Cardiff has proved to be an excellent venue for the British Pharmaceutical Conference. The city's brand new international arena has allowed virtually all conference events to take place on one site, making life very much easier for participants. Getting to and from sessions could not have been simpler and the opportunities for networking and informal contacts have been greatly enhanced.
The layout of the international arena has meant that the exhibition has been the focal point. This will, of course, have pleased the exhibitors, but it will also have allowed participants to enjoy the extra dimension that a successful exhibition brings to a conference. Thus, both the formal and the informal aspects of the conference, each as important as the other, have been facilitated. It would be difficult to ask for more. The pattern seen at Cardiff will be repeated in future years. The venue next year will the International Convention Centre in Birmingham, also purpose built.
There was a certain poignancy to be found in the President's address at Cardiff. It was not many years ago — nine to be precise — that the then conference science chairman concluded his conference address, also in Cardiff, by promoting a new organisation to represent pharmaceutical scientists (PJ, September 15, 1990, p343). Such an organisation — the United Kingdom Association of Pharmaceutical Sciences — was duly set up. With the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, through its Pharmaceutical Sciences Group, continuing to represent pharmaceutical scientists, a certain amount of disharmony resulted. It is pleasing to record, therefore, that the President, at this year's conference, was able to report that agreement in principle had been reached for a merger to take place between the UKAPS and the group (p425). Discussions on the detail are now taking place. We hope that those discussions bear fruit. The organisations are bound to be more successful together than if they continue to be separate. The divergence that followed Cardiff 1991 looks like leading to convergence following Cardiff 1999.