Ben Rice from Canute Medical was there. I hardly had a chance to visit with him and only to shake hands. I will have to make it a point next time to spend a few minutes with him.

I spent a lot of time with Jim Balet from Cool Pair Plus. Jim was there with Dick Branca and Dick's wife, Elaine. Barbara and I had dinner with them on Wednesday night.


Jim Balet is a really nice guy and also an impressive guy. He cares about his customers and seems to constantly be looking for ways to provide better customer service. Dick is a former Dunlee guy and recently joined Cool Pair.

My good friend, Mehdi Smail was there from Denmark with his wife, Beatrice. Mehdi was representing LBN Medical along with Peter Moldrup Petersen.

Mehdi is one of the nicest guys you would ever want to meet but he also has tremendous product knowledge. Best of all, he has the rare talent of being able to diffuse a problem when a machine is down. He is calm and patient and works through the problem. I have seen this in action and it is really very impressive.

Rob Piconi made a 15 minute appearance, however I am sure he had a number of meetings behind the scenes. He was there with a colleague whom I have met before but I did not catch his name.

There was the contingent from Inmed and Medser. Aydogan Polat from Medser was there. He has a very good reputation when it comes to Siemens CT scanners. I have never had much of a chance to visit with him as he is reserved but he is another fellow that I hope to visit with at a future meeting.

Erik Rehn was there with his daughter Nikola and his very qualified service manager, Ladislav Vavricka. Erik was accompanied by his wife and while I do not speak German and she does not speak English, she has a very warm way about her and you get the feeling she is a very nice person. As for her husband, Erik, he has no trouble communicating and is always one of the most dynamic people in the room. He is very knowledgeable about the European market and has a great service team.

Also, from Germany, Dr. Michael Friebe was there. Michael has a very interesting relationship with our industry. He was a pioneer in the field and according to my memory, if he was not the first person in Europe to enter the used equipment market, he was one of the first.

Anyway, Michael is now a university professor and concentrating on developing new products for health care. Michael was one of the speakers and talked about some new technology in health care, such as elastography and new techniques in cancer treatment. In addition, he made some predictions of technological developments he expects in the future. He also reminded us about some predictions he made in the past that have come true.

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