Soon after ACS (read my post about ACS here), I set off for the IMSC 2009, in Bremen, Germany, were Mestrelab had a booth in what is still a very new market for us, LC/GC/MS.

I have to admit that I was surprised by many things in Bremen:

• The excellent park the city has (more on that later)
• The beautiful historic city (more on that later)
• The excellently organized conference and adjacent exhibition
• The popularity of our booth, with many more visitors than I initially expected.

I will start with the last one. It is clear that the LC/GC/MS market is at a juncture which I think the NMR market has already been at. Too many vendors with too many software data systems for the average user, and a significant interest in a transparent visualization / post processing / analysis tool for LC/GC/MS data. It seems that Analytical Departments are currently split down the middle, with many quite happy to give LCMS or GCMS spectra to their chemists in PDF or even hard copy, and many expecting to give them more, and expecting more from them. For the latter, of course, the Mnova MS plugin could be the ideal tool. Over the next day or two, I will blog more on the arguments for this second approach.

In any case, people from this second group were out in force at IMSC. I had more than 70 visitors to the booth who were looking for Mnova MS demos, and some of them have already purchased the plugin, taking advantage of the very attractive promotions currently available for early adopters of the plugin (you can still benefit from them).

As for IMSC2009, it was attended by circa 2,000 people, and both the exhibition and the conference were excellently organized in an excellent venue, the Bremen Exhibition Centre and Hotel Maritim.

A word about Bremen

Finally, a word about Bremen. I was very pleasantly surprised by this Hanseatic city. It has a very diverse and interesting history, spanning 1,200 years, a beautiful historic old city including 2 World Heritage monuments (the Weser-Renaissance Town Hall and the large and impressive statue of Roland in the Market Square), a wonderfully quaint old quarter called the Schnoor, with improbably narrow streets peppered with incredibly attractive restaurants and bars, a rejuvenated river side excellent for walking, the spectacular Market Square itself and the notorious statue of the Town Musicians, of Grimm Brothers fame. It also has many museums (I did not get to any of them) including what I believe to be a state of the art Science Museum. And, for runners, it has just the most incredible park, the Burgerpark, in the centre of the city, with 200has of park and woodland, an inner lake with beaches, a 7-8 km perimeter just on the park area, perfect for a run before or after the Conference, and many beautiful XIX villas and house in the heart of the park, with amazing views (don’t miss the Park Hotel and the Meierei if you visit). I was even lucky enough to run past a Shakespeare representation on the park on the first afternoon there (in German, I am afraid, I wonder what the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon would have made of that). The nightlife was also much better than anticipated, and we did put it to the test, but, of course, I really should not blog about that…

Dani Uncategorized Leave a comment