So, I finally get around to writing about ENC, a couple of weeks late, but this is the sign of the times at Mestrelab, things are just TOO busy. I am writing from Shanghai, so I guess I will update information on this China trip in a couple of weeks, to keep the delay up (Probably from Utah, ASMS).

ENC was a good conference considering the difficulties many people had in getting there. In my case, it was really touch and go. I was sitting in my office in UK on Friday morning and decided just in time (about 10 am) that I was not going to be able to fly from Heathrow to Orlando on Saturday morning as planned. I managed to get on a flight from Madrid to Miami for the following day, and then had to deal with the small matter of getting from Herefordshire to Madrid. I was very lucky. I got an Eurostar ticket 15 minutes before they put up the ‘Sold out’ sign. I then had to get a hire car in Paris, because, what do you know, there was a railway strike in France which made it impossible to go by train to Madrid. With so many Brits trying to get out of UK, there were no hire cars in Paris, but I managed to get one (or rather Cristina managed to find me one) in CDG (this meant having to go the wrong way when I got to Paris, but that was a small problem). So, with all this organized, I drove my car to Heathrow, took the train into London, a taxi to St Pancras and the Eurostar to Paris, a taxi from Paris to CDG, where I collected the hire car, and then drove the car (frustratingly having to go past Paris about 2 hours after arriving at Gare du Nord) to Biarritz, just North of the Spanish border. There I returned the car and took a taxi to San Sebastian airport, just a few kilometers away (car hire companies really need to take a look at One Way fees within the EU, driving the car all the way to Madrid was ridiculously expensive). In San Sebastian (by now 8.00 am on the following day) I took another hire car and drove it to Madrid, where I arrived at the airport 2 hours before my departure time! (the drive in Spain was fairly surreal, surrounded by speeding foreign cars all on their way to Madrid airport, I stopped in a petrol station in Burgos where the attendant, who only spoke Spanish and probably gets 10 local customers on an average Saturday morning, had the shop full with 20 Red Bull craving English, French, Dutch and even Swedish people!). 10 hours flight to Miami, 3 1/2 hours by hire car to Daytona Beach et voilá, after 43 hours, I was in the hotel room, ready for our User Meeting the following day! (Well, I am not sure I was ready for the user meeting, but I was there)

But enough of that, and back to the ENC. I think the conference was a success in very difficult circumstances, and the organizing committee managed to make it all work, using web meeting tools so that presenters from Europe could deliver their talks. The organizers, commanded by Carla Marchioro, really did a fantastic job! (We need to be careful with this, otherwise they may decide doing these things by web meeting in future is good enough, and that really would not do!). The suites felt a bit quieter than normal, and that was a shame, but the atmosphere was still good and for us it was very successful from a business point of view.

Our user meeting was very well attended, 30-40 people, which we were pleased with considering there were other meetings being held simultaneously, many people were still travelling, many did not make it at all and that the Daytona Beach was beckoning outside the window! You can take a look at our presentations here. I was very encouraged by the great interest people were showing in GSD (Global Spectral Deconvolution - take a look at this poster for more info), our new algorithm for fully automatic deconvolution of whole 1D NMR spectra. It is amazing to see how quickly our users are coming up with applications for this algorithm. If you have not tried it yet, I strongly suggest that you do, it is available within the standard Mnova NMR distribution (version 6.1, download a free evaluation here if you don’t have it yet). Stan Sykora’s talk on our (his and Mestrelab’s) efforst in Automatic Structure Verification was also received with great interest (also available on the link above).

We also had a lot of interest on our new Script Market idea, to be launched in the next couple of weeks (more on that on a different post, and announcement duly to come on the Mestrelab web page).

The rest of the week was really busy, full of meetings with customers, other people interested in the software, potential collaborators, etc. The community is really very lively and full of ideas, and we left the conference with many more things to do than when we arrived (just what we needed!)

So, this is all for now. I will try to post some ENC pictures later this week, and give an update on our adventures in China as soon as I can!

Santi Conferences, Uncategorized Automatic Structure Verification, conferences, Daytona ENC, ENC, GSD, Mestrelab User Meeting No comments Leave a comment

So, the ACS Spring meeting is come and gone, and here goes my swift, and time pressed as always, report.
We had a very pleasing exhibition, with over 50 visitors to our booth. So, if you did come over and took a look at the software, thank you! Also, it was great that a number of our users who were giving talks stopped by to tell us about the talks they were giving and in many cases about Mnova-prepared slides they were going to use in the talks.

People continue to be very excited by the concept of seamlessly combining NMR and LC/GC/MS in one application, which is now possible with the Mnova Suite, and of course, everyone was also excited by our latest promotion, which offers Mnova NMR for free to all those  buying the whole Mnova Suite, between now and the end of May. Many people are taking advantage of this promotion so, if you have not yet, what are you waiting for?

Upcoming products: Mnova DB

The planned release of our Spectral Database has also captured people’s imagination. Once again, the feedback we got is that people really like the idea of being able to have both NMR and LC/GC/MS spectra in a database which is totally integrated within the Mnova GUI and which will not only allow users to perform structure and substructure search, but also peak searches (in NMR and LC/GC/MS) and multiplet searches (in NMR) all from within the standard Mnova front end. The concept is very simple and very powerful, and we are very excited by it! (Have a look at the poster we have presented here)

It was great to see that many of our users were excited and liked the idea too, and, of course, we got some very interesting suggestions which will allow us to release an even better application. We went to ACS looking for beta testers for this DB, to start building a list for when the software is ready (very soon) and we came back with a few of them, so that is great news. If any of you reading this would be interested in beta testing the Spectral DB, just leave me a comment here and I will add you to the list and get in touch to organize in due course.

Of course, we also enjoyed San Francisco a lot, as I always do whenever I visit this wonderful city with great weather! I even managed to catch two Golden State Warriors games, much to the amusement of most locals who thought watching the Warriors was a waste of time. I have to report a mixed bag, with an excellent victory against the Grizzlies on Wednesday and a pretty poor defeat against Dallas Mavericks, but in both cases it was fun and good to get the chance to catch a bit of the NBA (The second best basketball league in the World!).

Now, we are back in Europe but, of course, getting ready to leave for the ENC in Florida at the end of the week. We have a great program there, with a user meeting and, of course, demos at the suite all week. If you are going and are interested, check out what we are doing here.

If you are interested but you are not going, this is also no problem, we will be running a few webinars in May with the contents of the user meeting and our presentations. Just leave me a comment here and I will be in touch with more details.

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Wow, I have been looking at my last posting and that was more than 3 months ago! Incredible how time flies when you are enjoying yourself!

Of course, the fact that I have not been posting does not mean I have been idle, on the contrary! But now, getting ready to set off for the ACS Spring, it is certainly overdue time to post again.

So, here it goes. This week, we will be exhibiting at the ACS Spring National Meeting, Moscone Exhibition Center, San Francisco, at booth 624. I am excited about this conference, and not only for the fact that it gives me the opportunity to visit a city I really like (San Francisco is a great city in a beautiful area, with lots to do, excellent restaurants, beautiful parks and the stunning Bay, I could write about it for hours!) and to catch an NBA game (or maybe even 2, Golden State Warriors have 3 home games next week!), but mainly because at this exhibition Mestrelab is showcasing a lot of exciting stuff. For me, the highlights are:

• Version 6.1.0 of Mnova NMR, to be released on Monday, with some really good additional functionality (significant improvements to GSD and to the assignment module, which have been a long time coming)
• Version 6.1.0 of Mnova MS, full of excellent new features, from new vendor formats (Masshunter, JEOL, Analyst, Iontrap) to  manual peak picking and integration to many other exciting things. For this plugin this version really is a qualitative leap.
• We will be previewing our VERY SOON to be released Automatic Structure Verification module, designed to help our users validate their structural conclusions in automation.
• We will also be previewing our VERY SOON to be released Spectral Database, our solution to allow our customers to concentrate and pool their spectral work and knowledge in order to optimize productivity in R&D.

All these are major steps forward for us, and I am really looking forward to see what the market reaction is to them. Of course, should any of you be planning to visit the exhibition, come to find us on booth 624 and we will be delighted to show you our latest goodies! If you are not coming, check out some of our posters from the links on this page.

I promise to follow up with some show photos!

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So, I have been threatening a blog about SMASH for a while, and it is time I finally deliver on that (I think it was Moliere, but don’t quote me as I am not sure, who wrote: ‘All men are equal in their promises, it is their deeds that make them different’).

SMASH (Small Molecules Are Still Hot – more on this conference here) was held for the second time (first time was 2007) at Chamonix, France, a fantastic location at the foot of Mont Blanc. I am going to focus on what we did there, so for more information about the conference, visit the SMASH web page or read Stan’s post about SMASH on his blog entry of 4th October.

Mestrelab and Modgraph shared a User Meeting and a stand during the conference, and we were strongly represented there, with 9 people in total. The User Meeting was well attended, with about 40 people making an appearance (although not all braved the whole program ;-). We took the opportunity, both there and during the conference at the stand, to present many of the new goodies in our software, as well as to discuss some of our plans for the immediate future. These were some of the topics which proved most attractive/interesting to attendees, both from industry and academia:

• Our newly released MS plugin for Mnova – many people bought into the idea of being able to handle both NMR and LC/GC/MS in the same platform. I will not expand, as I have written quite a bit on this already in previous posts.
• The new functionalities in Mnova NMR, particularly the Data Analysis module, with its applications for Reaction Monitoring (more on that another day), DOSY, relaxation, etc.; GSD, and its many applications for qNMR and spectral analysis; the new Line Fitting module; and many others. You can go here to find out more or read some of the articles in Carlos’s blog.
• Our plans for a spectral DataBase (more on that later)
• Our plans for an Automatic Structure Verification module (again, I will post on that later, it is still a bit premature, but watch this space, as they say!)
• The significant improvements in NMR prediction announced by Modgraph, which are incorporated in their NMRPredict and our NMRPredict Desktop products.

So, a big thank you goes to all those who spent time with us during the conference, either at the User Meeting or at the stand. We do appreciate the continuous support.

Chamonix, what a place!

Of course, if you did not, that is understandable, with all the attractions of such a fantastic location luring you away from the conference venue. How could we compete with Aiguille du Midi, Mer de Glace, etc.? If you have never been to Chamonix, make sure you make it there. Maybe for SMASH 2011?

The photographs in the article fail to show how spectacular this place is (not helped by some of them having Pablo or myself spoiling them!). What you can see behind Pablo is indeed the Mont Blanc (at 4,810m, the top of the traditional Europe – I am qualifying it because I don’t want to get into new geography discussions about whether the Caucasus is in Europe or not, it is already quite a while since I went to school and you cannot teach an old dog new tricks!) taken from Aiguille du Midi (3,842m easily reached by cable car, don’t think this kid climbed up there! – of course, I did climb on foot to where my photo was taken, in Chamonix town centre BTW, it is well worth it looking at the exhibition of how this place was built, wonder what the Health and Safety executive would have made about that). The landscape shows a view of the Alps from the Aiguille, with the highest in the photo being, I believe, Monte Rosa, the second highest peak in the Alps at 4,634 m. If you don’t know why it is called Monte Rosa, you should look at it from Milano on a winter morning!

Can I try the new functionality or find out more about your plans or get the User Meeting presentations?

Of course you can! Contact us with any questions you have, get the User Meeting presentations here, or download Mnova NMR and MS here.

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So, I guess, in these dates, we should start with a post about ACS and ENC, both conferences we have been to in the last 2-3 weeks.

However, I did not go to ACS, so I am not going to post about that, I will leave that to Chen if he wants to write something. As for ENC, as ever, this was a great conference, at a great location (Asilomar, if you haven’t made it there yet, make sure you do, what a place!), with a great scientific program (take a look at it here) and a fantastic ‘non-scientific’ program, as ever. For our team there (Carlos Cobas, Chen Peng, Stan Sykora and myself), there were a few highlights:

Firstly, on Sunday 29th of March, our Mestrelab User Meeting, held in the afternoon at Viewpoint East. The User Meeting was attended by around 30 people (you know who you are and many thanks for supporting us), which was our room capacity, and included sessions on some of the latest functionalities in Mnova 5.3.1, some works in progress (GSD, automatic verification, etc., more on these later), NMR prediction (related to our NMRPredict Desktop plugin), our newly announced LC/GC/MS plugin for Mnova and Mspin. As well as thanking the attendees, I want to take the chance to thank our presenters (Stan Sykora - eByte, Jeff Seymour - Modgraph Consultants, Chen Peng - Mestrelab, David Stranz - Sierra Analytics, Armando Navarro - University of Vigo). It is always very difficult to trade the golf course, beaches and great walks of Pacific Grove for a software presentation, so we were delighted to see anybody at all there (although we had a sneaky hope nobody would make it and we could therefore go to the beach or the golf course ourselves!). If you would like to download the presentations, follow this link.

Even before that, Yosemite! Carlos and I had a great day there on Saturday 28th. I had never really stopped to think long enough about the significance of the initiatives by the US governments of Andrew Jackson (Hot Springs, AK) and Abraham Lincoln (Yosemite, in fact, amongst others) in the XIX century to protect areas of outstanding natural beauty and turn them into the first national parks. Looking out onto Yosemite Valley, with Merced River at the bottom and Half Dome and El Gran Capitan in front of us, you really have to feel grateful for the vision of these governments who decided ‘average man’ should not be allowed to run amok in these areas, and that they should be protected from normal exploitation.

Within the scientific program of ENC, a couple of highlights, at least for me, were the sessions on past and future. They were very full, and it was very hot perched at the very back of the Auditorium, but they were well worth it, both for the insights into what NMR and the ENC used to be like, and into what NMR (and by extension the ENC) may be like in future. It is always dangerous and troublesome to commit to highlighting some speakers, so I will ;-). Ray Freeman and Richard Ernst were my favourites, always a great pleasure to hear them talk and to be privy to their knowledge and experience, but also their wit (Lord Chesterfield said, and I quote: ‘ Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it; most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves’. Well, I love it, specially in others - although I don’t mind mine when it appears in rare occasions!). Many others were also great, and both sessions were hugely interesting. Congratulations to the ENC Committee for putting these two sessions together.

Of course, the hospitality suites, with their well developed entertainment themes: Norell and its live music, always excellent, JEOL with the sushi and sake, Varian, Bruker and, as always, that last port for strugglers, Isotec/Spectra Stable Isotopes and their excellent hospitality at Sanderling, were some of us congregated at the end of the night (once again, you know who you are, but don’t worry, I am not mentioning any names. Hope to see you there again next time!). And if you did not get to Sanderling, you haven’t fully been to ENC, but there is always the next ENC, we expect to see you there!. There were also a few ‘after hours’ parties, which kept some of us going well into the morning, another excellent ENC tradition! No details, I am afraid, I am not brave enough!

Still on the subject of hospitality suites, we were at Curlew this year (kind of promotion from Forest Lodge), and we had excellent traffic, I reckon that over 250 people came through the suite during the conference, thank you very much to all of you! In some ways, we were not ready for the location or for the traffic, so we did not have any interesting entertainment, apart from, of course, us and our software, Mnova, which we were heavily demoing all week, and which is not only beautiful but also entertaining in its own right ;-). If you have not seen Mnova yet, you can download it from here. For next time, we are open to any ideas on what we should be doing with the suite, if you have something in mind, which is feasible and not too indecorous, let us know by posting a comment here!

Another highlight was the meeting of the Overseas Chinese Magnetic Resonance Association, held at Surf & Sand. At this event, the new web site for the association was presented. This website is sponsored by Mestrelab, and has been developed by the guys in our company, so this was a subject close to our heart and we were very pleased to see that the meeting was very well attended. If you would like to know more about OCMRA, visit their website here.

So, another fantastic ENC. The Mestrelab team had a great time there, and we want to thank the organizers, our users, the attendees in general, the NMR community and presidents Jackson and Lincoln for making it such a great week!

You can see a few photos of the team working???? at the suite from the Mestrelab team at ENC gallery

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Welcome to the new Mestrelab blog! I feel that, before getting on with posting, I should try to explain why we have decided to create a new blog and make the commitment of maintaining it from here on.

Our motivation is not that we feel there are not enough blogs yet on the internet, nor that we had nothing to do over the Easter weekend. Rather, this blog is being born because of the many questions we are getting from our users, on our travels, about Mestrelab, about how the company is doing, about what we are working on, about our commercial activities, and about many other things which we expected to only be of interest to us. There are many ways to answer these questions, and a blog is a good way to do it, not only for those asking, but also for those who may want to know or be interested, but never get the chance to ask.

Of course, we already have Carlos’s blog, but that is a more scientific blog, created to discuss aspects of Analytical Chemistry which are of interest to Carlos and to our users, and we want to keep it that way, to avoid wasting anybody’s time. The Mestrelab blog is different. It is not scientific, but more lighthearted, somewhere to visit on a break from science, research or, god forbid, corporate meetings. It is not a one person blog, but rather a vehicle for anyone in Mestrelab to share their thoughts, for us to report on company progress and ideas, to tell stories about our trips and conferences, and to highlight aspects of our products which we may think our users may be interested in reading, or hearing, about. Also, the blog should be a good way to have an open dialog with our users, to bounce off some of our ideas before we get on with implementing them, and to gather feedback, and we hope that many of our users will contribute with comments to keep it alive and, more importantly, make it interesting (with the exception of Shakespeare, Brecht, Joyce and a few others, dialogues are generally a lot more interesting than monologues).

So, if you have something to tell or ask Mestrelab, in public, and you cannot wait for the next conference, here we are! We look forward to hearing from you.

Santi Uncategorized conferences, events, Introduction No comments Leave a comment