The 12th ETRIA World TRIZ Future Conference in Lisbon was organized jointly by ETRIA, New University of Lisbon, and was sponsored by a number of organizations. The conference was chaired by Prof. Helena Navas and co-chaired by Dr. Cruz Machado from the New University of Lisbon and Dr. Tom Vaneker from ETRIA and the University of Twente.
The event went on October 24-26, 2012. The venue of the conference was at the university campus Caparica, located near the ocean which was really inspiring and provided naturally “fresh” and exciting atmosphere.
The conference gathered about 90 participants from 27 countries. About 60% of the conference participants represented Europe, 30% Asia Pacific, and 10% other parts of the world, including USA and Australia.
The conference featured 4 keynote talks, 2 tutorials, and 60 presentations from 135 authors and co-authors: 28 scientific contributions, 23 practitioner contributions, and 9 short talks. Thanks to the introduction of “short paper” format several years ago, the conference allowed short papers to be presented in 10 minutes that extended a number of live presentations at the event. Other papers were presented in a usual, 30 minutes format.
About 50% of the participants represented scientific and research institutions, and about 50% private and industrial organizations.
A full conference program is available for all ETRIA members in electronic form at the Members Section of the ETRIA website. Paperback 698-page conference proceedings are available from the conference organizers. So far it has been the largest volume of the TRIZ Future conference proceedings.
Social events included the conference dinner, and a dinner with fados, traditional Portuguese style of music and singing. And there was a lot of informal communication among the conference participants to exchange comments, opinions, ideas, and discussing future collaborations.
The official conference closing was followed by the ETRIA Members meeting where a new President of ETRIA was elected: Prof. Dr. Ir. Joost Duflou, from the K.U. Leuven, Belgium. A new ETRIA Board member was apponted, Paul-Armand Verhaegen, from the K.U. Leuven, Belgium. Many thanks were expressed to Dr. Tom Vaneker, who served as ETRIA President in 2009-2012 for his contribution to the development of ETRIA and further promotion of TRIZ.
It was decided to conduct the next edition of the conference will be held in Paris, France in October, 2013.
