After a great lunch, Carlos Bustamante from Stanford gave a phenomenal presentation (as usual) though his typically loud presentation voice seemed a bit moderated. Maybe it is the new beard he was sporting, which may help absorb some of the sound waves.

It’s been a few years since I had attended the American Society of Human Genetics meeting, but I could not resist this year as it was in San Francisco, so close to home. I was very impressed with how well-organized it was, and especially how the society organizers have embraced mobile apps. This was one of the easiest-to-use conference apps that I have seen, with schedules, location maps of the conference venue, abstracts, and best of all, an area to input your own notes. This app worked incredibly well on the iPhone but even better on the iPad (no, not the 7-inch mini one, as I have not got my paws on it yet!)

Over the years, I’ve looked forward to ASHG as a chance meet up with old colleagues and make new friends, events largely facilitated by post-session parties and get-togethers. This time, I attended a different kind of celebration: the session titled “A Sequencing Jamboree: Exomes and Genomes.” Talks in this session discussed novel approaches to identifying causal variants and gene regions responsible for a variety of diseases, including type 2 diabetes (T2D), high LDL, cystic fibrosis, and autism.

At ASHG, we featured a cozy, hip little space called the Illumina Lounge. Located off the noisy exhibition floor, our enclave was decked out with white leather couches, a spread of drinks and snacks, a photo booth, and most importantly, Illumina product experts.

Until recently, only our benchtop MiSeq systems have been able to upload to BaseSpace, but I'm thrilled to announce we've now begun enabling customers' HiSeq instruments to stream their hundreds of gigabytes generated per run up to BaseSpace. 

I think conferences like ASHG are intellectual smorgasbords. Full of new product introductions, experimental approaches, and algorithms, they represent a feast of potential novel directions for our research. Often in the Q&A section of a talk, people ask, "Have you tried reanalyzing your data with the algorithm presented in the previous talk?" Without exception, the presenter graciously acknowledges the merit of the idea and delicately moves on for further questions. But how often do you think they follow through and try out the algorithm?

Abizar Lakdawalla, Ph.D., Associate Director, Product Marketing

I have been at Illumina for four years (which feels more like 40 years!), where I balance my time spent sailing in the San Francisco Bay with working with the development teams at Illumina on defining the sequencing products for tomorrow, and for the day-after-tomorrow. I was recently exiled to Illumina UK for about 13 months to work with the field organization just after the HiSeq system was launched. All in all, I have succeeded in keeping the current ratio of sailing versus work at approximately 0.000001: 1. Before Illumina, I worked at a company previously known as Applied Biosystems, focusing on microfluidic technologies for resequencing sample prep, and then led a technology incubator to rapidly commercialize new technologies (e.g., protein quantitation by real-time PCR). Before ABI, I was the technology director at BioGenex for automated strainers and imagers for in situ localization of proteins and nucleic acids. And somewhere in the past, there was a Ph.D. and a post-doc in molecular genetics.

Finally, after a long process of consideration, nonstop social media coverage, and many late nights, the voting is underway. The results will be announced this week to an international audience waiting on the edge of their seats. But who will win?