55th SPICE Meeting 87th ICECE Work Group event

Tallinn, Estonia
9 – 11 Jun 2002

The European Conference of IASP hosted by Luis Sanz and Raivo Tamkivi brought together science park and business incubation experts from many countries. In an inspiring atmosphere full of energy and drive important topics were discussed like "Corporate Governance" with presentations by Piero Formica, Ron Kysiak and Oli Niemi. Charlotte Munck af Rosenschöld (Malmö Science Park, Sweden) was highly appreciated for her long-time service in IASP bodies, including the European Presidency 1998-2002. Lauri Ylöstalo, Otaniemi Science Park, Finland was elected new European IASP President.At the SPICE Meeting, chaired by Janis Stabulnieks, Mary Spaeth prepared ground for discussion by summarizing the results of the EU Benchmark Study. The very active discussion of this topic showed that members and friends give great importance to this topic. Besides the SPICE Members already mentioned Jan Naxera, Harry Nicholls and Leonids Ribickis contributed to this event. With this discussion, which due to the lack of time could not be brought to an end, the cornerstone was laid for a continuous process leading to the 6th International Summit of Associations in November 2002.

Expectedly the social component of these events played an important role in the networking part. The Reception hosted by the City of Tallinn in the ancient Town Hall combined with the celebration of then Old Town Days festival all around the Hall will remain in the participants memories as well as the conference farewell session on the 24th floor of the Radisson SAS Hotel with its views.

Technically interesting aspect was perhaps that the participants with laptops had free wireless Internet access in the whole conference area.

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