Commentary from Behind the Bench

Right about one calendar year ago I was asked to start writing for a new blog for the Genetic Analysis division of Thermo Fisher Scientific. Called ‘Behind the Bench’, it took a few months to get off the ground, and started posting right at the end of May 2014.

A few personal comments on what I’ve learned this past year:

• Finding post ideas is not a problem when your own customers are doing fascinating things
• The mechanics of legal and regulatory approval can be daunting, but I have plenty of company among others who have similar constraints
• Producing nice-looking video takes a lot of effort and expertise, but is so much easier (and less expensive) now
• Being a social media professional doesn’t mean my prior experience no longer counts; it becomes more relevant than ever
• Marketing is going through a huge tectonic shift, away from email toward digital (in all its forms – webinars, video, white-papers, ebooks) and social
• Presence online doesn’t mean anything to those who are still offline; peer recommendations and in-person involvement (such as interaction with a flesh-and-blood salesperson) still mean a lot to customers

If you are interested in the most popular posts from 2014, they are available here. If you’d like to see all 113 posts published to-date, they are here.

Lastly, if you would like to ‘listen in’ on live-tweets from an upcoming conference (such as AGBT in Marco Island FL Feb 25, AACR in Philadelphia PA April 19 and ESHG in Glascow Scotland June 6) follow me on Twitter. And if you are interested in the top tweets from 2014, you can access them here too.

If there are topics you’d like to see in the future (suitable for this space rather than Behind the Bench), feel free to leave a comment below.