Is BIO's Annual Meeting Too Big?
By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @RfwrightLSL
As a past BIO educational planning committee co-chair, I am well aware of the amount of effort that goes into the successful planning one of our industry’s biggest gatherings — BIO International’s Annual Convention. Typically drawing more than 15,000 attendees from nearly every U.S. state and over 65 countries, this year’s event took place June 6 – 9 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. And while I have always been a big fan of BIO, this year’s event made me wonder: Is BIO too big to be effective? After all, it boasts 7 product zones, 18 educational tracks, 6 super sessions, 2 keynotes, and 3 fireside chats. That doesn’t even include the roughly 4,000 companies represented at the event, 1,800 of which typically exhibit.
So is BIO too big? Yes and no. Yes, it’s too big to be held in just one building of the Moscone Convention Center. Admittedly, BIO being spread over three separate buildings did make navigating this year’s show somewhat difficult. No, the convention is not too big to be effective for attendees. Though, to get the most “bang for your buck” does require a lot of pre-event planning. For example, if you wanted to attend an educational session on the third floor of Moscone West, followed by a super session in Moscone South, you needed to allow for a little extra travel time.
One of the things I have always found valuable about BIO is how it offers educational opportunities for nearly everyone. Unfortunately, for someone like me (i.e. very broad and diversified life science interests), picking which educational offering to attend is similar to trying to select a dinner entrée at the Cheesecake Factory. With a menu boasting more than 250 items made from scratch daily, deciding what you want to eat at this restaurant can be challenging. If you flip through the BIO 2016 “menu” of educational selections for the morning of Tuesday, June 7, you will see 13 overlapping educational options that include a super session as well as a fireside chat with FDA commissioner Robert Califf, M.D. Does such an extensive selection make deciding difficult, and if so, would BIO benefit from developing a more limited educational menu that doesn’t put attendees in a position of having to choose between such strong offerings? In other words, might less be more?
Is BIO One Of The Annual “Can’t-Miss” Shows?
Over the years some people have asked me for a list of can’t miss industry shows. To answer this question first requires thinking about your area of interest. For example, if your focus is on biopharma investing, then certainly the annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference or the BIO CEO & Investor Conference should be on your radar. If biopharmaceutical manufacturing is your bailiwick, then you should probably focus on CPhI Worldwide or ISPE conventions. DIA is great for those interested in clinical trials, discovery, and drug development. And while the World Vaccine Congress is appropriate for, well, vaccines, if you are looking for insights on outsourcing, then you should probably consider Outsourced Pharma.
There are a wide variety of industry-related events, with new entrants seeming to pop up all the time. But what makes BIO one of the industry’s all-encompassing, can’t-miss shows is that it covers a wide variety of topics at just one venue and draws high-level participants from some of the biggest and most interesting companies in the world. For example, at this year’s meeting you could have run into Paul Stoffels, EVP and chief scientific officer at J&J; Kemal Malik, head of innovation and Bayer AG board of management member; or Jessica Mega, the top doctor at Google’s medical moonshot arm, Verily Life Sciences. I personally met with Mark Alles, CEO of Celgene; Luc Debruyne, president of GSK Vaccines; Axel Hoos, SVP and head of oncology R&D at GSK; Clive Wood, SVP discovery research at Boehringer Ingelheim; and Liz Lewis, chief counsel at Takeda’s global oncology business unit. These are just a few of the folks with which I was able to have deep, one-on-one conversations.
Additionally, since many members of Life Science Leader's Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) often attend BIO, we took advantage of this year’s meeting to bring several of them together to gather their insights on potential editorial topics and ways to make the magazine more valuable for our readers. We would like to thank Alex Chang, Heather Erickson, Bernie Munos, and Chandra Ramanathan for taking time out of their busy BIO schedules to share their thoughts with Life Science Leader.
Just as we are striving for continuous improvement, I imagine BIO is too. If you have some thoughts on what you liked about this year’s show as well as what could be done to make next year’s BIO even better (e.g. easier time getting badge during check in), please be sure to drop me an email. My hope is to collect an assortment of suggestions from a wide variety of stakeholders and share with BIO anonymously. With your help, perhaps we can assist BIO in continuing to be a convention that best serves all of its attendees. Mark your calendars now, as next year’s BIO (San Diego, CA, June 19 – 22, 2017) will be here before you know it.