TesLA Alliance Quarterly Meeting

I'm on the Customer Advisory Board for the TesLA Alliance and we had our second quarterly meeting this last week.  I missed the first meeting due to being sick, so it was great to finally meet the rest of the TesLA Members and the Customer Advisory Board as well. I am really excited about all of the new things that we're planning to do, and very appreciative to be involved with the entire alliance.  The caliber of all of the members and board is top-notch, and there are many very exciting dicsussions going on that will forever change this industry in the positive. Why is it so exciting to me? Well, first you have a collection of Members that span the performance, functional, and lab automation arenas.  Some of these vendors are bitter rivals, yet they met together, and all agreed on many things that will help to not only unify the market, but provide far more benefits to end customers.  There are even more vendors that are interested, and attended the first part of the meeting to see what it was all about. Second, you have the goals of the alliance, which are exactly what I've been looking for.  Defined and published standards.  Framework to allow vendors to communicate between each other.  Completely open to all vendors.  An alliance focused on all of these things, and not on building their own product. Third, the momentum behind this is amazing, and the amount of progress that has been made in the last few months shows that this is being done at the right time, and the right place.  So many people agree that the industry needs this ASAP. Finally, the customer advisory board - my colleagues are all top-drawer folks from varying parts of the industry.  One of the members was adding up the experience we all have together and we came up with something around 80 years!  We're the reality check for the rest of the alliance to make sure that what they're coming up with meets customer expectations.  It's a privilege to work with these folks on such a critical standard for our industry. What's next? I would like to see even more vendors participate in the alliance.  There are some noticeable key players that are still playing politics, when they should really just put those aside and get on board. There's a lot more planned, and a lot of new things happening every week.  Check out the Activities Calendar, or subscribe to the RSS feed for the site.  I'm looking forward to the ongoing participation, as well as the new folks who will be joining.