"We were up over the 1,100 mark for attendees at this year's show," says Jeff Stone, IEDC's vice president and senior director of conferences. "Last year's number was about 780 attendees."

Featured speaker for the Sept. 22-25 conference was Joseph Cortright, vice president of Impresa, and one of Oregon's leading economic analysts. Cortright addressed such topics as, "Who are the nation's leading biotech centers?" "Which metro areas are pulling ahead in the race to generate new biotech activity?" and, "What are some of their critical success factors?"

The next IEDC annual conference is scheduled for Sept. 13-17, 2003 in Cincinnati, Ohio. For more information on next years' event, contact IEDC at (202) 223-7800 or visit the Web site at www.iedconline.org/index.html.