AACC and ASCLS: Double the lectures, double the fun?

Sten Westgard, MS

This year I had the fortune and opportunity to present not only at the AACC University, but also as part of the AACC regular convention, as well as the ASCLS regular convention (I was double-dipping in the conferences).

Sunday started with the 41st annual presentation of Trust but Verify, the longest-running educational program that AACC has ever presented. This year we had an extra hour to present the discussion of method verification - with a dash of method validation and just a hint of Sigma-metrics.

Thanks to Dr. David Koch, on the left above, AACC Past President, implacable and ever-competent. I couldn't do this workshop without him.

Then Wednesday morning, I had the pleasure of presenting the latest update on "Westgard Rules" to the ASCLS. This seemed particularly appropriate, talking about the rules to the technologists who have to suffer through them the most! Luckily, I had a lot of good news about modifying the rules when performance is good.

Sorry, I don't have any pictures of this particular workshop. When you lecture, you hope that others take the pictures - and then you hope even more that they will share the pictures with you (please?)

I did grab a picture with some attendees as I rushed to get a cab from the ASCLS conference over to the AACC conference:

Why was I in a rush? Because there was only 15 minutes between the end of my ASCLS lecture to the beginning of my AACC lecture. Luckily, my next talk was with the great Dr Alan Wu, so he was able to take the lead in speaking, and I was only a few minutes late to the opening of the talk. But what I found there was very unexpected, a line of people out the door, and a room filled to capacity.

Nearly twice as many people wanted to attend this lecture on Biological Variation as the room could hold. Credit the AACC, they quickly converted a room two doors down into an overflow room. So those who couldn't find a seat in the primary room could at least watch the slides and hear the audio. Quite an unusual turn-out!

And that's all the science I was able to do at AACC/ASCLS.