The Column - July 2006 - (Page 8)

Opinion The Column www.thecolumn.eu.com July 2006 The Greatest Show on Earth? The organizers of the leading chromatography conferences should pool together to present one major spectacular event, says Zosimus. I attended HPLC to find out about key research into stationary Last year I wrote an article about the excessive amount of and bonded phases for HPLC. I will attend the ISC meeting to chromatography conferences. With the conference season hopefully catch the people I miss at HPLC. coming to its peak, I would like to re-address this subject. But wouldn't it be great if I didn't have to do all this At the end of May, we had two major conferences of interest travelling and I could meet and listen to all the key people at to chromatographers on at the same time. There was the 54th one conference. It would really be nice to meet everyone in American Society of Mass Spectrometry ASMS conference one location. In all the conferences I have attended this year which is held in Seattle, Washington, USA and the 29th the opportunities to meet and talk to other chromatographers International Symposium on Capillary Chromatography ISCC is an integral part of the conference. This is what happened at held in Riva del Garda, Italy. Previously such a conflict did not the ISCC conference in Riva del Garda. The venue is good with matter as the mass spectrometrists and the chromatographers plenty of space to meet people inside, a suitable climate to be were very different groups, but today the mass spectrometer is able to meet outside and plenty of bars to meet up when the classed as the ultimate LC/GC detector and the two presentations are over. The same could not be said for the communities are closely related. venues where the MSB and HTC meetings were held. I was lucky enough to be able to attend both meetings by I am not suggesting that Riva should be the venue for a splitting my time into two days in Seattle and then two days in combined chromatography conference, just that we should Riva del Garda. What a striking difference between the two look at the good points such a location gives and work that meetings. ASMS had 6300 people while ISCC only had 550. into the conference planning. I would estimate that a Why is there such a difference in the numbers of people combined annual chromatographic conference that did not attending an MS meeting versus a chromatographic meeting conflict with other meetings that chromatographers may when there are far more users of chromatography than there attend, such as ASMS, would attract over 4000 people. With are of mass specs? good lecture planning, such as no parallel sessions and free Well, I did answer this question before: There are just too time in the afternoon that would allow us, as practising many chromatographic conferences. chromatographers, time to meet one another and also to meet This year we have already had the MSB in Amsterdam, and talk to all the lecturers, this would increase the quality of HTC-9 in York, ISCC in Riva, HPLC in June and ISC, the conference many fold. Copenhagen, Denmark will take place in August. I could go If any conference organizers are reading this column please on. Why oh why can't the organizers of these meetings get get together and consider combining your conferences into together and combine them into one GREAT international one International Conference on Chromatography to be held meeting just like ASMS? once a year in a suitable venue. To all of you that attend the Why am I so keen on this? conferences: tell the organizers what is wrong. Why do you Well, not all of you are as fortunate as myself in being able have to attend so many conferences and sometimes hear the to attend all of the main chromatographic meetings. I attended same lectures again. Tell the organizers to get their act MSB to listen to Milos Novitony; HTC to listen to Jim together and give us one great chromatography conference. Jorgenson; Riva to listen to Mike Ramsey and Milton Lee. Author: Zosimus E-mail: zosimus@thecolumn.eu.com 8 http://www.thecolumn.eu.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Column - July 2006

Contents
News
Opinion
Market Trends and Analysis
Meeting Preview
Meeting Report
Generating High-Purity Water for Endocrine Disrupter Analysis
High Accurate Mass Profiling of Biomarkers
Q&A
Supplies & Services

The Column - July 2006