Dear Otto, Currently I am in Peru for attending CLEI 2004. Here I will meet the responsible of WCC 2006 and also the CLEI responsible people. I will talk with all of them in order to see the possibilities for 2005 and 2006. However I will not take any commitment before discussing the alternatives in Bangkok. As soon as I will be back from Peru I will send a message explaining these alternatives and proposal from South American people. Best regards Ramon
Dear all,
I was away from my email for a few days and when coming back I found a lot of messages concerning WCC 2004 in Toulouse (and WCC 2006 in Santiago de Chile); in particular I have to thank Volker Tschammer for his clear report concerning the I3E disaster in Toulouse and its consequences.
I had the opportunity to meet Klaus Brunnstein last week (he delivered an excellent keynote talk at the "IT and sports" in Cologne).
He told me:
that indeed the financial loss of WCC 2004 is 220.000 EURO and this happened despite a really excellent preparation and organisation (!)
that WCC 2006 first started with an absolutely unrealistic assumption of getting 2.000 paying participants (remember that the loss of Toulouse is due to the fact that they expected 1.400 participants but got only 1.100)
that the Chilean organisors now base there assumptions on 600 participants (real paying participants since if you call together all the students from Chile and if you give them free entrance you might artificially reach 2.000 people but your budget will collapse). The hope is that by having more realistic figures and by organising the congress in university rooms instead of expensive conference centers the risk of another financial disaster will be limited
and (last but not least) that the organisors are desperately seeking the support of TC6 for organising workshops, tutorials, wirking conferences etc. (!!!). We will have to say yes or no rather soon.
Now what to do? All comments received until now were mildly or rather strong against any participation of TC6 at IFIP WCC's irrespective of the location. On the other hand we are in a way obliged to do something more in South America. We know that Ramon does a lot of things there but this is only supported by a few TC6 members. We will have to discuss in Bangkok whether we may extend those activities in 2006 and how to concentrate them in Chile. I don't see too much enthousiasm for organising one of our regular conferences at that occasion but of course proposals would be welcome. We could do a series of tutorials, we might try to organise a TC6 meeting there (but if so then only in conjunction with a TC6 event), ....
I invite all of you for comments. And of copurse this request for comments is explicitly directed to our new delegate from Chile.
Best regards Otto
p.s.: Another problem for WCC 2006 is that Basie van Solms (IFIP vice president) who was designated as congress chair will not be able to do the job due to serious health problems. No successor has been nominated thus far.
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========================================================================= Ramon Puigjaner Universitat de les Illes Balears Departament de Ciencies Matematiques i Informatica 07122 PALMA (Spain) Phone: +34-971173288 Fax: +34-971173003 e-mail: putxi@uib.es =========================================================================