Last week, Kevin and I attended the annual IABPA training conference in Boulder, Colorado. By all accounts it was a very successful conference - well organized, good talks, good workshops, and it was great to see old friends and make some new ones.

There were about 147 participants from all over the US, Canada, Europe, and Southeast Asia. There were even students from Japan and The Netherlands who paid their own way to the conference. The Rocky Mountain Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts [RMABPA] and Boulder Police Department conference organizers - Tom 'Griff' Griffon [Colorado Bureau of Investigation], Colleen Wilcox [Boulder Police Department], Rich Tewes [Pioneer Forensics], and their team - did a great job with the 'new' 4-day workshop format.

There were some very interesting talks - one that stands out for me was Michael Maloney's [no relation!] talk on Combat Crime Scenes in Iraq and how the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service [NCIS] team had to modify their SOPs and equipment to work in a war zone. There were also some pretty choice quotes - Gary Gillespie [Environmental Science & Research, New Zealand] "Why couldn't there have been five?" and LeeAnn Singley's [Grayson Singley Associates] comment about her "clock".

As with previous conferences I had a great opportunity to demonstrate HemoSpat and discuss it with attendees. I'd like to thank all those who took the time to let me give a quick demo for the very positive response. We also met with some licensees and had some great feedback. This may result in a research project with one of our European licensees which would be quite exciting for me.

Special thanks to Sheri Shimamoto [Lakewood, Colorado Police Department] who drove us around the Red Rocks area after the conference was over. Given that we were attending the conference the majority of the time we were in Boulder, it was great to see a tiny bit of the country.

I look forward to seeing everyone again in Portland, Oregon next year!

We've added a section on the website dedicated to bloodstain pattern analysis terminology.

There are several differing terminology and classification systems used in the field of bloodstain pattern analysis. We've chosen to present the IABPA's accepted terminology from their suggested terminology list and course outlines. The images we've included are meant to serve as general examples to exhibit the characteristics of each type of bloodstain pattern. We've also included the alternative terminology for each of our examples.

Whether you're an analyst, a forensic science student, or just someone interested in the field of bloodstain pattern analysis, we hope you'll find this resource useful.

Earlier this month, Kevin and I attended the 2nd European IABPA conference in Zürich, Switzerland.

This conference saw about 140 participants from 23 countries and was quite an interesting one. The main organizers - Sabine Hess and Andreas Schweizer [both of the Wissenschaftlicher Dienst, Zürich, Switzerland] - did a fantastic job of keeping things on track and running smoothly. Silke Brodbeck [Blutspureninstitut, Germany] did a great job organizing the talks.

There were a few interesting talks on crime scene reconstruction, several talks which generated interesting evening discussions, and presentations on the state of bloodstain pattern analysis in France and Canada. The Complex Bloodstain Patterns workshop by Brian Allen [Ontario Police College, Canada] was particularly useful to me as it helped me put our work with HemoSpat into context.

It was great to meet with licensees face-to-face and discuss potential improvements to HemoSpat, and to hear HemoSpat mentioned in several of the talks. We also were fortunate [?] enough to participate as members of the "Vineyard Escape Team" on the night of the banquet. Sadly one member of the team was injured and required surgery to his arm.

After the conference, Kevin and I were fortunate enough to be invited by Martin Eversdijk [Forensic Police Amsterdam-Amstelland, The Netherlands] to tour their new forensics labs in Amsterdam, and by Martin Roos [Netherlands Forensic Institute, The Netherlands] to tour the NFI building in The Hague. These tours were very interesting as we got to see different aspects of forensic services in The Netherlands. [Thanks also to Dennis Boon of the NFI for the tour and to Jos Klemm and Ger Coolen of the Regio Politie Limburg-Zuid for the lift to Maastricht!]

See you in Boulder, Colorado, USA!

Based on feedback from several agencies, we have decided to simplify our pricing structure. We recognize that yearly support fees are often a difficult thing to get into a budget and that this has prevented some institutions from being able to purchase HemoSpat. We have therefore decided to eliminate yearly maintenance and support fees to ensure that these organizations can use the latest tools for bloodstain pattern analysis.

Our new pricing structure may be found on our pricing & ordering page.

FORident Software is pleased to announce the release of HemoSpat v1.1 for Mac OS X 10.4 and Windows 2000/XP. The biggest change in this version is the addition of the 2D Viewer. This gives you top, side, and front views of the scene so you may verify that the virtual strings for each pattern look correct.

There are a few other changes and fixes as well. For a complete list of changes, please see this forum post.

We look forward to working with you!