2004 - A quality year in Cytometry: Review

Dear Colleagues on the Cytometry list:

The first thing that I want to say is thanks to all those that 
voted for our coalition for change team in the ISAC election 
this year. In particular I am very humbled by the strength of 
your confidence in voting me in as President-elect of ISAC. I 
will represent you well in this opportunity of joining President 
Maria Pallavicini and the executive management team (Bob 
Zucker, Secretary and Frank Traganos, Treasurer) of your 
Society ISAC. There is a great team of people to work with. 
They are all very keen and all well qualified people. I have 
made it clear that I want you to tell me what you think about 
ISAC, your ideas and your concerns - email me. 

There are 3 things that I want to say about ISAC. 
1. If you are not a member, please consider joining. There 
are many benefits of membership. ISAC can be a rising star 
in the world of standards, calibrations, mulitplexing and 
HCS. Participate in that venture 
(http://www.cyto.purdue.edu/isac/). I note that less than 40% of 
the members of this list are also members of ISAC. 
2. Publish your quality papers in "Cytometry" - try hard to 
support the journal
3. Come to the next congress. Quebec City, May 2006. 
(http://www.isac2006.com)

The list
This list is about to enter its 15th year of operation! It started 
with 5 people who had even heard of email in 1989-1990 
and it has generated into an enthusiastic, high quality 
discussion of 2630 people. The list hit 2000 members in the 
year 2000  - so in the last 4 years its grown at a cumulative 
rate of 10%/annum. 630 new members in just 4 years is 
amazing and indicative of the power and growth of 
cytometry - it has many more great years to come. Steve 
Kelly spends countless hours keeping viri, spam, 
unintended personal messages, and the like out of the list.  
I have worked hard to keep the list unbiased, as free from 
commercialism as possible, and still keep the information 
flowing. If you joined the list and underwent what you 
thought was an interview - it was! You will all note that when 
we accept your subscription to this list, you will receive a 
personal invitation to join ISAC - over 100 of you accepted 
this challenge in 2004!! I would like to see another 250 join 
for 2005. Our target membership of ISAC for 2006 is 2000 
members! 

Instead of listing all the stats this year in this message, I 
have decided to start a yearly page on our website that 
simply documents the key stats. You can find that at 
http://www.cyto.purdue.edu/hmarchiv/surveys/2004.htm

Our usual Top 20 Members are in order of messages sent: 
Marjan, Robert C. Leif, Bob Zucker, Phil McCoy (all 13),  
Ray Hester,  Janet Dow (14)  Richard Konz, Mike Evans 
(15), Simon Monard (17),  Mario Roederer (19),	Calman 
Prussin (21),  Zbigniew Darzynkiewicz,	Derek Davies (22), 
Timothy Bushnell (24),	Joanne Lannigan, Marty Bigos, Uriel 
TK (28),  Gerhard Nebe-Von-Caron (35) and the usual over-
active chatters....J. Paul Robinson and Howard Shapiro with 
50 messages.

Howard Shapiro, however, takes the prize for 2004 as he 
was already the winner from 2003 and therefore retains his 
title!!! Thanks Howard for your outstanding contributions and 
thanks to all 865 members who took the time to post, and 
the 913 messages that had followups means that the list is 
doing its job. If you want to see which messages generated 
the most followup, go to the URL above.

In 2004 many things happened that are worthy of comment. 
First we started a new High Content Screening discussion 
group and website. 
http://www.cyto.purdue.edu/HCS/index.htm - HCS is an 
area that will drive much change in ISAC and our field. 
Second, we remodeled our Cytomics initiative and started to 
discuss the possibility of a Human Cytome Project 
(http://www.cytomics.info). Third, we created a special 
website for the ISAC 2006 congress which I hope you all 
attend (http://www.isac2006.com). Put the dates on your 
calendar NOW (May 20-24, 2006).

2005
>From all of us at the Purdue University Cytometry 
Laboratories, we wish you all a fantastic 2005! I am excited 
about some really serious changes that are going to take 
place at Purdue this coming year. I believe that it will be a 
year of the greatest change ever for us! Much of what we 
have planned for 2005 will have impact on many of you - 
(lets just say that I have gone through an intellectual mid-life 
crisis and made lots of changes) - this will affect particularly 
those who participate in the Email Discussion, our 
educational programs, and other things we do. I hope that in 
my 2005 message I will be able to look back on the year 
and say "what a great year - the best ever!" Well, its only 
365 days to go and I can't wait.

All the best to you all for the coming year. Thanks for 
participating in the Purdue Cytometry Discussion.

J. Paul Robinson

J.Paul Robinson, PhD		 PH:(765)4940757
Professor of Immunopharmacology
Professor of Biomedical Engineering  
Purdue University	   FAX:(765)4940517
EMAIL:jpr@flowcyt.cyto.purdue.edu
WEB: http://www.cyto.purdue.edu     

Have you seen our new HCS webpage?
http://www.cyto.purdue.edu/hcs



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