The reason that we go to conferences is to sell mass spectrometers. I will not go into the confidential nature of sales, but the overall exhibit setup and utility is relevant, so deserves a mention.
Firstly, I dropped the ball a little bit on the booth organization. We should have had more chairs, more stuffed rocks, and a stand for projecting. We generally get an internet link back to a SHRIMP from the booth, and let people either watch the instrument take data automatically, or pause the autoanalysis to have a manual play. This worked to an extent, but the setup in the booth space could have been better.
The exhibition was downstairs with the posters and the lunch room. However, there were no oral sessions on the ground level, and there was no reason for people to transit through the area. In addition, the number of exhibitioners was fairly small, and they were all fairly hard core: instrument manufacturers like us, some (but not all) of the major publishers, and the organizations that sponsored the event. Traffic through the exhibition was slow in the morning and while talks were on, but we were the thoroughfare for the in-house lunch, and were we not far from the beer during the poster sessions, so lunchtime and evening were pretty busy.
The internet connection was very unreliable, and tended to drop out five minutes before an important customer walked up to the booth, but overall it was a much more positive meeting than GSA last year.
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