I once sat in the lobby of the T-Water Beach Hotel in Negil, Jamaica reading a book when a woman came rushing in, and pounded her fist on the check-in counter, startling the Jamaican clerk.  In a heavy New York accent, she demanded, “There are no beach towels outside I need one, and I need it now!”

Before I resume the story, for those of you who haven’t traveled to Jamaica, life moves at a glacial pace in this beautiful island paradise.  Negril is particularly isolated at the western tip of the island, and is a place that I have adopted as a second home.  I dive off the cliffs at Rick’s Café at the south end of the town, and I know every restaurant in the area. I also am a respected negotiator when it comes to taxis.  Unaware tourists pay two to three times the going prices because they both don’t know that rates are negotiated, and they fumble with Jamaican currency.  When I flag a cab, basically anyone driving a car, I just tell the driver, “$400 J to the beach?”  (translation: I’ll give you $3.37 USD to take me to the beach).

The driver will either say, “ya mon”  or “that’s a $600 J ride.” With the latter, I turn away and look for another cab, which usually triggers an immediate capitulation from the taxi driver.

Respect gets respect in Jamaica, and a lack of respect gets you, well, let’s continue the story.

The New Yorker held a tall rum concoction, and was apparently long-accustomed to fast service.  The Jamaican clerk, whom I had known for a long time, looked at the woman with heavy eyes.  Without a word, she turned away from the woman, went back into the office, and shut the door.  This action initially puzzled the New Yorker and she looked at me.

“Is she getting the towels back there?”

I laughed. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

She exploded, and began to shout at the closed office door.

“I’m a guest! I need towels!”

She looked at me again. “Do you know the manager here? I need to speak to the manager!”

I pushed my sunglasses up on my head, and responded.

“Yes, I know the manager quite well. She’s a lovely lady.  As for speaking with her, you just did.”

I pushed my glasses back over my eyes and continued reading my book. The lady waited another minute, and stormed out.  Maybe ten minutes later, the clerk reemerged as though nothing had happened.

Another phrase I use to describe Jamaica to people who haven’t been there is that, no matter how many times a person has performed a task; it may appear to an American as though they’re doing the job for the very first time.

That’s the situation with the parking attendant at the Orange County Convention Center where I came to park each day before PittCon 2010. Pulling off International Drive, I headed towards the parking lots to the rear of the building. I was immediately met with a line of cars. No problem, I thought to myself, I have 45 minutes to kill before the show.

The line absolutely didn’t move for several minutes at a time. I leaned out of the car when I finally came within visual range of the booth, and tried to figure out what the hell was taking the attendant so long.  This guy had to have been doing this job for years.

Why then was he taking 3-5 minutes per car to take their eleven bucks?  Were people attempting to pay in bizarre currencies, perhaps Uruguayan Centavos?  Maybe the business travelers held universally despised and ridiculed credit cards like Discover or Diner’s Club?

Whatever, after spending a mere 30 minutes trying to fork over my eleven bucks, I made it into the show with seconds to spare.

Okay, Monday and Tuesday were beehives of activity in the vendor booths. Was this due to real interest, or did the Florida weather, colder than it was at my home in Colorado for a few days, force people off the golf courses and out of Disney, and into the conference?  The traffic seemed heavy in our booth on both days, except for the lunch hour where people squatted at the few round tables set up near the dining area (more tables were added by Wednesday, I should add).

Wednesday, even though the Florida weather was still grim, PittCon was emptying out. Were it not for some inconveniently-placed vendor booths, a good full-squad touch football game could have been organized.

My first impression was that a number of suppliers are trying to follow STARLIMS by introducing integrated product suites. Most notably, there is a push to include Method Execution ELN; this is my term since no formal definition is in place, but I feel I had to invent a term to differentiate method execution functionality from pure R&D ELNs.

The latter is a work in progress by some LIMS suppliers, and when they materialize, another battalion of suppliers will fade to black. What do I mean? Look at the pure standalone Method Execution ELN suppliers. There aren’t many, but one of them took an astoundingly reckless tact by taking on all LIMS suppliers by saying LIMS could be replaced with their product, plus an ERP tool. Yes, and we could replace the U.S. fleet of F-16s with Sopwith Camel biplanes, but I wouldn’t consider such a strategy to be any more viable.

Who would pay for a standalone Method Execution ELN and then pay to integrate it with chicken wire and spit to a LIMS? No one. That’s why the only avenue of viability might be for a standalone Method Execution vendor to imply that LIMS weren’t needed if a customer had an ERP and their Method Execution ELN. Of course, that reminds me of an old Steve Martin joke:

“I’m going to tell you how to make a million dollars and never pay taxes!”  And then, he says quickly, “first, get a million dollars.”

So the flaw in this approach is one of sheer statistics, even if the proposed solution might work. First, of all the potential LIMS sites in the world, only a fraction will need a Method Execution ELN. Still, the numbers are strong enough that it pays to have Method Execution ELN as part of a unified informatics architecture. But, of that small set of potential Method Execution ELN customers, how many will have an ERP in place, and of that miniscule number, how many will have the stomach to bet their careers on a LIMS-less approach? Not too many.

So, in desperation, one Method Execution ELN vendor is suggesting that LIMS are no longer needed, if only you bought their product and maybe sprung loose another $4,000,000 for a small-ish ERP to feed batch information to the ELN.

That brings me to my second old joke: A young girl is running a lemonade stand with a sign on the front of her table:

Lemonade: $1 million per glass

An adult comes by and says, “Do you think you are going to sell any at that price?” She responds, “I only need one good customer!”

Other than that, Thursday’s at PittCon are the best possible time for stragglers to come to vendor booths and witness a demo in peace. Hell, suppliers could show demos on an IMAX screen on Thursdays and you’d have maybe five people glancing at the demo as they hurriedly tore down their booths.

I’m waiting for the call from the PittCon organizers to help them out. Recall that I suggested years ago they should hold the conference in Las Vegas. What better sociological Petri dish to blend the pocket-protector, short sleeved crowd with a sinful amalgam of ridiculous consumption, terrifying restaurant prices, and flint-eyed bartenders who think nothing of insulting patrons nestled at their video poker machines for betting too little, too slowly to warrant the free beers plunked down in front of them?

I’ll tell you what: they know how to valet park cars in Vegas, and any breathing human in town who doesn’t know how to hustle, such as my friend in the Orlando Convention Center parking booth, would be run out of town on the rails and forced to hawk free passes to fifth-rate magic shows in Elko.

Until the PittCon organizers take my most excellent suggestion to move to Vegas, let me offer a few intermediate fixes, sure to be welcomed by everyone:

Cut the damned thing down

A Tuesday-Thursday event would be perfect. Three days is more than enough to experience the dwindling wattage of the once-proud show that has slowly declined in attendance and purpose. No Sunday travel and those attendees wanting to goof off can do so on Monday or Friday.

Expand the Talks

I spoke a couple of years ago and was reminded why I hate speaking at PittCon. Roughly twenty minute talks are a waste of both the presenter’s and attendee’s time. Either PowerPoint slides fly past like Ferrari F450s, or the presenter shovels a sales pitch at the attendees, throws a stack of business cards to the audience, and hopes for the best. Come on people, a talk worth doing is worth 45 minutes plus Q&A.

Beer on the Floor

Hey, the Lab Automation show in Palm Springs does it, and it’s a huge hit. Sure, the place is overrun with robotics propeller heads, and occasional drunken fistfight crops up when a CHARON programmer calls a PRS coder a wimp for his lack of vision, but it’s a good tradeoff. Deals are made over Heinekens all over the world, why not at PittCon?

Ah well, PittCon wisely returns to Atlanta, my adopted home for 11 years after leaving the grey skies of Michigan, and a town I truly know and love. Tip to attendees taking their families. The Zoo is called Zoo Atlanta, not Cheetah’s. If you mix one with the other, you’ll either be in divorce court a few days hence, or that customer you were going to wine and dine will have to settle for pink flamingo pellets out of a vending machine.