What do you get if you combine mass spectrometry with 5000 cups of beer, 1000 glasses of wine, and 600 servings of mac ‘n’ cheese?

… A successful ASMS 2016!

ASMS is definitely one of the highlights of our year and here at Waters we are only just recovering from this year’s event and, can you believe it, starting to think about next year already.  It’s funny because whenever I travel to America my children are always slightly suspicious that I might be going to Disneyland without them. However, with our user meeting, sales meetings, 7 a.m. breakfast seminars, customers meetings, demos, supplier collaborations, media interviews, evening workshops, conference programme, and all of the evening hospitality it’s magical — but not in the way they imagine. Who knew it would be possible to combine science, line dancing, poker, discussions, demos, and of course the ion mobility wheel of fortune.

Talking of the hospitality suite, this year our guests enjoyed a taste of the Old West whilst enjoying a beer and dining on good old mac ‘n’ cheese.  We gave away more than 2,500 wooden nickels and over 500 people took part in the line dancing and were the proud recipients of the “kicking up my boots” t-shirts — and I was worried the dance floor would be empty!

Waters sends a dedicated team to ASMS from all over the world, including representatives from the research scientists, applications specialists, engineers, sales and marketing folks, events managers, and of course, product managers like me. The event gives us an opportunity to showcase some of our new products, which this year included:

• Xevo TQ-XS – the most sensitive tandem mass spectrometer yet
• UniSpray – an exciting new ionization technique
• Updates to Vion IMS QTof – to make it applicable to more application areas
• Software improvements – to existing software such as UNIFI and Progenesis
• Introduction of Symphony Software – which enables laboratories to extract the maximum value from LC-MS instrumentation

However, absolutely the best thing about ASMS is the opportunity it provides to meet with you, our customers.  We love to discuss the new research trends but also find out how we can drive future products to help solve those little and not so little problems. Only by listening to you can we innovate to drive technological advancement, bringing the right products to market, and ensure our existing products stay successful by delivering the most relevant updates.

As the product manager for ion mobility mass spectrometry, it is exciting to see how the application of this technology develops each year as it gains wider acceptance. Waters’ efforts to make ion mobility mass spectrometry better suited for routine analysis aligns well with what many of you were asking for. However, for those more interested in research applications, we shared with you the direction our research is heading at our IMS breakfast seminar.  Many asked what we thought about the arrival of a new IMS system. Well, it’s arrival has been rumoured for a long time and the way we see it — the more vendors that invest in IMS-MS, the faster the more people will engage with this fantastic technique. We are confident that with our two systems we are well positioned to deliver ion mobility mass spectrometry for all our customer’s needs!

Whilst we all love hardware, many of this year’s big discussions were about software and data handling. We recognise that this is one of the areas Waters can continue to make a big impact in, and rest assured your feedback continues to drive the directions of future developments.  One thing’s for sure, this feedback will help drive the products of the future, that may be introduced next year, but if you can’t wait until then why not join us at IMSC?