Bio tech party
Biotech party revs up
It's not just the main show that matters -- spinoff conferences are boon for city and industry
By Stephen Heuser, Globe Staff | May 4, 2007
At 6 tonight, Peter Chaffey's jet-lagged body clock -- still set on Australian time -- will tell him it's Saturday morning. But his social calendar will say it's cocktail hour on the Boston waterfront.
Along with nearly 200 Australian trade representatives and biotechnology executives, Chaffey will be capping off a day of business deals and biomedical schmoozing at a wine-tasting with a view of the harbor.
At the same time, dozens of executives from India will descend on the Marriott Copley Place to talk about inking partnerships with US biotechnology companies. And nearby, representatives of medical-research parks across the country will be checking into the Fairmont Copley Plaza to talk about how to jump-start new biotech companies in their hometowns.
They're drawn here from all points of the compass by the annual convention of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, now being set up at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center . Though the 20,000-person gathering doesn't formally kick off until Sunday, it is already drawing hundreds of people to the city for "piggybacking" conferences, a little-tracked but important by product of huge conventions.
"It's like a magnet for activities," said John Chiplin, an Australian biotech executive coming to Boston this weekend. "And also Boston itself, it's such a hub for biotechnology, it's a great place to be having it."
The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority doesn't keep track of how many of these spinoff conventions come to the city, or their economic impact. But executive director James Rooney said they're a key part of the estimated $31 million in spending the BIO International Convention is estimated to be bringing to Boston.
"It speaks to why being a major convention and meeting destination is important," Rooney said. "It's not just about what happens inside the building."
Though biotechnology is a highly specialized industry, largely driven by newly hatched science, it is also fiercely dependent on building tight relationships between investors, profitable drug companies, and smaller money-losing biotech operations.
BIO, the organizer and national trade group for the industry, tracks the side conferences but does not release their names, because attendance is by invitation.
Such secondary meetings aren't always welcome at major conferences. Last year, during the LinuxWorld conference in Boston, a rival search-engine conference set up shop in a hotel lobby and tried to drain visitors from the main event. And the Massachusetts convention authority recently denied the request of a drug company to throw a meeting at the same time as a major drug-discovery convention.
The BIO side events being held this week, though unofficial, are largely welcome -- scheduled not to compete with the giant trade show, but to take advantage of the fact that BIO attendees are already in town. For Australians like Chiplin, the Boston meeting might just be another stop on a multiday tour of the United States: He has already been to San Francisco and New York.
"Any time you're flying from Australia you're basically buying a round-the-world ticket," said Diane Sinclair of the American Australian Association , who organized today's Boston Biorelationships conference.
The cocktail party is cosponsored by sister cities Boston and Melbourne, where Chaffey is manager of business development. It also has a secret weapon: sponsorship by the famed Australian winery Penfolds.
"They always provide great Australian wines," Sinclair said.
Not all the side-event attendees will show up at BIO. The Biotechnology Institute , an affiliated group focusing on education, is hosting 150 science teachers from around the country to get them interested in including biotechnology in their curriculums.
Last night, the teachers gathered at the Museum of Science to watch an IMAX movie; today, they'll tour laboratories at Boston University and take field trips to local drug companies.
And when BIO ends next week, the meetings still won't trail off. Although most of the conference will have vanished by the time the closing party takes over Jillian's gaming emporium Wednesday night, the next day marks a Scandinavian assault on Cambridge: Cancer experts from Denmark, Sweden and Norway -- along with the "best and brightest of Scandinavia's aspiring biotech companies," say the promoters -- will meet at Biogen Idec Inc. in Cambridge, hoping to forge ties with local oncologists.
