attending the BIO show.
Jim Stafford
Business Reporter
Answering the BIO ‘help wanted’ ads
Among the Oklahomans who came to San Diego for the giant BIO 2008 International Convention this week was one who was seeking a job. His name is Fadee Mondalek and he is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oklahoma.
Mondalek met prospective employers such as Johnson and Johnson, Merck, the Mayo Clinic and the Food and Drug Administration at the BIO Career Fair that was held the day before the convention officially opened. Biotech representatives from countries such as New Zealand, Canada and Scotland also were on hand to meet with potential job candidates such as Mondalek.
“A lot of people really got interested when I started describing what I do,” Mondalek told me when I met him at an informal dinner Monday night for the Oklahoma delegation.
“I handed out my resume to a lot of people and they asked me to e-mail an electronic copy to them so they can send it to other people.”
The Scots and the New Zealanders seemed especially interested in bringing in scientific talent to bolster their medical research industries, said Mondalek, who is a native of Lebanon.
For instance, the New Zealand representative promised to quickly cut through the red tape for anyone with scientific training who was emigrating to that nation.
“The lady there said if you are in the bio field you can get a visa in two weeks,” Mondalek said. “Basically it sounded like she’s saying just come there and don’t worry about anything, we will give you citizenship just like that.”
Mondalek said he has worked toward his doctorate under the guidance of University of Oklahoma researcher H.K. Lin, who is also among the Oklahoma delegation at the BIO conference.
Jim Stafford
Business Reporter
The BIO show is open
The floodgates opened at 5:15 p.m. Oklahoma time on Tuesday and a mass of humanity rolled onto the floor of the San Diego Convention Center at once. A large crew awaited visitors at the Oklahoma pavilion; they weren’t disappointed.
Above and below are some photos of the first few minutes of action.
Top photo: Nate Fisher of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce helps a pair of visitors to the Oklahoma booth minutes after the BIO 2008 exhibition hall opened.
Manu Nair with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation greets a visitor to the Oklahoma booth.
Renee Ogan of the University of Oklahoma School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering looks up some information for a visitor to the Oklahoma booth on the touch screen.
Switchgrass: Our last, best alternative fuels hope?
We’ve heard a lot in Oklahoma about the potential of switchgrass as a source for renwable energy that won’t cut in on a major food source such as corn.
In fact, Noble Foundation in Ardmore is deep into research to develop a switchgrass that will yield the biggest fuel source potential.
Noble Foundation recently planted some test acreage in the Panhandle that should go a long way toward proving — or disproving — the switchgrass potential.
The biotechnology world is noticing. The San Diego Union-Tribune published a Page 1 story Tuesday in advance of the BIO 2008 show here that called switchgrass the “second generation” of biofuels that could supplant corn-based ethanol production.
“The topic is commanding attention at this week’s BIO International Convention at the San Diego Convention Center, the annual conference for the Biotechnology Industry Organization,” the Union-Tribune wrote of the interest in biofuels at the conference.
It’s a topic in whcih Noble Foundation representatives at the BIO show have a vested interest. I’ll report their impressions of the BIO exhibition’s emphasis on renewable fuel sources in Thursday’s editions of The Oklahoman.
In the photo above, Adam Calaway, left, and Steve Rhines, both of the Noble Foundation, greet a visitor to the Oklahoma pavilion Tuesday on the floor of the BIO exhibit hall.
Business Reporter
Always connected at BIO
The BIO 2008 show doesn’t officially open until 5 p.m. Oklahoma time today, but the San Diego Convention Center was a hub of activity this morning. Seminars were in full swing, as were Business Forum meetings, which are sort of speed dating for entrepreneurs.
I ran into Craig Shimasaki with InterGenetics who said he was hurrying to a Business Forum meeting after attending a BIO seminar. Later, he was to give a presentation at a BIO seminar.
The second floor of the convention center was packed with convention participants, either headed to a meeting or a seminar of some sort. I paused at an Internet station set up in a corner of the main hallway. It was filled with people checking their e-mail and a long line of people waiting their turn.
Jim Stafford
Business REporter
They’ve come for the Doritos
We earthlings are trying to make contact with other intelligent life in the cosmos, so we’ve beamed through space a digital transmission of – wait for it – a Doritos ad. Really. And it’s not even an entertaining commercial. Obviously, it’s a marketing ploy. It also could be the first step down a slippery slope.
Warren Ellis isn’t impressed (in fact, he writes that we may be doomed in a post he titles “Inviting Death From Space”)
This would seem to open the door to polluting local space with the grottiest capitalistic artifacts conceivable in return for being able to do a bit of science. That’s a pretty high cost — of a piece with the recurring nightmare in fiction of the Coca-Cola logo being permanently sprayed on the surface of the moon. Others will champion this as private enterprise giving science the boost it needs…
I’m a big fan of space exploration, and I’m a big fan of Doritos. Not so much of the combination of the two.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Opening night in San Diego
About 30 Oklahomans shared a meal Monday night at a place called Busters that sits dockside just across a walkway from a fabulous marina in downtown San Diego. It was an informal gathering that featured Lt. Gov. Jari Askins as a special guest.
The Oklahoma group will gather again in a more formal working lunch Tuesday to work out any last-minute issues with the staffing of the Oklahoma pavilion at the BIO 2008 show here. The show opens at 5 p.m. Oklahoma time Tuesday.
In the photo above, Carl Edwards, chairman of the Oklahoma BioScience Association, welcomes the group to California in brief remarks. A total of about 90 Oklahomans is expected to attend at least parts of the week-long show that showcases everything related to biotechnology and life sciences.
Jim Stafford
Business Reporter
