Most life sciences events have an invitation-only event or two. But at the CED Life Science Conference this week there were literally two conferences going on at once: one that everyone could attend and constant, ongoing invitation-only sections for a select few.
Before the conference began mid-day Wednesday in Raleigh, North Carolina, entrepreneurs and members of North Carolina’s life sciences industry had already had private invitation-only events. Then on Thursday came a CEO breakfast (who got to hear from former Medtronic CEO Bill Hawkins) and private investor-only venture day. Then, after most attendees went home, the summit continued for a few more hours with a lengthy grant-writing workshop.
“We needed to do something different to attract the high-level people that add so much value to a conference like this,” said Joan Siefert Rose, president at Council for Entrepreneurial Development, which organized the event. “At the end of the day it’s about networking and you need to have the right people in the network.”
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No one was attending each of the invitation-only events. Instead, most of the invitation-only events attracted different portions of the audience and poured the remaining crowd into the general audience. This has been a common approach for this event, though they increased the number of exclusive events this year.
It’s too early to tell if the approach worked. The conference did have an increase in attendees — in the 900s compared to the mid-800s in the previous year. And it had more participation in some key segments. For example, last year three large pharma companies participated in the event’s partnering sessions. This year, there were 16.