I attended the 2011 Association for Crime Scene Reconstruction [ACSR] conference in Jacksonville, FL, USA last week. Thanks to Tom Brady, Michael Maloney, and the NCIS team for organizing the conference and especially for giving me the opportunity to present a workshop on HemoSpat and a talk on my cast-off pattern research. Special thanks to Walter for helping me set up and tear down the workshop.

This was my first ACSR conference and I’d like to thank the ACSR members and other attendees for making me feel so welcome. The talk highlights for me at this conference were Digital Mapping of Differential Oxidation Arising From Fingerprint Sweat Deposits presented by Dr. John Bond [Scientific Support Department, Northamptonshire Police, England], Hijacked Naval Vessel Scene Investigation and the Impact of Forensic Reconstruction by E. Toomer, and Wound Mapping: A Reconstruction Technique by Michael Maloney [Bevel, Gardner & Associates].

I also had the opportunity to take a full day Basic Digital Forensic Photography workshop with “Nikon Ron”. I found it really useful to get a breakdown of the basics and to get some hands-on experience through the exercises we completed. Thanks again to Walter for lending me his camera!

If you attended the conference and saw my presentation on Visualization of Linear Cast-off Patterns I’d really appreciate any feedback you may have on either the subject or my presentation delivery.

Next year’s ACSR conference is in Monterey, CA, USA. Should be fun and I’m sure the hospitality suite will be well stocked for this one!

I attended the 2010 IABPA conference in Atlantic City, USA last week. I was fortunate enough to have been invited to give workshops on HemoSpat at the conference. Thanks to Jeff Scozzafava [Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office, New Jersey, USA] and his team for organizing it and for inviting me to give workshops. Special thanks to Kevin Parmelee [Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office, New Jersey, USA] and Anthony Mangione [Hamilton Police Division, New Jersey, USA] for their help setting up and tearing down the workshop.

I think the workshops went fairly well and I enjoyed the interaction with the attendees. Thanks to Brian Allen [Ontario Police College, Canada] who sat in on one of them and helped out answering questions, fostering discussion, and providing some one-on-one tutoring for the other participants. My favourite quote from the workshops: “I’ve never used a computer this long without swearing!”

The most interesting talks for me this time were the double murder case presented by DeWayne Morris of the Illinois State Police, the research presented by Victoria Richards of Cedar Crest College entitled An Investigation of the Effects of Different Laundering Treatments On Commonly Used Fabrics In Regards to Bloodstain Pattern Formation and Analysis, and the two presentations by Mark Reynolds of the Western Australia Police on (1) bloodstain formation and (2) the Australian fabrics course and how different fabrics effect bloodstains.

A lot of case presentations at these conferences are the same one-way dump of information: this is a photo of X, this is what the suspect said, this is what I concluded, etc.. What made DeWayne’s interesting was the way he engaged the audience, challenging them with questions. At best it was a two way exchange with the audience and at worse it was one-and-a-half: he made everyone think. In my opinion, this is a much more useful and effective way to approach this kind of presentation.

It wasn’t all work of course – the conference was held in a gargantuan casino. Some people gambled. Some won. Some lost. And unfortunately on Thursday evening Karaoke with “Sarge” was on the books for some. Land Down Under and Bohemian Rhapsody will never be the same…

Next up: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA in 2011 and Nantes, France in 2012 – see you there!

A couple of weeks ago I attended the third European IABPA conference in Lisbon, Portugal. As with the last conference in Porland, Oregon, it was a busy one for me. Thanks to Lino Henriques [Policia Judiciária, Portugal] and his team for organizing it and inviting me to give workshops.

I had the opportunity to present two 2-hour workshops again at this conference and based on the feedback I received I think they went well. I still have some work to fit it in to the 2 hour slots, but I think it’s getting there. Thanks to all the participants for taking the time to attend and gave me feedback.

The talks which stood out for me – ones I hadn’t seen before – included Michael Taylor’s [Environmental Science and Research, New Zealand] demonstration of high speed video to study backspatter associated with ballistic impacts, Maurice Aalders’s [Academisch Medisch Centrum, The Netherlands] talk on using optical spectroscopic techniques to detect, recognize, and age blood, and of course Karla de Bruin’s [Netherlands Forensic Institute, The Netherlands] talk on how to improve area-of-origin calculations in BackTrack and HemoSpat.

In the first part of Karla’s talk, she showed that the results produced by BackTrack and HemoSpat are equally good [which is a good thing since they’re based on the same mathematics!]. The second part of the talk on stain selection, though, was more interesting. I think her work on stain selection is very important as it has never been studied in depth – the textbooks are all vague on what constitutes good “size, shape, and location” – and it seems to be taught differently depending on who’s doing the teaching. I look forward to seeing her paper on this.

As usual it was great to see old friends and make new ones. Glad to see a couple of students there – one from the UK and one from Poland. Their enthusiasm showed and they added a bit of life to it. I had some interesting dinners and talks over drinks with the ladies from Scotland – who I hear are organizing a whiskey tour followed by a bit of conference – and with some of the Dutch, French, Swedish, Danish, and Swiss participants. How do you tell if green wine is corked, anyways?

Thanks to everyone and I look forward to seeing you in Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA in October 2010, or Nantes, France in 2012!