Cold Chain Global Forum Agenda Records, 2016–2017

The address /agenda-mc on the former Cold Chain Global Forum website was referenced in more than one year. This page keeps it as a multi-year record and separates what the sources show for each edition.

Verified facts

2016 (14th Annual)

• The 14th Annual forum was announced for 26 to 30 September 2016 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. [2]
• An archived /agenda-mc page from June 2016, titled “2016 Cold Chain Global Forum Event Agenda”, summarised the week as three pre-conference master class sessions, eight pre-conference workshops, two main-conference days with a four-track design and fifteen roundtable topics, and the 2nd Annual Cold Chain Excellence Awards ceremony. [1]
• The same page offered a draft agenda for download through a registration form. [1]
• The announcement of May 2016 described interactive workshops, master-class training sessions, a four-track main conference and panel discussions. [2]

2017 (15th Annual)

• The 15th Annual forum took place on 25 to 29 September 2017 in Chicago. [4]
• An archived /agenda-mc page from October 2017 was titled “2017 Global Forum Event Brochure”. It listed keynote speakers, including Paul Zikopolous of IBM and John Brownstein of Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard University. [3] The 2017 brochure listed Wesley Schmidt, Vice President of Quality Systems at AbbVie, among its featured speakers. [4]
• The same page’s menu named six agenda days: Master Class Day, Workshop Day, Main Conference Day One, Food Fresh Day, Main Conference Day Two and International Focus Day. [3]
• The brochure placed Main Conference Day Two on Thursday 28 September and the International Focus Day on Friday 29 September. [4]
• A session titled “LEBANON: Reviewing the Lebanese Ministry of Health’s GSDP National Guidelines to Ensure Preserved Quality and Identity of Pharmaceutical Products during Storage & Transport” appeared on the International Focus Day pages of the brochure. [4]
• The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health announced on 22 August 2017 that its representative would present at the forum and invited readers to check the event agenda at /agenda-mc. [5]

See the separate records for the 2017 Day Two sessions, the 2017 speaker record for Rita Karam and the 2016 master class and Fenway visit.

Additional detail from the sources

• The May 2016 announcement named five speakers with titles: Terry Carrico, VP, Corporate Security & Safety, McKesson; Rolando Vega, Senior Director, Global Packaging Engineering, Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson; Hasan Jabarti, Head of Quality, Novartis; Brian Johnson, Senior Director, Supply Chain Security, Merck; and Rob Montague, Director, Supply Chain Logistics, GlaxoSmithKline. [2]
• The October 2017 snapshot opened with the line “We’re headed to Chicago this year with a new look, new speakers and new content”. [3]
• The brochure’s “Agenda at a Glance” put the master class on Monday 25 September, the workshop day on Tuesday 26 September, Main Conference Day One on Wednesday 27 September, Day Two on Thursday 28 September and the International Focus Day on Friday 29 September. [4]
• The brochure listed Day Two’s keynote as “Bringing Healthcare to People and People to Healthcare: The Future of Clinical Trials & Vaccine Distribution”. [4]
• The International Focus Day entry for the Lebanese session carried four discussion points: responsibilities for preventing counterfeit products, documentation and infrastructure for a quality management system, the ministry’s GSDP certification and auditing process, and an update on GDP regulation in the MENA region. [4]
• The brochure listed Rita Karam, Pharm.D., Ph.D., as Quality Assurance of Pharmaceutical Products Program Director, Lebanese Ministry of Health. [4]

How the two years differ under one address

The 2016 snapshot summarized the week by counts: three master classes, eight workshops, two main-conference days and fifteen roundtable topics. [1] The 2017 snapshot named individual days instead, and one of them, Food Fresh Day, has no counterpart in the 2016 summary. [3] The sources do not explain the change in structure, so this page does not interpret it. The same address appears in snapshots from both years, so a reader who followed an old link could have reached content from either edition depending on when the page was captured.

Source material and scope

What exists: two archived snapshots of the original page, one 2016 press release, one 2017 brochure file hosted by a third party, and a 2017 ministry announcement. The brochure is undated and is attributed to the organizer on the basis of its signatories; the host reports a July 2017 file date.

What is missing: the 2016 draft agenda file, any session list for 2016 beyond the summary above, and the original files for the 2017 agenda. This page does not state session times or attendance, and it is not a full agenda for either year. Speakers are named only as the sources listed them at the time; later changes are not known.

How this record connects to other archive pages

The 2016 detail sits in two other records: the master class and Fenway visit record, for the one pre-conference session that had its own page, and the 2016 awards record, for the ceremony that the June 2016 agenda summary mentioned. For 2017, the Day Two record lists the sessions printed for 28 September, and the Rita Karam speaker record covers the International Focus Day session that the ministry announcement tied to this address.

For other years, see the 2015 programme record and the 2018 edition record. The historical resource index lists the public documents behind these records, and the archive home lists every record.

Editorial analysis: why these topics still matter

The Cold Chain Practice Editorial Desk wrote this analysis. It does not describe what any speaker said, because the sources give session titles only. The questions below start from those titles.

Two 2017 roundtable titles, “Passive VS Active Shippers” and “Innovations in Data Collection & Storage”, name decisions that remain open on any new lane. Whether a shipment suits an insulated shipper with conditioned refrigerant or a powered container is a system-boundary question, laid out in the guide on active versus passive shipping systems. A third listed topic, the return and reuse of temperature assurance packaging, raises the operating questions covered in the guide on reusable shipper operations, such as inspection, cleaning and re-conditioning.

The track titles also point to materials and data. An inorganic phase change material session title connects to the decision path in the guide on choosing a refrigerant. A title about integrating temperature data from several sources connects to the guide on data logger selection, and the choice of when data should become visible is explained in the guide on real-time versus offline monitoring. Read this way, old agendas yield questions only. Any current decision should rest on current product documents and qualification evidence.

Editorial reconstruction note

This page was prepared by the Cold Chain Practice Editorial Desk from the public sources listed above. DeltaSpark and Cold Chain Practice are not affiliated with IQPC or the organizers of the former event. There is no registration and no current event. Companies and people named here are historical references and are not partners or endorsers of this site.