Recapping the 6th Annual DLOAC International CAD/CAM Symposium

Of course the meeting went on to serve many other purposes than providing a sparing venue for 3M and Ivolcar. Day one was kicked off by Judy Fishman’s State of the Industry presentation. Judy, President and Publisher of Lab Management Today magazine, used fresh information gathered from her recent web survey to highlight some of the recent purchasing trends related to CAD/CAM in the dental lab industry. Following Judy were about a dozen morning presentation at about 20 minutes per. Each presentation was sponsored by a manufacturer who shared the features and benefits unique to their offering.

The morning presentations were action packed and my presentation for Coral Optical Zirconia was among the group. Having been last among the morning lineup - due to earlier technical difficulties with the AV - I was happy to share some of the exciting benefits of Coral. The theme and title of the Coral presentation was The Evolution of the Dental Understructure. I had a lot of fun showing the progression of dental understructures and how Coral Optical Zirconia is the most evolved for outsourced zirconia copings due to their evolved brains and dental outsourcing intellect - both of which result in a higher quality and more consistant product for dental lab customers seeking outsourced zirconia copings and bridge frameworks.

The evolution of zirconia copings

The claim of being the smartest, or most evolved dental coping, stemmed mostly from the fact that at Dale, we use so much real time customer feedback to perfect every zirconia coping we manufacture for other labs. Additionally, Coral saves paper, time and money over other outsourced zirconia understructures thanks to our online case entry. system In all, so many unique benefits, all of which we can go on to talk about in a future blog.

Unlike the other presenters, we did not exhibit at the show. Instead we donated our exhibit space to America’s Toothfairy, a project of the National Children’s Oral Health Foundation. This is an organization I’ve known about for years, but recently decided to get more involved. My special thanks go out to Dana Cohen and his dental technology students at the LA City Technical College for donating their time to work the exhibit booth Friday and Saturday. We had a great time sharing the fascinating details of the program with so many interested lab owners and industry professionals and I look forward to following up with all those who expressed their interest.

After a couple of long days, I woke up Saturday morning to listen to Lee Culp with his View of the Future in CAD/CAM technologies. I followed Lee with my presentation titled Evaluating High Technology. I’ve presented to thousands of lab owners about technology through industry meetings around the states, but this one may have been my favorite. Why? Because I think I succeeded in finding a way to place technology making decisions in the broader context of the entire laboratory business. That is to say, not only what technologies will serve the labs purpose, but exactly what purpose technology does and does not serve the lab.

America's Toothfairy at DLAOC meeting

I used a newspaper analogy to show that CAD/CAM equipment is like the physical printing press of a newspaper. And, if CAD/CAM is the printing press of the newspaper, than materials are the headline. After all, if a new material were to come out tomorrow that was deemed the most esthetic, strongest, etc, however was a hand-applied material that was then cured in sunlight… there would be no more interest in CAD/CAM. Of course, that’s not exactly true, but does provide some perspective on just how important the materials are compared to the equipment that fashions them.

The other components of the newspaper such as the reporters and the story are like the labs technicians and marketing components respectively. I went on to provide additional details of each and I will try to post a summary of the entire presentation somewhere else at this blog address. Perhaps my newest quote and favorite quote of the presentation was that “if a brush is the tool of artists, then CAD/CAM is the tool of businessmen.” I think it’s a very appropriate statement and it seemed to resonate as evidenced by the nods and hmmms I saw and heard throughout the crowd.

I also want to throw some props out to Jeff Youngerman of Sirona for his quick wit in calling me on the technical difficulties I experienced during my Friday presentation. The funny thing is that I have been plagued with technical difficulties since announcing I would be stepping down from writing my TechSmart articles in Dental Lab Products Report. First, my laptop never recovered from a hard drive upgrade - I am still on a temporary laptop. Second, and third - both of my presentations were accompanied by technical difficulties that made it look like I was playing tennis every time I went to advance the slide deck. Anyway, Jeff made some funny comment that I was like the troubled PC guy and he was the cool Mac guy since his presentation went off without a hitch. I do own and use both a PC and a Mac. I find it easier to work on the PC and from a business perspective I feel it integrates so much better with the rest of the world. The Mac however is just so much fun to use, and as Youngerman pointed out, perhaps a little less prone to technical difficulties.

Special thanks to Glenn Thom and the rest of the DLOAC team for putting together the meeting, again to Dana Cohen and his students and the Langham hotel for their awesome hotel, staff, service and atmosphere. I don’t like being away from home, but it was a great gathering and a great venue and I look forward to attending next year.