Celje, 30.4.2021
Dear ESTES Virtual Week 2021 participants,
Esteemed colleagues,
Thanks for participating! We all participated in a big experiment proving how to carry out an online conference instead of a live congress. We were facing with numerous technical and organizational challenges but my personal opinion is that we were successful.
The ESTES Virtual Week 2021 was a final rehearsal for a live congress presumed to be last year in Oslo and this year in Ljubljana respectively. Both events have to be postponed to the near future. I hope sincerely that the corona virus will allow us to make alive meeting in spring 2022 in Oslo and in the spring 2023 in Ljubljana, where I come from.
I express my deep gratitude to the EB, EAC, PCO Conventus, especially to the general secretary ESTES Klaus Wendt, to president of EAC Roberto Faccincani, to the organizing secretary ESTES Manuela Walland, to Juliane Schoenau from Conventus, but above all and particularly to Tina Gaarder. She should have been our host in Oslo last year, we were slowly roasted when pandemic surprised the world and had to decide to postpone the congress to 2022. I really wish her and her colleagues in the Norwegian organizing committee to be successful next year. Today I should deliver a bunch of flowers but I cannot do this online. I can only say: »Tina, thank you, you did a great job!«
In this moment I finished one year post of president ESTES and became an »immediate past president ESTES«, I am giving the steering wheel of ESTES to the hands of the new president Inger Schipper.
Inger, the floor is yours. Good luck!
Radko Komadina