Committee Chair Corner – Drug, Device and Biotechnology Committee
Jason C. Rose
Venable LLP
jcrose@venable.com
I am honored to be chairing the IADC’s Drug, Device and Biotechnology (DDB) Committee this year, taking over from Doug Moore who was a fantastic leader of our Committee. The DDB Committee is one of the IADC’s largest and a goal for us this year is to increase the participation of our Committee members not only in our Committee endeavors, but also in the broader IADC initiatives.
We plan to have our Committee telephonic meetings on the second Monday of the month at 1:00 p.m. central time with the hope that planning around the lunch hour in the eastern half of the U.S., the morning on the west coast and the end of the day across the pond will help to maximize participation. I am communicating with our Vice Chairs before each meeting to prepare an agenda which we hope will be informative for all while also allowing us to keep the meeting to 30 minutes. We of course encourage all members to call in and to contact me or one of our Vice Chairs in advance if you have an item you’d like to put on the agenda. I thank everyone for the strong attendance at our two meetings so far in August and September. Our next call will be on November 12.
We are fortunate that among our Vice Chairs we have a mix of new folks and others who kindly have stayed in leadership positions from years prior.
On the all-important membership front, Joe Cohen and Jeni Heis have stayed on as Vice Chairs of Diversity and Membership, respectively. As we start working towards our Committee’s 2018-19 goal for new member nominations, we will want to focus on diversifying and energizing the Committee with new members. Joe and Jeni also will be working with Committee member Dominic Campodonico to help implement some broader IADC membership retention initiatives within our Committee. An opportunity like serving as a new member “ambassador” is an easy way to get more involved in IADC, so please contact Dominic, Joe, or Jeni about it. Peter Pliszka will again serve as our International Vice Chair, linking our U.S. and international Committee members.
For our CLEs, new Vice Chairs Rick Fern and David Ferrera are working on content and submissions for the Midyear and Annual meetings, respectively, with help from our new Vice Chair of Programs and Projects, Chad Hutchinson. In addition to the content generated by our Committee, we also are coordinating with and co-sponsoring content from other Committees as well. Our November 9 deadline for internal CLEs for the 2019 Annual Meeting is nearly here so please contact David if you would like to submit a proposal. The Committee leadership certainly does not have the market cornered on interesting CLE content…all proposals are welcome.
Another goal of our Committee this year is to increase our publications. We have new Vice Chairs Stephen Meyers for Publications and Chad Fears for the DCJ. Look for a newsletter soon about innovator liability. Kirstin Abel stayed on this year as our Vice Chair for Webinars and she is “on it,” with an active slate of programming. After informative Webinars in August on e-discovery and proportionality and in September on the opioid litigation, the next Webinar will be in January on MDL rulemaking.
If anyone is interested in getting more involved in a particular area of the Committee, please let the Vice Chair know or send me an email. We welcome all helping hands, and serving in the Committee truly is an excellent way to meet more people in the organization.
We hope everyone is planning to attend the Midyear Meeting at The Ritz-Carlton Bacara in Santa Barbara, California, February 23-28, 2019. It will be a beautiful setting, a sure-fire cure for the winter blues, and a great way to meet new members and catch up with old friends. Please visit the Midyear Meeting page on the IADC website for details as they are finalized.
Lastly, a quick plug for the Annual Meeting next summer. Doug organized a DDB Committee dinner in Lisbon last summer that was a really fun evening. We’ll want to keep that tradition alive next summer in Asheville.
I’m looking forward to a great year ahead as we all support the “One IADC” initiative, and I thank our DDB Committee Vice Chairs and members for your continued involvement and support of IADC.