I've just booked our tickets for IDS 2011 and am secretly quite excited. Admittedly the experience has changed since I first started going all those years ago, it used to be a 3 day knees up, with dinner followed by drinking late into the night with our colleagues and suppliers, many of who had come from the US, Italy and Spain. IDS is usually the only time we get to see them face-to-face so it's always good fun.

It's a more sedate affair these days. People haven't the time or money to "go for it" in quite the same way and having sampled the delights of the city of Cologne year after year, we now just tend to go for a day.

So the social aspect isn't why I'm excited this year. There's always the hope that you'll discover 'the next big thing' to introduce to the UK market. And we've had some great successes in the past, we were the first company to introduce non-precious bonding alloy for crowns & bridges to the UK and then later, acetal resin for the fabrication of tooth-coloured clasps, techniques which are now standard practice in the UK. In the last few years we have introduced more and more high quality flexible denture materials as well as the revolutionary range of Dynamic Abutments, which are compatible with all major dental implant systems. We made all these discoveries at the IDS exhibition in Cologne.

Of course, we always walk amongst the larger manufacturers' stands but the real gems are to be found on the smaller, top floor stands. Some of the best dental inventors are dental technicians, who've been getting on with their job quietly for 40 years or so, in their one-man labs or the shed at the bottom of the garden, when suddenly, "bingo!" they think of an idea which will solve that problem that's been bugging them for so many years. These guys don't have the resources of the larger manufacturers to get out their and promote themselves so it's always satisfying to find them hidden away in the furtherst corner of IDS.

Is there anything you would like us to look for in particular? Do you have a problem which needs solving? Any new technology that you are interested in? Please let us know by clicking on the Write Review button below and list your requests there. We will then let you know what we found on our return.