Helen Susan MacLean Odense University helen@mip.ou.dk

Saturday 27 June 1998 - the day before the first i3 Annual Conference was to begin. My feeling of excitement was mixed with fervent hopes - that everyone would be able to find their way to the Nyborg Strand, and that when they were all safely inside, the hotel would not be suddenly engulfed by a tsunami, that the poster area was big enough, that the Danish seafood would pass muster with everyone - particularly the Italians - and most of all, that it might, please, stop raining for part of the Conference at least. Where was the blistering tropical heat of this time last summer? I had promised the southern sceptics that the water would be at least 20 degrees C by the end of June.
I decided I had better go down to the Nyborg Strand to check out our other claims.
Yes, the setting was tranquil - the woods, the beach, the coastline with the view of the new bridge. The sea water was certainly refreshing. The hotel was ready, prepared, reassuringly spacious. I walked in. It was quiet and deserted. Suppose no one turned up? I ventured into the poster area. There, quite at home, was the ZKM group, setting up their poster exhibition, working quickly and efficiently with huge sheets of colour-printed canvas. The i3 vanguard had arrived. The i3 Annual Conference was happening after all, here in the Nyborg Strand.
My first impression was of all the sheer effort and hard work that i3 members had put in. Everyone turned up in force - 163 conference participants from all over Europe had booked into the Nyborg Strand and the Hotel Hesselet was coping with the overflow - and each project had brought with them, it seemed to me (used as I was to the kind of conference where people just get up and read papers) enough technical equipment to fill a container ship. The next three days were packed with poster exhibitions, presentations, thematic sessions, questions, answers, plenary sessions, excellent discussions, good food (yes, the Italians loved it) and after-dinner social gatherings on the beach presided over by Erik Granum from his seaview balcony vantage point.
The packed programme left everyone exhausted at the end of each day, but this seemed only to bring out the sense of humour and fun in Conference participants - and the salt sea air encouraged a certain amount of romantic mythmaking. Kick-started by a certain convergence of nomenclature and fuelled by i3 optimism, a rumour had run round the Conference that the Helen's Angels prize was to be the handsome motorbike on display in the hotel foyer, on which, after the Conference, the winners would ride off into the sunrise over the newly-opened Storebælt road bridge. The bridge itself, of course, immediately became the adopted symbol of the Conference, and prize-winners carried off bits of it in the shape of shiny metal bridge-bolts, which now sit as trophies on computer tables in several i3 countries, outranking all other executive toys.
The overwhelming impression was that of a close community of good friends. As one reviewer said afterwards, it was incredible that the i3 projects were "all here in one place". There was a spirit of goodwill, co-operation, curiosity and enthusiasm. Panu Korhonen seemed to speak for everyone when he said at the farewell reception that the Conference had been a good 'Version 1'.
The next i3 Annual Conference will take place in September 1999. This Conference will be opened up to a much wider international audience. The Conference Chair is Manfred Tscheligi of MAYPOLE. He has already started making preparations, and has issued a call to members for proposals for a conference site. He would be glad to have any other ideas and contributions which would help him in planning OUR event next year. Send your ideas to him at mt@ani.univie.ac.at

© 1998,1999,2000 i3net	-- Search i3net --	About the i3net web pages
Revised: 13 January, 1999.		Mail to webmaster@i3net.org