It ain’t no blarney
10/01/2008
Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the ICCCS Conference & Exhibition held in Cork, Ireland. And I say pleasure not because I had the time to visit and appreciate any of the beautiful surroundings or historic sites and architecture of the region???not even a chance to kiss the famous Blarney Stone???because unfortunately I didn’t, but because I really did learn a lot.
I learned about a lot of new initiatives underway in the measurement, standardization, and advancement of contamination control science. And I also learned that there is a tremendous amount of this work being done all over the world, spearheaded by the many national and regional chapters of the ICCCS.
Representatives from these groups came to Cork to share their work with their peers from other nations and to encourage participation and cooperation in these and other important efforts. This forum also provided an excellent environment for the different contamination control societies and members to interact professionally with other standards-setting associations representing the interests and needs of individual user industries as well as other scientific disciplines. All in all, I never had enough time just to meet and talk with all of the people I wanted to???many whose names and reputations in this field have long been known to me.
To those who say there’s not much new going on in the field of contamination control, I say you’re just not looking. I saw and heard about extremely important new initiatives going on in fields ranging from bio/pharmaceutical manufacture, to hospital hygiene and infection control, to the future challenges ahead and, in fact, here today for nanotechnology-scale contamination control.
One thing I learned for sure is that I want to involve as many of these associations and industry experts as possible in our 2009 CleanRooms Europe Conference & Exhibition as well as the CleanRooms USA event later in the year. And I’m pleased to say that the feedback I’ve received from the key individuals I spoke with during my visit has been extremely positive and motivational. It’s motivational, because the leadership of these organizations share the same goals as me in terms of building and supporting a truly international, influential, and highly relevant contamination control organization to support our industry. I’ll keep you posted as new developments are finalized.
In the meantime, I encourage all of you to check out the working groups and committees of your national or regional ICCCS organization. In the U.S., it is, of course, the IEST, but other very active groups include the VDICCT in Germany, ICS in Ireland, R3 Nordic for Nordic countries, S2C2 in Scotland, JACA in Japan, and SRRT in Switzerland. If I didn’t mention your home country’s association, no slight was intended. I’m actually trying to encourage you to write and tell me about your activities and initiatives. We’ll be happy to help you get the word out.
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John Haystead,
Publisher & Editor