I hate to admit, but this year was the first time that I have ever attended the Allen D. Leman Swine Conference.

Though I have worked in Minnesota agricultural media for over the last 25 years, my joining the National Hog Farmer staff allowed me to finally attend this annual conference that brings the best and brightest minds in the swine health world to one stage for a few days.

The Leman Conference has become a melting pot of ideas and research and exchange of information from around the globe. As porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) is one of the hot topics in the swine industry today, of course it was heavily covered at this year's conference. I concentrated on sitting in on the PEDV sesssions of the conference, while sprinkling in a few other topic seminars for good measure. Thank goodness for digital recorders, notebooks and speakers' presentations posted online because sitting through more than 20 speakers' seminars it can be a little overwhelming to say the least.

You will be seeing information that I and National Hog Farmer Editor Lora Berg gathered during this years conference in future issues of the National Hog Farmer as well as our weekly newsletters.

Though overwhelming, there was a lot of great research information shared during the conference, and Lora and I are happy to be able to share some of that with you.