OurCon 2012 conference on Imaging Mass Spectrometry

On big conferences devoted to mass spectrometry as ASMS (American Society for Mass Spectrometry) conference or IMSC (International Conference on Mass Spectrometry) participate typically thousands of scientists. OurCon 2012 was in that way a perfectly family-size conference with only about 150 participants.

I think it was fairly the lower number of scientists and closeness of them, which created the kind conference atmosphere. The participants knew each other very well not only in the terms of their scientific work, but often were also very good friends.

When I was heading to OurCon, I knew only the colleagues from AMOLF, but was pretty sure I would get acquainted with couple of new people eventually. But! I would have never imagined I would leave Spain with a bunch of new science-related friends and many other working contacts.

Honestly, they were really demanding three days. However, I enjoyed them so very much. Not just the imaging related lectures, which gave me a "DataCube" of basic and more advanced knowledge on the technique, but also all the conversations I had during the coffee breaks, lunches and long long evenings (and nights) after the dinners. :-)

So many things had happened there, that sort of changed my way of thinking about science. And I am sure you will read about them soon on this website. I left Spain with head full of nice friendly experiences, lot of knew information about mass spectrometry imaging and feeling, that I love science more than ever before.

Most of all I really fancied the challenges to unit the mass spectrometry imaging scientists together. I definitely support the idea of unifying the protocols and data processing, so we all can share results, that were evaluated in the same manner. The program of COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Mass Spectrometry Imaging: New Tools for Healthcare Research, should help a lot.