20 years ago I walked into my first Showcase at Birmingham NEC, spent the day wandering around, met one person I knew (Jeff Caddick, Castle Ceramics) and then went home, wondering whether dentistry might be an interesting place to hang out.
To say the rest is history would be an understatement.
The business of dentistry and the people I have met as a result have shaped the best and the worst of the last two decades.
Happily, the great people I have met far outweigh the not so great in both quantity and quality.
Today I begin 3 days of back to back workshops with my friends from Planmeca, introducing the demonstration of their scanning design and manufacturing process live in a series of 1-hour sessions and looking at the financial ROI from investing in digital equipment – real figures from real Principals – starting at 13:00.
It is amazing to reflect on my own historic journey from anonymity to some degree of notoriety, to think about how much the profession has changed in that time, to celebrate the astonishing digital present – perhaps most importantly to look into the future and wonder what we will be talking about here in another 20 years from now?
On which point, I’ll be speaking about Dentistry 2026 at the Practice Plan business theatre today and tomorrow.
If you are visiting the show and can make it to stand E70 please come over, take the weight off, enjoy one of our coffees and let me listen to your story.