IBM
0232 Biomedical Seminars and Symposia
My main way of selling the cell IBM 2997 separator was to invite people to a demonstration of it in use. Needless to say, this had to be in a hospital where they were actually treating patients, typically for plasmapheresis. In the main I used the Royal Marsden hospital in Sutton; but I also used the Manchester Royal and Glasgow Royal hospitals.
Indeed, seminars at the Royal Marsden, at Sutton in Surrey, became something of a routine. For each event, I hired a room there since they had excellent facilities for meetings. In this I gave a multi-media introduction to the operations of the machine. Only then did we go to see the machine actually in operation. Finally we returned to the meeting room, for question-and-answer session – at which Ray Powles, the leading oncologist there, would also address the audience.
My style was very laid-back, and most of the attending sold themselves on the virtues of the machine. Accordingly my main approach was to seemingly hold people back, for example saying "...don't get too enthusiastic, be as realistic as you can about it". This only pushed them into being even more enthusiastic -- and incidentally protected me against future problems from them feeling they had been oversold. Usually I was able to get a commitment from a significant number of the audience before the seminar was ended. On the other hand, the cash raising procedures were so horrendous that it typically would take another two years before they actually were able to buy the machines.
After the meeting we went down to the restaurant in Sutton which I regularly used for the meal. As far as they were concerned, I was the last of the big spenders and accordingly the food was always very good. Not least, the restaurant knew my taste and rang me beforehand to see whether I wanted fresh lobster and strawberries flown in from California (when it was rare for such things); and I usually did!
Entertaining was something that medical consultants knew of about. As I went around the country, and took them out for lunch, I gained experience of some of the best restaurants in the UK. Later on I was able to say, of the up-and-coming chefs, I had tasted their cuisine when they were first starting out.
I must have run three or four dozen such small meetings, but I also decided to back this are with a large-scale symposium which was intended to reach a wider selection of people.
Accordingly, I ran for symposium - for UK attendees - at the Royal Society. To hire the main hall at the Royal Society you had to go through a member of the Royal Society -- fortunately John Goldman arranged this for me. With something like 1,000 attending, it was a major event, with international speakers. It was very successful in creating awareness amongst haematologists in general.
I then ran a second symposium in the building with the roof gardens in Kensington High Street. After Derry & Toms had closed, the top floor of this had become a conference suite. In this case the thousand or so consultants attending, as well as coming from the UK, also came from overseas; as did most of the speakers. Again it was remarkably successful. It did, however, mean that I had to start to develop skills as an impresario. We had to hire not just the speakers, and pay for them coming from overseas, but also had to hire in all the sound and projection equipment. It was a major venture, but great fun
Following this, in a rather different direction, I set out to create a learned medical journal. This Journal, finally named the ‘Apheresis Bulletin’, was a genuine scientific journal - which was at the leading edge of plasma exchange. This was the up-and-coming area where the cell separator was being used. The idea behind the Journal was that it would give us a degree of authority, whilst at the same time expanding the use of the machine in terms of the markets addressed. But above all it was intended to sit on shelves in the consultant's office, so that, if he ever needed a cell separator, he only had to go to his book shelves to find our contact details.
It was a very interesting project. I hired Terry Hamblyn, who was the consultant at the Royal Victoria hospital just outside Bournemouth. He was one of the up-and-coming livewires, and was happy to edit the journal. Of course, the fact that we paid him handsomely for this helped. Unusually for academic journals, we paid contributors. Accordingly we were able to go out and get the best contributors.
To manage the academic content, where I was the publication editor covering all the other administrative factors, I hired a top flight editorial board. Indeed it was of incredible quality, with people like John Goldman and Ray Powles, as well as some of the blood transfusion directors. Even so, the meetings of this editorial board were a hoot. Everyone got on very well with each other, and there was as much laughter as there were serious decisions. For all of us I am sure it was a very enjoyable experience.
As a footnote, I took some pleasure in publishing, under the IBM name, a paper on priapism. This is the medical state where men get permanent erections. Moreover, I included several pages of photographs of these. I think I was probably the only member of IBM who managed to get pornographic photographs into its material.
On the other hand, I also built something of a similar reputation within the company across the UK. At the kick off meeting, where it was traditional that all the key players - usually senior managers - were presented to the audience of many hundreds by a photographic slide - sitting sternly at their desks and looking very earnest - I was shown in bed being attended to by a nurse and seemingly attached to the IBM 2997 machine. Of course the whole audience broke out in laughter and the managing director even referred to it in his final speech. It's useful at times to be a celebrity!
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