Mondy and Tuesday were a little quieter (guess that happens when you don't have Bernie Williams or Michael Strahan signing autographs) - this was maybe not so great for the exhibitors, but it was great for us because the exhibitors had a little more time to talk in depth with us about their products. Some more highlights:
Dr Greitzer @ the Apex booth - little did we know that our client, Dr Geitzer from Tarrytown, serves as a spokesperson for Apex - he has published several interesting papers in the last few years and we got a chance to talk bonding with him for a while.
On the train down to the show, I read 1-800-DENTIST's Fred Joyal's article in CERECDoctors.com - then lo and behold, I had a chance to discuss the article with the man himself at his booth - he is right - externally marketing CEREC is a little tricky, but internally marketing it can be very successful if executed properly.
The XRite Shade Taker - we've been poking around at a bunch of different shade taking systems - we think we've found the winner - in addition to taking the shade (and converting it to all of the major shade guides) the unit will tell you which shade block to use in the CEREC machine as your 'base shade- while it's not that tough to choose the right block to start with, it's always nice to eliminate guesswork.
I think we might be buying one of these in the next few days.
Marisa and I sat down to be interviewed about MobileTek Labs at the American Express OPEN booth - hopefully our video will make it to the OPEN website at some point, but even if it doesn't we had a good time chatting with the interviewer - it's always good to practice speaking and answering questions about the biz.
Other notable boots/products - very impressed by Snap On Smile's booth and staff - we know how hard Dr Leichtung has been working on SOS and we are glad to see it taking off - we spoke with a product manager at Heraeus who told us that they will be introducing a scannable bite registration materials @ the Yankee show - always good to have more products on the market.
All in all a fun time (except for the $4 sodas) - hopefully next year we will be ready for a booh
Marisa and I spent a nice chunk of the day down at the show - we ran into a bunch of our clients and schmoozed with a bunch of dental industry folks.
Some quick highlights:
3M Lava COS (Chairside Oral Scanner) demo - very nice mini-theater setup at the 3M Booth with demos every hour - the scanner itself is pretty amazing - rather than taking taking single pix and sticthing them together, the scanner is constantly on as you are waving the wand through the patient's mouth. It is therefore able to feed a constant stream of data to the machine giving you a 'real time' 3D model as you scan. was pretty sweet - willn need to look at it closer on another trip downtown.
Mobile 3D Imaging - Mobile 3D Imaging brought their entire mobile unit to the New Tom booth - it's quite a setup (and of course we love it because it is a similar concept to ours. The unit is currently operating in Long Island and will begin servicing Westchester County shortly.
E4D Impression Scanning - E4D itself is looking good - time will tell how the CEREC/E4D war plays out - but either way the impression scanning feature on the E4D is really cool (esp for labs) - we got a chance to play with it a bit - you do have to take quite a few pictures but scanning the impression directly without pouring a model is a big time savings (I can also it being quite useful in the dentist's office - perfect for a patient who won't 'play nice' with the camera - or in a situation when the doc is too busy to scan and design on the spot.
Well -I'm sure we'll have more to report over the next couple of days but these were some biggies.
Heading down to Javits in about 2 hours - should be a lot of fun - looking forward to seeing some friends and some cool new stuff - I will about some of the more interesting products/companies that we come across.