This was accomplished using a Wordpress plugin by Andy Moore. Here is the description:

Make your WordPress site accessible on a mobile phone with this plugin. Now your posts, pages, archives and comments can be viewed on a mobile device. Standards are supported, posts and comments can be submitted by phone and your WordPress mobile site is easily moneitized by AdMob.

http://www.andymoore.info/wordpress-mobile-plugin/

I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think. I have checked it out on my mobile phone and it looks good IMHO.
Technorati Tags: mobile ready

I hadn’t posted for a while because I was spending my free time trying to figure out how to get my old theme back so now that it is up and running, expect more posting.

Information Entrepreneur: Lesson Learned from Building a National Library
Sam Richter, Business Information Resources, Research Tools, Online Library, JJ Hill

Sam Richter took us through the development that took the James J. Hill Library from an obscure business reference library to having a major internet presence. The presentation contained the many programs and products geared towards small business that the James J. Hill Library has developed.

The Most Common Mistakes Self-Employed People Make
Christine Hamilton-Pennel, Economic Intelligence Specialist

Christine gave us a list of the common mistakes self-employed people make.

1. Not knowing your basic Strategy
2. Not Understanding Your financial Needs
3. Assuming you can handle all the functions
4. Marketing

Managing a Research Project From A to Z
Marcy Phelps, Phelps Research

Lessons Learned

• Your network is your most valuable resource
• Subcontracting parts of the research provides clients with high quality results
• Extra effort up front saves time and money

Cynthia Shamel, Shamel Information Services

Lessons Learned

1. Networking plants seeds that you never know when they will sprout
2. There is nothing like a mandate form the top to give a project traction
3. Executive committees have a short attention span
4. When the scopes creeps, offer an amended proposal
5. See lesson 1
6. Educate yourself by researching, reading and talking to experts
7. Corporate employees come and go
8. It’s OK to price on value
9. Do what you do best and hire the rest
10. You can’t put a price on internal cooperation
11. Allow plenty of time to do quality work
12. Celebrate the successes, then get back to work

Change as Opportunity
Rita E. Miller, Motivational Speaker

Rita gave an excellent talk on change and dealing with stress. It was great to learn 10 tips for dealing with change

1. Determined optimism- ask “what could go right?”
2. Say YES to learning
3. Take a realistic vs. a perfectionist approach
4. Allow for venting if needed
5. Find your control point
6. Ask questions
7. Remind yourself that new learning involves practice over time
8. Develop a change support network
9. Reward yourself
10. Consider the value of humor

You betcha!

Look for photos from the event soon. I hope to get them uploaded to Flicker by the weekend.

Looking forward to seeing everyone in Pittsburgh, PA April 30 to May 4th, 2008. Come and bring someone new!
Technorati Tags: aiip07

The following is just my impressions of the talk and not a full well thought out posting. It’s just sort of my thoughts. Peter has made the presentation available on his website and the link is at the end sf this posting.

Provide multiple ways to access information.
Multiple disciplines needed to design websites
got tired of “usability. and has a slide describing it in more detail
Talked about the interrelatedness in peoples mind of findabilty and credibility. people tend to trust and believe pages that have higher ranking?!
Gave case study of Cancer.org site and how it was redesigned based on users searches.
Future movement towards taking things learned on the web through interface design into physical space. Good case study from Maya.
Findability: the ability to find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime.
A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention
Herbert Simon, Nobel Laureate Economist
Dilbert version: information is gushing toward your brain like a firehose aimed at a teacup.
Recommended The Transparent Society by David Brin
Need to combine tagging and standard taxonomy
Amazon has done much for navigation and organization of a rich information system.
use not just the long tail but alos the “fat head”. use that information as a guide.
Mentioned Buzzillion and Clusty as hybrid systems of standard and tagging

link on the web: http://semanticstudios.com/aiip.pdf

Mistakes I Made and How I Recovered
Margaret King, Karen Klein, and Jan Davis

Margaret: Make sure you have a contract in place if you are doing business with anyone defining the relationship.
Lost relationship, lost revenues and marketing opportunities due to on-going problems.
Partner was handling books and it cost to get that fixed.
Just because you are friends doesn’t mean they are a good business partner.
Try to keep emotions out of the business as much as possible.

Karen: Related a story of a problem client not responding and then not approving the invoice for work agreed to and completed in a timely fashion. Used her mentor to bounce ideas of off.
Sent a letter to the manager and copied COO saying she wouldn’t be able to do business with them if she didn’t get paid and related that this was very scary.

• Don’t ignore red flags.
• Divide projects into chunks.
• Strength your disclaimer that they are paying for the services not results.
• Listen to your conscious

Jan: Emails can lead to problems and misunderstandings.

• Follow your instincts.
• Put things in writing.
• Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and talk.
• Don’t lowball your projects.
• Make sure and understand what it is your client wants.

Forming Strategic Alliances
Ann Potter, Suzane Sabroski, and Jane John

Ann: Retired after 20 years having done market research, secondary and primary research as well as competitive intelligence
Had 2-3 formal alliances, 4-5 informal long-time alliances and many informal long standing subcontractors and partners.

Why form alliances?

• leverage your efforts
• expand your network
• develop teamwork skills and other skills
• smooth income fluctuations

Think in terms of assumptions about relationships
Take inventory of personal styles

Suzanne: Background as a corporate librarian. Started her work in 1995 and changed name to Sabroski & Associates in 2002.
Has had one formal partnership in place for 4 years.

• Prevents isolation
• Gives you the ability to enhance relationships and communication skills
• Expand your business
• Consistent work can develop.

Suggestions

• offer unique service
• do several projects together first
• define roles

Jane: 5 years in business creating 20-40 page market reports
Has used 3 subcontractors for telephone, web search, and accounting charts and various professional consultants.
can do more work and be more profitable as well as more control and more fun!
start small and build relationships
have one firm take the lead.
allow time to integrate results

Business meeting ran long and I missed the first afternoon session.

The afternoon session were again three concurrent tracks.

Lessons Learned From the Client from #@*
Liga Greenfield
Characteristics of the client from hell

• Unrealistic
• Demanding
• Opinionated
• Indecisive
• Secretive
• Deadbeat: don’t pay their bills
• Thief: take detailed proposals and se it for their own gain

Manna from Heaven, many promises, well-paying, etc.

• Good people and ones that were trusted.
• Recognition and Respect
• Growth
• Friendship mixed with business
• Foregone conclusion
• Obvious gaps in the plan
• Lack of consensus
• Greed
• Delusions of grandeur

Results:

• timelines changes
• project goals
• trouble playing bills

Rising from ashes

• developed a game plan
• contacted client and VC board
• pulled together to do the impossible
• contacted creditors and made arrangements
• maintained contacts even though not involved anymore
• actively solicited business from VC firm.

Two of the VC folks are on the BioMed{harmIS advisory board
number of other projects
have gotten more from the VC firm

Suggestions

• put expectation in writing.
• expectations only in writing including scope and cost changes
• learn from both success and mistakes
• define specific lesson learned when things do go wrong.

You can learn what to do and what not to do from both good and bad clients.

How to Conduct Primary Research and Still Make Money in a Business
Amy Hebard

Gave brief background and then talked about what goes into performing primary research

Objectives

• Market research defined
• Market Research topics
• conducting primary research
• new qual & quant tools
• opportunities
• key takeaways
• Begin with the end in mind
• clear goals and objectives
• research design
• validity; right people
• reliability; enough data
• good questions
• clean data
• right analysis
• clear story

Evening was fantastic at the Como Conservatory and Zoo. We had about an hour to browse and look around and then had dinner. It was a great evening.

Technorati Tags: aiip07

Awards
Eiko Shaul, Presidents Award
Ed Vawter (your truly), Sue Rugge Memorial Award
Jan Davis, Connections Writers Award
Jothi Nedungadi, Myra T. Grenier Award

Keynote Speech
ichael Roby - Motivational Speaker | Sales Trainer | Keynote Speaker | Sales Coach

Becoming the Best… and Getting Better

A very good keynote talking about how small changes to increase productivity can lead to large increases in income. He use the example of Tiger Woods who earner 10 million from PGA tour (not including endorsements) and another player earner $570,000. But Tiger Woods was only 4.2% better in terms of strokes not 17 times better if you base it on income. The take homer lesson; small changes can have a large impact.

6 keys to Critical Success Factors (CSF’s)
1. Business Plan
2. Marketing
3. Selling
4. Service
5. Continuing Education
6. Administration

multiply each CSF on scale 1-3 gives dramatically different results

A business plan is your road map to success.

basic components
a. objectives,
b. SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
c. strategic plan,
d. tactical plan

Give 3 touches per month, email, phone call, direct mail for A client list.
When people think of me they think of X, but more importantly, when people think of X, they think of me.
This is a different way to think about who you are and what you do.
Check out Growing Your Business! for Mark LeBlanc’s book about growing your business; 45 min to read and a lifetime to master.
Another good book What’s your brand? by Oren Harari

Marketing is selling to the masses, selling is knee-to-knee; asking for that order by leading your client to a logical conclusion.

Service
keeping promises by giving them more than they pay for.
fixing problems
finding solutions
up-selling / next selling
DEFINE “Excellent Service”

prompt response phone calls and correspondence
prompt response to request for proposal
coming in on time and on budget

Give excellent service to all and exceptional service to some.

Continuing education
product/process knowledge
process knowledge of how you run your business
entrepreneurial knowledge
people knowledge

Administration
RYBLAB: run your business like a business
Stick to your expertise
Out-source
Systems & Processes
not in the information business, you’re in the peoplwe business!!

How do you measure up on the 6 CSF’s?
What areas can you improve and how can you improve?
How will you benchmark progress?

How much is your business changing?

there were several concurrent session in the afternoon and here are the ones I attended.

Medical Insurance for the Self-Employed
William Lehnertz
TLC Financial Inc.

Gave brief background and history of employer proved insurance from WWII

Basically said to get health insurance with high deductible from a private carrier and use health savings account

He gave some excellent resources and health savings account information which will be on the members section of the aiip site.

The Latest & Greatest Developments in Legal, Medical, and Government Information.
Ruth Balkin, Peggy Garvin and Cliff Kalibjian

All three gave a good overview of changes and new information in their relevant fields.

Beyond Maps
Wendy Cobrda

Gave a good intro to geographical information services.
Geo info can reside in information such as telephone numbers.
Geocoding software is a tool to take address information and turn that into spatial coordinates
Explained what geocodes are; similar to say a Dewey decimal system
What can you do with the coding? Summarize data, relate it to other spatial objects.
Wendy gave several interesting examples.
There is a lot of information that is spatial oriented and can be very useful!

Entering the SPY-ders Web; What Would YOU Do?
Arthur Weiss and Dee Richardson
The attendees worked thru scenarios dealing with various ethical situations. All the situations were based on true real life situations.

Table Top Tips.

Amelia Kassel and Mary Ellen Bates had a roundtable discussion on marketing Mark Goldstein and I did one on technology issues. We basically sat around and discussed technologies and answered folks questions about a variety of subjects. Both were well attended and seemed at least in my opinion to go very well. Hopefully folks came away from it with some useful information and got their questions answered.

Technorati Tags: aiip07

I do have a whole bunch of articles I hope to comment on soon. Stay tuned!

For those of you not familiar with Informex it is a big meeting of pharmaceutical contract manufacturers and fine chemicals producers. The big attraction is the networking and ability to meet with a lot of companies in a few days. I go every year to meet with contract manufacturers and see what has changed and who has added new capabilities. it also gives me a chance to catch up with many of my friends in the industry.

Hope to see some folks there!

Technorati Tags: Informex

I’m working on several posts and will be back on a more regular posting schedule now.

Hope everyone in the US had a Happy Thanksgiving.

Also, be aware that if there are problems, please report them. First try your local election official and make them aware of the issue. If that doesn’t work, try calling The Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS) at 1-866-OUR-VOTE (687-8683). Also, if there are major problems then let you local media know. Be sure and make the general public aware of any problems that may occur. Many votes will be cast on electronic system for the first time in a national election. The only way these problems will be addressed is for the public to be made aware of the number and extent of the problems.

Make sure that your choices are EXACTLY the way you want it before hitting the final vote button. Always check to make sure your choices are correctly reflected on the confirmation screen. If you have questions, ask a local offical for help. If you have problems getting your vote to be recorded correctly, let the election official know immediately.

Also note that if you are told there is a problem with you voting, ask for a provisional ballot. This allows you to vote and then get any matter cleaer up within a specific period of time which varies from state to state.

Take advantage of your right to vote and make your voice known.

Technorati Tags: election, vote

Feel free to contact me with any questions and comments you might have about setting up these alert services for your company.

Technorati Tags: alert service, QDIS

Podcasting is not jut a fad but is an efficient method, unique, low-cost method to communicate with your costumers or just anyone with access to the Internet.

Feel free to contact me if you’d like to further discuss how podcasting can help your company.

Technorati Tags: consultant, consulting, podcast, podcasting

I feel voting is very important and wanted to contribute something to the podcasting community. I went through many sites before settling on the ones I decided to include. Episode 012 covers election information sites. These include:

• Yahoo News Midterm Elections 2006
• C-SPAN
• CNN America Votes 2006
• Fair Vote
• getvoting411.us
• League of Women Voters
• Vote411.org
• Electionline
• Elections 2006
• Factcheck.org
• Media Matters for America
• Politics1.com
• Project Vote Smart
• RealClearPolitics
• Election Protection 365
• Election Incident Reporting System
• Electroral-Vote.com
• Election Projection - 2006 Edition
• Clusty Results for 2006 Midterm Election
• Mooter Results for 2006 Midterm Election

I feel voting is the most important duty of any American and I hope this episode helps people make informed decision at the polls on Nov 7.

Technorati Tags: election, vote, voting

It was also great to get to meet many people whose podcasts I listened to and who I have communicated with over the past year. It was nice to be able to put names with faces.

I am now back and will be blogging on a regular basis.

Technorati Tags: Podcast Expo 2006

• Police Busy With Pipe Bombs In Salem Area
• Bomb Squad Called To Third Location In Salem
• Four pipe bombs found, destroyed in Mid-Valley: Three incidents occur in the Salem area; one in Dallas

• Timeline of events for Aug. 10

This on the same day as the airline bombing plots from Britain made the news. This means that this situation was not widely reported but it was indeed unnerving to have four pipe bombs found all in the same day spread across the city.

Luckily, the hospital called and cancelled my wife’s outpatient treatment or she would have gotten caught in all the confusion.

There are no reported leads at his point so it will be unnerving not knowing if another pipe bomb will turn up.

Here is a list of all the news stories from Google News

salem oregon pipe bomb - Google News

Technorati Tags: pipe bomb, Salem

FDA approves implantable contraceptive - Yahoo! News:

A little background: this of course is not the first implantable contraceptive. Wyeth (formerly American Home Products) had Norplant approved back in 1990 which they stopped selling in 2000 after several lawsuits. Norplant lasted seven years and was implanted in the forearm. Since then, there haven’t been any implantable birth control. Another implantable drug is the Gliadel wafer for brian cancer. This is implanted near a tumor in the brain and was approved in Feb 2003. There may be others but my point is the technology exists and could be used in other areas.

Back to my thoughts on implantable drugs. I spent about five years working on a polymer drug conjugate which, although not implantable (it was delivered by IV) had a lot of similarities to polymer rug released products. I spent a lot of time learning about analytical methods for characterizing polymers in a cGMP environment.

I have also had some experience with schizophrenia; I had my best friend with schizophrenia in graduate school commit suicide by taking potassium cyanide from the chemistry stockroom. I also know a little bit about how depression and other mental illness and their effect people and there families. One of the problems with these sorts of medical problems is that once these people are on the correct drug, their symptoms disappear and they feel much better. In fact, it is not uncommon or them to feel so good, they think they no longer need their drugs. Another problem is CNS drugs have undesirable side effects ranging from headaches, to feeling like your thinking is slow, to sexual problems, and others issues. So there are several reasons people want to go off their medications even though it may indeed be helping.

My though has been to make implantable forms of CNS drugs. Now, I’m the first to admit that there are potential problems with this. What if there are serious side effects? One of the problems with Norplant was not that it didn’t work but that there were complications with trying to get the implant removed and there were also some side effects. My thought was to put patients on an oral form of the drug to see if there are any side effects and then if there are not, the implantable form could be used. This would be especially useful in serious cases of schizophrenia in patients who may be a danger to themselves or others. This would solve the “roller coaster” problem of going on and off drugs causing even more problems. I would say that I also realize that this would not be appropriate in all circumstances and would have to be managed carefully at first. However, the long term pay off should be more than worth it in preventing re-occuring hospitalization of those with serious problems.

Technorati Tags: drug implant, CNS drugs

Kansas opens arms to Ventria’s biotech rice - sacbee.com:

The company only has 18 employees and has had resistance in both California and Missouri due to concerns about GMO from other rice farmers in that state. They currently grow the rice in North Carolina and in greenhouses in California. This would allow them to expand their fields into Kansas and so far there hasn’t been local opposition. Also, Kansas has no existing rice crop so the fears of cross contamination are not there.

It should be made clear that this rice is not for human consumption. It will be collected and further processed to extract the proteins.

Further resources:

Web Search:

• Ventria - Yahoo! Search Results
• Ventria - Google Search

News Search

• Yahoo! News Search Results for Ventria
• Ventria - Google News

Blog Search:

• Yahoo! Search Results for Ventria
• Google Blog Search: Ventria

Technorati Tags: biotech crops, Ventria

As a consultant in the pharmaceutical, biotech, and fine chemicals industries, I already keep up to date on these sorts of issues anyway so I though others might find it useful. However, before I commit to this, I’d like to know what others think. If this is something people would find useful, please drop me an email using the link below in this post and let me know that you are interested. If you have any comments or suggestions for what you would like to see in such a podcast, please send them to me.

Technorati Tags: podcast

Technorati Tags: NMR solvent data

Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Trade Publications

Technorati Tags: pharma trade publciations

Technorati Tags: tagcloud

I’ve set up TagCloud for the following:

• American Chemical Society (ACS) organic journals
• Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) organic journals
• all ACS journals
• all RSC journals
• pharmaceutical news
• interesting science blogs that I read

Let me know what you think.

Technorati Tags: tagcloud

John Jantsch gave a great talk about marketing in a way that worked for the AIIP audience.

The first thing he said was “Nothing in your business will change until you take action.” He talked about a lot of marketing ideas in terms that were new to me and in a way that didn’t come across as hard selling.

Although the talk was on customer loyalty John discussed other topics before getting to customer loyalty. He talked about defining your ideal client, identifying the right problem or need to address, and the need to develop a strategy before worrying about tactics. He discussed developing a marketing kit, and a system for lead generation based on advertising, referrals, and public relations as well as a “lead conversion system” involving discovery, presentations, and transactions. Finally, he talked about customer loyalty tool several ways to continually communicate with your clients. This included “drip communication”; at least once a month letting the client know something of interest to them and several other options for communicating with your clietns.

Here is a brief summary:

• think of your ideal client
• have a strategy outlining what makes you unique
• have materials that educate
• use the lead generation trio
• use a lead conversion system
• develop customer loyalty tools

General session IV: The Case Study of the Contented Client

Preston Smith of Business Information Services LLC

Preston talked about how he got started and how his direction has changed. originally wanted to design databases for politicians and business; clients were hard to get and the work was low dollar value. lots of competition and many programmer. Now does a lot of GIS demographic studies for schools.

Will Hann of Freepint and Willco

1. feedback: need to request feedback and then either do it or tell them why you aren’t going to do it
2. integration: vertical integration or supply chain integration
3. shakeout: there will be things you don’t want to do. avoid time consuming tasks; those that take a lot of effort without a big return. if it causes confusion, then separate it out
4. focus: sometimes difficult to focus after a shakeout. important to have the right business plan and the right people.

Debbie Schwarz of Library Associates

Started her business because she was bored and now specializes in recruiting and placement of information professionals.
A phone call from a law firm in SF changed her outlook and she has branched out into other industries. She shared her experiences; some don’t want to share information. There are those for whom everything is a rush or emergency. Malcontents are those who never seem to be pleased or you just can’t win over . Good clients become friends or mentors and are agreat source of referrals. Communicate with your clients and don’t take things personally. It’s about business and not about you as a person.

The conference was very informative and it was good to see folks i know and had met at past conferences. Hopefully my posts have piqued your interest and you will join us at the conference next year in Minneapolis, MN.

Technorati Tags: aiip06

Pamela talked about the lack of women in computer science and gave some numbers. Women are generally underrepresented in sciences except for biology and she emphasized that computing is important and not just an enabling technology, but allowing you to create your own worlds.

She also talked about how diversity is important to solving problems and creating growth and briefly covered roles women have played in computing historically. The number of women in computer science peaked in 80’s and has fallen ever since. She mentioned that this situation is likely cultural.

I’m probably not the best person to comment on this since I am a white male. I thought it was a missed opportunity in that the male members of this particular audience would have been very receptive to helping change the situation from within. I think if there had been some concrete suggestions as to what males could do to help facilitate the needed changes, they would have been willing to try and improve the situation. Instead it seemed to be a call to arms for women to make these changes happen.

General Session 3 Case Study on CI Tom Waters of DOD (contract) Counterintelligence Officer

Tom talked about competitive intelligence and how info pros can tap into that market. he mentioned that competitive intelligence is used even if its not called that and that market research and keeping track of what others are doing is indeed competitive intelligence. The following were some of the sources of information he mentioned:

Regulatory filings (EPA, fire marshals, etc.): lots of competitive info including information regarding foreign companies operating within the US.

FOIA: Japanese carmaker studied a US navy fighter braking system, which they then copied and applied in the automative industry. This is now a case study in many business schools.

Consumer Product Safety Commission investigation; test results are available. A paint business can find out about their competitors formula.

OSHA inspection records and hazardous materials permits are good sources.

The main focus was on Freedom of Information Act and what all can be found via that avenue. He talked about what kinds of information was available and the information that would not be available. He also mentioned that every agency was different in terms of how quickly they supplied the information and their cost was free up to 2 hours of time or 100 pages; beyond that there would be charges but they were low (figure of ~$50 was given). He also said to succinctly state what information you needed; just saying give me everything isn’t enough. The FBI has great information and it is very detailed but given their backlog, it could take years before you received the information (although they must at least tell you they must respond within 10 days even if its just to tell you it’s now in their cue). Also, he stated companies will hire an independent contractor to do this type of of work since the person requesting the information is public record. This way, their competitors can’t tell who is asking for the information and since the contractor and client would have a non-disclosure agreement .

It was a very interesting and though provoking presentation.

Concurrent Session Technology Track

In the afternoon there were two concurrent sessions; one was a technology track and the other was business. Since I was giving a presentation in the technology track session, I attended it, so I can’t comment on the talks in the business sessions.

Mark Goldstein gave a talk on gadgets and technology and how computing has changed with a focus on networks primarily. Then I gave a talk on what’s new with RSS in the past year with a focus on what podcasting is how it can be useful to information professionals. Once I’m back in the office later this week I’ll post it to the website along with a link in a post here.

The afternoon was open and we gathered that evening for a cruise in Biscayne Bay and watched the night lights of the skyline.

It was a great second full day of the conference.
Technorati Tags: aiip06

Myra T. Grenier award: Amy Rose
Gale Group award: Julie Mellon
Roger Summit scholarship award: Marge King
Sue Rugge award: Cindy Shamel
Presidents award: Will Hann

I did not attend the first timers gathering but heard there were about 25 people attending a conference for the first time.

Keynote Speech: Alice Norsworthy, Sr VP of Marketing for Royal Caribbean Int.

Alice talked about what she as a high volume purchaser of information expects from her provider. She went through a typical day and covered what information she need and this included demographic info, media trends and future options, current trends for future product development, competitive activity, fact gathering for a speech.

She then went on to outline the opportunities for Information professionals from her perspective and talked about how to get the business and then how to keep the business. She mentioned there is less of a need for descriptive reports and more of a need for prescriptive reports; less of a need for reactive reports and more of a need for proactive recommendations.

Some of the things Alice looks for in her information provider is to identification of trends and established standards; gather ideas, develop hypothesis or assumptions, determine alternatives, provide a deeper expertise on a topic, and qualitative project management.

In terms of getting the business her primary ways she identify people she works with is though recommendation of friends, personal experience, professional associations., conference attendees, internet search, and articles.

She suggested info pros identify their uniqueness and make sure we know our audience as well as build a network and credibility. The following is a list of what she valued from a researcher: knowledge of her business, responsiveness, listens and seeks to understand, simple clear answers in proper context, complete info, data “testing”, and integrity.

How to keep the business: Alice mentioned several criteria she uses to decide wether to continue to use a certain researcher. These included the information quality and quantity, adherence to standards, confidentiality, and value-added response-insight.

As an executive, she has to make bold and sometimes irreversible decisions based on limited info and possibly inaccurate forecasts. therefore there is a great need to identify hypothesis vs facts as well as have rigorous data evaluation. She also values the researcher keeping their objectivity and reliability and anticipate executive needs.

Finally, she talked about delivering the goods by fulling understanding objectives and deliverables, acknowledge the expertise of the person or company that hirer you,. She felt that secure and written communication was vital to success, as well as being on time and budget and respecting confidentiality. She likes to see clear and objective information in context and in a useful format. She also states how important it is to be available for follow-up and to report progress and problems in a timely manner.

General Session 1 Eric Seeger (Sr Consultant with Altman Weil, Inc.) and Garn Anderson (head of Energizer’s Global Business Intelligence/Competitive intelligence)

Why, when and how decision makers decide to use our services. This general session was interesting but had audio microphones problems that distracted from the presentation. One of the topics discussed was error and omissions insurance. and from their perspective working within larger companies, they stated they would not work with an independent information professional unless they had E&O insurance. Much of the talk was repetitive of what Alice had stated earlier (another good reason to be the first speaker of the day).

The talk boiled down to it being very important to build and establish a relationship of trust and honesty.

General Session 2 Vendors under the Microscope

I didn’t take many notes during this part since I had already talked to. They updated what was new and some was repeated from the training sessions on Thursday. The vendors were 10K Wizard, Dialog, Lexis-nexis, Factiva, and Skyminder.

The remainder of the day was included an ice cream asocial and open exhibits to talk one on one with the vendors as well as a “Tips on the Terrace” an informal evening of drinks and desserts and sharing around tables with each table having a facilitator and topic. It was great to be able to share ideas and in my case, educate people on what RSS is and how it might be useful to them.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow and will recap those events soon.

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My longer answer is that I’ve always had an interest in chemistry from my earliest childhood and can remember with great excitement when I received a chemistry kit one year for Christmas. I found organic chemistry particularly interesting when I was in high school chemistry class. It was then that I decided I wanted to study chemistry in college; I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do exactly, but I wanted to study chemistry. Before my senior year in high school, I had attended a two week summer chemistry course at Indiana State University with a wonderful professor, Dr. Alan Siegel. Since Indiana State offered me a scholarship and I knew a little bit about the department, I decided to go there. It was probably good for me to be at a smaller university for my undergraduate degree. And although not required, I did do undergraduate research with Dr. Richard Kjonaas studying organozinc reagents and their addition to alpha, beta-unsaturated ketones, and received a wonderful education. At the urging of Dr. Kjonaas, I decided to look into going to graduate school and finally after looking at several universities decided to attend Purdue University. Dr. Kjonaas received his PhD from Purdue University working for Dr. Robert Holton and so he was encouraging me to consider Purdue. After getting my degree from Purdue, I decided I did not want to be in academia, and, since biology was not one of my strong suites, I decided to go to work in industry and focus on process development. I had several job offers in various areas such as fuel and oil lubricants and candy and food but I decided helping people and developing new medicines was the better choice.

But back to my short answer, I really do care a lot about helping other people. I’ve had a grandfather die of prostate cancer and several other friends and relatives die from other cancers so any time I run into problems I just pull out their pictures and it reminds me of why I do what I do.