Chromatography Forum

At Pittcon last week I registered for a seminar by Waters on HILIC. Obviously, a topic of great interest for me and an opportunity for an interesting lecture and also some discussion. Surprisingly, I was asked to leave before the seminar.

Is this the typical treatment of an European guest visiting Pittcon and the USA?

We are happy to welcome everybody to our presentations at HPLC 2005 in Stockholm, June 26-30, http://www.hplc2005.com/

This is more of a style of a conference in the US than a general feature. If I would have been there, I would have given you the opportunity to come and listen.

In Europe, I can go to the booth of a competitor and discuss the features of a new product with him. In the US, I am most often thrown out of the booth. Politely, of course.

I appologize for the US style.

Einar,

I feel sorry for you. I think that this is not smart and violates good spirit of science. You can find 1000 other ways to get content of the seminar (or any other information). I just wondering if Waters is this particular case is so affraid of competition from your company that they go to such extreme. So if you are working for Ford or Nissan, Toyota people will throuw you out of autoshow?

Typical of Waters-but you probably missed very little!

This is more of a style of a conference in the US than a general feature. If I would have been there, I would have given you the opportunity to come and listen.

In Europe, I can go to the booth of a competitor and discuss the features of a new product with him. In the US, I am most often thrown out of the booth. Politely, of course.

I appologize for the US style.

That style may not be limitated to US. I got to sit and to listen to certain seminar in Asia last week, but to my great surprise after the seminar I was stopped and required to return all the literatures distributed to me because they thought I was competitor. I have to confess I felt embarrassed that time. I was also surprised as I didn't expect Waters would treat us as competitor.

Morever, I had to say the information I got from that seminar is actually very fundamental and general, nothing detailed in the product technology and very few applications. Even those literatures and brochures they took back I can easily download from Waters web site. I don't know what they were worrying about.

Some other things more than this make me feel, little by little, the aura on the name Waters is fading in my heart. I feel a little sad actually. That is also a lesson for me that to be reasonable and open-minded always.