Pre-event: March 28, Taipei, Taiwan,

Main-event: April 27-30, Taipei & Hsinchu.

With the aim to enhance IT scientific and technological cooperation between the European Union and Taiwan, the European Commission has initiated the GAPFILL Project. GAPFILL’s main objective is to allow Taiwanese companies and research institutes to be more involved in European R&D Projects funded by the IST Programme of the European Commission (www.cordis.lu).

To give the opportunity to European and Taiwanese organisations interested in participating in the EC IST programme and get more detailed information and support in their efforts to initiate cooperation projects, it has been decided to organise a “2005 Euro-Taiwan IT Cooperation Event” (EuroTaiwan2005) to be held from April 27 to 30, 2005, in Taiwan.
Prior to this main event, it has been considered as relevant to organise an “Information Briefing” (March 28, 8:00-10:30 am, Shangri-La Far Eastern Plaza Hotel, Taipei) to the kind attention of European organisations active in the IT area and based in Taiwan, so that these organisations can receive detailed information in advance and be better prepared to participate in the cooperation event of April.

The Organizing Committee of the 3rd International Conference on Politics and Information Systems: Technologies and Applications (PISTA '05), is pleased to invite you to participate in this international event that will be held on July 14-17, 2005, in Orlando, Florida, USA.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are transforming our societies, therefore papers about research results, solutions and problems of the applications of ICT in Politics and Society are highly encouraged.

We are making emphasis on the area of Ethical, Legal and Societal Challenges of Cyberspace which is related to your specific area.

You are also invited to organize a panel or an invited session. Panel sessions with panelists coming from both: ICT researcher/practitioners and political consultants or politicians are highly encouraged.

Final Camera Ready Manuscript due: May 04th.

You can find more information about Pista '05, in our web site: www.confinf.org

The best 10% of the papers will be published in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (www.iiisci.org), the hard copy version of which will be ready in about one month, and it will be sent to the largest university libraries.

The 2^nd PRIME PhD Summer School on the Challenges for the Research and Innovation Systems of Southern, Central and Eastern European Countries which will be held this year in Budapest, between 4-8 July.

The School is open for PhD students from all over Europe but particularly for students from Central and Eastern Europe and Southern Europe. The school will address the challenges for research, innovation and higher education (HE) policies in old and new members and candidate countries resulting from the enlargement of the European Research Area.

PhD students may submit an extended abstract to iku@uni-corvinus.hu

Specific: The Summer School will be organized around 3 main issues within the national innovation systems framework:

• research development and innovation activities through the internationalisation of firms,
• the transformation of relationships between universities and their environments
• new challenges for regional innovation system in the ERA.

The Innovating Regions in Europe (IRE) network is organising a workshop on 'Innovative business incubators' that aims to present successful incubators that have helped the emergence and survival of high-tech and knowledge-based companies through the provision of a number of innovative services to entrepreneurs and start-ups.

The workshop will take place on 21-22 April 2005 in Krakow and is part of a broader event entitled 'Technological innovation and regional cohesion in a wider Europe' organised in conjunction with ERIK (a network of regions undertaking Regional Programmes of Innovative Actions with a focus on technological innovation) and the Malopolska Regional Government.

From 17th to 22nd April the Secretariat, in conjunction with the Institut für Gestaltungs- und Wirkungforschung - Technical University of Vienna, will be running the 3rd IRC Spring School in Palanga, Lithuania.

The preparation for the yearly edition of our Annual Meeting is still ongoing. A discussion forum on the subject has been opened for those among you who wanted to participate in the drafting of the agenda. Very soon, you will be able to register on-line and to consult the final version of the conference agenda. For the time being, I wanted to inform you on two points that should interest you.

First of all, there is no longer any restriction as to the number of people who can attend the meeting: every single member of the IRC Network who wishes to register can do so!
Second, please note that the last day of the event is an open day, therefore open to an external audience.

The 5th "THE" Coatings and the 2nd "ICMEN" Conferences are going to take place on October 5-7, 2005 in Kassandra-Chalkidiki in Greece, Athos Palace-Pallini Beach Hotel.

In the frame of these conferences, a EUREKA brokerage event, focused on Innovation in Small-Medium Enterprises, is going to be organized.

Please open the attached file to find more information concerning the 1st call for papers of the aforementioned conferences or visit: www.eng.auth.gr

Contents:

• IST Calls Deadlines
• Call 3 Evaluations
• IST Mentor Database:
• IST Mentor+ Databases
• IST Mentor Event
• IST 2004 Conference
• IST 2004 Networking Session
• eChallenges

A one day briefing in Brussels Thursday 15th July 2004

Brussels Thursday 15th July 2004