In Orlando for ASHG
Last Wednesday I took a day trip to Orlando, FL, to attend the American Society of Human Genetics 2017 meeting.
Since I’m spending a few months in Canada, flying to the continental USA is much easier and shorter than flying from Europe. But from where I live to Orlando there are still over 1200 miles (nearly 2000 km.) so in order to make it a day trip, I had to leave my house at 5am, drive across the Peace Bridge border into the USA, board a plane in Buffalo, land in Orlando, and take an Uber to the Orange County Convention Center.
Once at the event, the first thing I did, before having any business meeting, was to read the nearly 3000 scientific posters:
It was brutal, but also extremely interesting. From oddball phenotype associations to malformations, from drug discovery to genetic-influenced psychological traits, there were all kinds of research projects from institutions all over the world. Without a doubt, genetics is a ‘hot field’.
My company, Kanteron Systems, was invited to participate in partnership with Microsoft Genomics:
What was not expecting was Microsoft highlighting Kanteron Systems in one of the key session presentations, as the top solution in EMR medical data integration amongst their dozen partners:
Quite an honor!
On the way back, another surprise: my Uber ride cost me $34 on the way to the convention center, but $17 on the way back to the airport. I wrote an email to Uber pointing out the discrepancy, even taking into account things like ‘airport pickup fee’ (there were $10 of weird charges, like ‘booking fee’) and Uber issued a $10 refund right away. Nice customer service.
