President Report

I trust everyone did “survive” and are all now “thriving” following what was a great week in Dubrovnik. We were certainly blessed with the weather and a truly beautiful location.

I thought I would just share a few interesting post conference facts:

• 702 attendees (Most ever)
• 33 sponsors (Most ever)
• Money raised for the charity €25,000+
• Estimated over 5,000 meetings took place between members !!!
• Over 40 prepared sessions and events available ( Most ever)
• 85 Speakers participated (Most ever)
• Over 3500 meals prepared for attendees....
• 55  took part in the inaugural Friday run
• One of the biggest weekly bar takings ever for the Hotel....😀

It won’t come as surprise that to organize and co-ordinate such an event, there has to be many dedicated and amazing people involved and focused on the smallest of details and this where we are so fortunate with our brilliant EuRA team. I would also personally like to thank Peggy Love for her constant drive and enthusiasm in pulling together many of the sessions, along with my fellow board members who all took key roles this year in presenting or moderating sessions. A particular thanks goes to Stuart McAlister our

Vice President, for his humorous conference opening session, maybe a career in stand up awaits you Stuart.. !! Also huge thanks to our “men and ladies in black”.. that is our AV, sound and photo team.

For those who were at the opening session, they would have heard that we will be re-branding our non-European conferences, eg Goa coming up in November. We have taken this decision so we can reflect better the global nature of our membership. Rather than trying to be clever about this, we thought that simplicity is often the best solution, so you will start to see the new EuRA- Global logo appearing on some of our events.

Staying with the global theme, plans are in full swing for our November conference in Goa and more details on conference sessions and speakers will be announced shortly.

Jumping back to Dubrovnik, I would also like to congratulate our award winners, Patrick Oman and Ken Barron who both received the EuRA Outstanding Contribution to Relocation Award.  Charlie and Vanessa McCrow and Walt Woolf and Linda Fries were the inaugural recipients of the EuRA Award for Outstanding Partnership. All these folks as well as having built amazing businesses, have been great supporters of EuRA and we thank them  for that.

Finally and most importantly I wanted to thank all of you that attended the conference, as you are  the ones that put real energy and fun into the event. I sincerely hope you all reaped some business benefits, along with the chance to make new friends and meet old ones. I know many of our friends and colleagues weren’t able to join this year, but we all hope to see them and everyone else in Munich next year.

I wish you all a profitable and happy rest of the year.

Ps. I couldn’t sign off without saying on behalf of us all, a massive THANK YOU to Tad and Dom, for everything you have done for the past 20 years. Our great organization wouldn’t be great without your vision, constant focus and drive to always add more value to our members. We all look forward to the next 20 years with you.