2007 End of year message from Purdue

Beware, the end is nigh!
No, not an apocalyptic prediction - but 2007 is definitely coming to an 
end. Not before time I would say - it’s been a busy year. But I have 
some strong words to end the year and I am going to say them!! Of course 
you don’t have to read them!

Cytometry is now 40 years old and it’s been sort of decaying a bit. What 
do I mean? I am amazed at how conservative and frankly boring the field 
has become. Why? It’s time to move to the 21st century folks. I'm 
getting older and frankly, its time to kick some butt as my younger 
colleagues often say. We talk so much like it is the same old cytometry 
it has always been. Wake up people - times are changing - look at all 
these new small companies trying to stick their noses in "our" field! 
True we need to do the core work and do it well, but lets not forget 
that fundamental tools of cell analysis are changing and if we don't 
keep ourselves up-to-date and educated on what's happening....before we 
know it, a new field will emerge and we will be like the old electron 
microscopists who are still wondering what happened ......

I know most of us work in the field and like what we do, but I think its 
time to open up a little and try to do some serious integration of our 
field. It’s not happening very effectively on the most part I would say. 
Cytometry is about integration of the tools of the field into the vast 
reaches of biological problems that we can contribute to solving. 
Cytometry is about advancement of the field, that means always looking 
ahead. ISAC will soon be the International Society for Advancement of 
Cytometry – a 21st century Society not a 20th century Society.

Cytometry is not flow cytometry!! Let’s not kid ourselves about this 
folks. Cytometry is about measuring cells - however you do it - and flow 
cytometry is just one component of many. I understand that it may be the 
only tool some of you use - I don’t want to take away from that or 
de-emphasize its value or importance. But, we so often hear people talk 
about our field only in context of just flow cytometry. Recently, when 
we polled the ISAC community on changing our name from "analytical 
Cytology" to Advancement of Cytometry" we received comments like "hey I 
don’t do flow cytometry, so why are you reducing the breadth of the 
field?" Ouch - they think "cytometry" means "flow cytometry". We have a 
long way to go before we convince the community that we cover all 
aspects of cytometry. And let’s also remember the growing membership in 
India and China – (that’s half the worlds population right there) – it’s 
high time we paid much more attention to these countries as a field. 
Awtar Krishan can’t be the only person to drive cytometry training and 
education for 1.2 billion Indians can he? Well he has been up to now. 
Who is taking on the mantle of training and education of cytometry in China?

So here's the scoop. That's one of the reasons why the Purdue Web portal 
is going to change. We tried to make the change this past year, but 
there were too many other things happening here to achieve it. But come 
middle of 2008, I am resolved that you will see a huge difference in the 
Purdue site. It’s been the default cytometry communication portal now 
for many, many years. We have focused on good clean fun with cytometry - 
quality, timely, simple - no spam. Many people like that actually. The 
portal is almost overwhelming for us – 22,000 daily page requests with 
over 2 Gigs daily download. In 2007 alone, downloads of 208,000 
powerpoint files, 233,000 PDF files, 8800 movies, 38,000 word document 
files. The education pages and the Cytometry Discussion Archive are the 
most hit for sure. Over 125,000 distinct files from our portal were 
accessed in 2007.

But all good things must come to an end. Come July 2008, the usual 
Purdue web portal may well be no more. It will be replaced with 
something entirely new. Hopefully most will find it more useful and 
relevant - some will not like it. Maybe we will be able to make everyone 
happy....ha!..C'est la vie. Some of you will be beta testers and 
advisers I hope.

So my best wishes to all in the cytometry field for 2008. Regarding the 
past year on the discussion list, its been lively, with an average of 7 
messages per day with 754 different individuals submitting at least one 
message. 139 messages had at least 6 responses.  There were 1205 unique 
subject lines. Subscribers came from 64 top level domains. The usual 
bunch of suspects answered lots of messages and Marty Bigos seems to 
have too much time as he answered the most (thanks Marty!!). Tragically, 
the second most prolific responder was Randy Fisher who passed away on 
December 5.  Randy's responses were always short, to the point and 
accurate. It hurts to lose one of our own, particularly when it's one of 
our most active members. But that’s the point isn't it. For many years 
to come, we have the value of Randy's hundreds of suggestions over the 
years archived for the many new people who enter our field. Many of you 
probably never actually met Randy - but I bet most of you feel you knew 
him. One of the mysteries of the web I suppose. Our condolences to 
Randy's family - perhaps they didn't know how many people knew Randy 
"electronically" - but we all did. You know we are a small field when it 
comes to the big world of science so when we lose one person, the entire 
field morns.

To end 2007, let me make a big plug for a program we began at the 2006 
ISAC congress. Gary Durack from iCyt and myself started a small 
not-for-profit charity called "Cytometry for Life" in response to 
Stephen Lewis' compelling plea for some low cost CD4 devices. Our field 
has done a lot of talking about this, but only a few people have really 
tried to do anything practical. Well, folks we have all been doing 
cytometry for a very long time - it's time to do something. "Cytometry 
for life" (http://www.cytometryforlife.org) is working hard. We have 
made tremendous progress in just one year. It would be great if you all 
decided to jump on board and play a small part. You can give money, 
advice, moral support, talk to your politicians, community health-care, 
charities, whatever. But get involved as be recognized as the cytometry 
community to solve this problem of bringing low cost, portable devices 
to the 65% or more of African's who don’t live in the cities and towns 
where current CD4 technologies are available. Our goal is to work in 
areas not being served by current technologies. We have heard these 
calls before, but folks we have to deal with this problem - it's your 
problem if you call yourself a "cytometry" person. Email me if you can 
help - consider donating to the program, let's make it work. By the end 
of 2008, I want to be telling you that the program is getting to people 
who need this desperately. Help us achieve that for 2008.

I hope many of you got hold of a copy of our new double DVD set 
“Cytometry – 60 years of Innovation” – if not ask your local rep from 
virtually any company in our field. It might give you a good sense of 
how strong the foundation in our field really is. I will see many of you 
at the 2008 congress in Budapest. I know some of you think its going to 
be expensive so I took several hours myself and created a webpage for 
the cheap ones out there so you have no excuses not to go... 
(http://www.cyto.purdue.edu/flowcyt/cheapflights1.htm).

It's been a privilege to serve for the past 19 months as President of 
ISAC. I will gladly pass that hat to Bob Murphy in May. ISAC is alive 
and well  - membership is growing daily. I would not be surprised to see 
us top 2000 by the end of the Congress in May. I know that about 60% of 
the members of this list are NOT ISAC members. Perhaps you should 
consider joining the Society that keeps many of you in business? 
http://www.isac-net.org/

My best wishes for you all in 2008 from Purdue
Paul

-- 
J. Paul Robinson
SVM Professor of Cytomics
Professor of Immunopharmacology & Biomedical Engineering
Director, Purdue University Cytometry Laboratories
President, International Society for Analytical Cytology

Purdue University Cytometry Laboratories
Bindley Bioscience Center
1203 West State Street
Discovery Park, Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2057
Ph (765) 494 0757; Fax (765) 494 0517
email: jpr@flowcyt.cyto.purdue.edu
www.cyto.purdue.edu

Join ISAC - www.isac-net.org

Change lives today  - www.cytometryforlife.org