Abstract

During the second half of 2017, my elderly mother had three hospitalizations due to unexpected health problems. Thankfully, she seems to have improved. While in the hospital, I studied a couple of paintings on the walls while waiting as hospital staff preformed tasks. Aside from providing decoration and a pleasant distraction for visitors and patients with more serious matters on their minds, the paintings raised an interesting question: “What about the picture draws one’s attention?”

Well, the same question can be asked in the context of high-purity and industrial water treatment. As we move into the New Year, this is the kind of question being considered by the UPW Team for both our publication website, as well as our conferences.

For www.ultrapurewater.com, we are thinking about new types of entry points to draw interest from our readers. We are happy that our statistics show that we have a healthy number of unique visits, and that the length of time for reader visits is higher than the average website.

But, we do not intend to stand pat. In 2017, we want to see our active readership increase. Not simply to achieve growth for growth’s sake, but because we are offering reasons to make our website worthwhile.

First, a disclaimer—since 1984, it has always been our desire to offer worthwhile content that is presented in a manner that is useful, educational, technical, and non-commercial. We have always sought technical articles that touch on subjects related to high-purity and industrial water to help our readers learn so they can better perform their tasks—whether at an enduser facility, or as a consultant, service company, or vendor.

But, one cannot be satisfied. It is important to always be expanding the universe, and our UPW Team is working with that aim in mind. At www.ultrapurewater.com, we have sought to move our technical article coverage into new areas that previously received less attention. Examples would include water for food and beverage and mining applications, wastewater reuse. We had more technical coverage in those areas during the second half of 2016.

On the water reuse side, we understand that in today’s world that sustainability is a key subject. Industrial plants must share sometimes limited water resources and in so doing must find ways to reuse their allotted water.

This month, we have begun our new “Water Forum” column that will feature commentary by water industry leaders and those with a good idea they would like to share. In January, the first Water Forum is by Dr. Craig Bartels, who examines the future needs in reverse osmosis technology. Our goal with this new forum is to examine timely topics relevant to the high-purity and industrial water treatment. Should you have an interest, please contact me at +303-745-3890 or mhenley@globalwaterintel.com.

Going forward, we also want to see our technical content scratch the areas of our audience’s interests by providing technical papers and notes that address cutting edge topics and research developments, as well as articles that address the basics of water treatment.

We are not standing still on the conference side either. After our successful 2016 UPW Micro and UPW Pharma conferences, my colleagues charged with conference organization are looking at ways to add further value to our 2017 meetings that will be conducted in Portland, OR, May 31-June 1. We are considering ways to add training sessions to the conferences to meet the needs of plant engineers and technicians whose current need is simply a better understanding of how to successfully operate a water system. In our discussions with our co-organizers, we have also had discussions about how to enhance our Round Table sessions, which were first introduced in our 2014 UPW Micro conference in Phoenix. Likewise, we are looking at ways to make our technical tracks more beneficial. One practical step we took occurred in 2015 when we added Track 2 to UPW Micro, which covers process waters and wastewater topics.

Nor, should we ignore the importance of our conference sponsors. Our team is actively working to ensure that our exhibits provide the best opportunity network with fellow delegates and to meet and learn from our sponsors that are key suppliers to the microelectronics and life sciences industries.

We invite you to visit our conference websites: www.ultrapurewatermicro.com and www.ultrapurewaterpharma.com for more details about the upcoming conferences. On each website, you will also find information about our “Call for Papers”, and we encourage those active in the life sciences or microelectronics industries to submit an abstract. Guidelines are available at each website.

In closing, our bottom-line message is that we want to provide multiple points of entry that serve your needs as we continue to provide for the needs of the high-purity and industrial water and wastewater community. We wish each of you a Wonderful 2017!

—Mike Henley

Log in or Subscribe to Access the Full Article

To read or download full-length articles you need a subscription to Ultrapure. Please log in or subscribe below.