Back in the office

Well, I'm back in the office now after a hectic conference season. I've spent most of the last 2 weeks away at conferences, and, as much fun as they were, it's good to back at my desk again.

The week before last was the PSI conference in Brighton. I was very impressed with the standard of the talks (although not with the hotel, which was a bit pants), and picked up a good few useful thoughts. I gave a talk during a session on CDISC standards, about the way we are using software to automate some CDISC-related tasks at Dianthus, and I was struck by how much variability there seems to be in the way statisticians are using the SDTM and ADaM standards. Some have been using the standards to good effect for a while, and others seem barely to be aware that the standards are out there. I expect I'll write another post about CDISC on this blog before long.

Now, I wouldn't want to say a word against the PSI conference. It was a well-run conference, and I'm glad I went. But it doesn't even begin to compare to the EMWA conference that I went to last week. There is something very special about EMWA conferences, and I'm not sure exactly why. But there is. Not only is there always a good selection of educational workshops and interesting lectures, but the social side is consistently miles more fun than any other conference I've ever been to. This year was no exception.

The venue this year was Ljubljana. It's not somewhere I'd have thought of going to myself, but it's a lovely little city and I'm thoroughly glad I went. Slovenians seem to be a splendidly welcoming lot. Our hotel was very pleasant too, although given all the "networking" that we enjoy so much at EMWA, it was a shame the bar shut as early as it did.

In a recent issue of EMWA's journal, The Write Stuff, former EMWA president Geoff Hall wrote an article about EMWA and its conferences in which he said "It seems somehow bizarre that several of the people I consider among my closest friends are people who I only see for a few days each year". But that's a great observation about EMWA conferences, and absolutely how I feel as well. It was really lovely to catch up with so many of my best friends again.

Of course EMWA conferences aren't only for sitting around drinking beer with old friends. This year's conference had a great series of plenary lectures in addition to the educational workshops. It was a great privilege for me to be allocated one of the plenary slots to present the results of the survey I've recently done looking at ghostwriting among medical writers. I'll write some more about those results once the full report has appeared in The Write Stuff.