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Out on a LIMSThe Blog for People Who Risk Life and LIMS on a Daily Basis

More on the LinkedIn LIMS/LI Group

Volume IIEntry 84 of 113 in 20161 min read4 comments ↓

Written by Gloria Metrick on . Published as written. It may not reflect how these systems work today.

Yesterday's blog post talked about my involvement with the LinkedIn LIMS/LI Group in Gone in LinkedIn LIMS/LI Group and Others. Today, I want to say a few separate things about the group.

First of all, Terry Iorns had taken it over and been leading it for years, now. I want to make sure people know he's been continuing to work to keep the group going and I'm sure we all appreciate his hard work. Thank you, Terry. In addition, for those who are interested in it, search for it in the LinkedIn Groups area.

Past that, then Alex Birch took it over from Terry and, while Terry does remain active in the group, we should also remember to give thanks to Alex for keeping the group rolling along.

Gloria Metrick
GeoMetrick Enterprises
http://www.GeoMetrick.com/

The conversation

4 comments from 2 people, September 16 to September 19, 2016. Gloria replied 2 times.

  1. Terry Iorns

    Gloria, a correction is needed. I turned over the LIMS/LI group to Alex Birch in February of 2014. Although I still participate from time to time, Alex needs credit for running the group the past two years or so.

  2. Gloria MetrickAuthor

    My apologies to Alex and I did know that he took the group over but just forgot. I have updated the post. Hopefully, people will happen to see this updated version. I went back-and-forth between updating this one and making a new post. However, with this post still being fairly new, decided to make the change directly to it - that more people would possibly see it by doing that (it's hard to know about these things, but doing my best to help people see corrections).

    So, Terry, thanks for reminding me of this.

  3. John H. Jones

    Gloria, unfortunately, I see a problem with LI groups. To make them work, you really have to do more than just sit and wait on someone to post a discussion and then wait further for someone to contribute answers. The rest of the stuff is self promotion and spam. The groups are a pale image of their past and the problem is with Linkedin itself but the problem is also with our community membership. It is small and not engaged. I am not sure what should be done about this, if anything. The fact that you have left the LIMS/LI groups is very telling. There is simply not much by way of value. Just look at the number of discussions and comments.

    There are other groups on Linkedin that are fantastic, like the HIPAA groups, CSV and Medical Devices groups. The groups are highly engaged, there is leadership that cares and posts regularly and always works to answer questions and despite the shortcomings of LI, the groups are thriving. Our Lab Informatics groups are not. I am grateful to those who do take the time to at least be a name that is listed as group owner or moderator or manager but we really need more than just some names, we need some leadership and action and engagement building.

    I am sorry to sound negative but I am in this industry and I see the number of community resources shrinking to nothing and that is not good for our industry and really want to see it change and all of us take stock of the situation and see if we cannot pull together and make something that is great. Otherwise what is left of these communities will die a pitiful death.

    So there is the down side. Now for the upside...

    Are there any new people in our industry that you can think of that could take over the LIMS/LI group and turn it into something great and build the membership? It's not me, it's not Terry, it's not you, it's not Alex. We have all had the opportunities and we all have other things that we must do that preclude us from leadership roles. Perhaps Artur? I would support anything that gets our LIMS/LI group back to an engaging community. Who knows, it might become so great, you might be willing to join the group again.

    I would not take the time to write this long note and further, risk a strong rebuke for being a kill joy if it were not for the fact that I actually care a lot about our group and desire for it to grow through true community engagement.

  4. Gloria MetrickAuthor

    That is true of all groups, whether they're in LinkedIn, Google Groups or elsewhere. Artur has his own groups to work on. That's a lot of work all by itself. I would strongly urge him not to take on more but to remain focused on what he has.

    As for Terry, Alex and anyone else, if they put in the time they can, that's all we can ask of them. I will tell everyone reading this that I spent a lot of time on the group and it's hard to get your work done and do all the things the group needs in order to grow and function. We need to thank them for

    In any case, in our industry, we no longer have centralized organizations, centralized groups, centralized conferences, or anything else that would bring us all together on this topic. Everyone wants to do their own thing and this is the result. I think it would take someone bigger than a handful us to make this happen and none are interested. At least, not when I asked them. And it really takes more than being interested, it would take putting resources toward it and no-one who is big wants to do that.

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