Dear delegate of IAME 2021,
With great pleasure we welcome you to the community of the IAME 2021 Conference in Rotterdam. The Conference theme for this year is 'Accelerating Transitions', a theme that was chosen before COVID-19 and that was chosen in the light of all disrupting challenges that the maritime and port business face, asking for major transitions. These challenges are certainly still there. But now, in this utmost strange and uncertain situation we all live in due to COVID-19, we might have chosen another theme. Thinking about the conference, words as 'Perspectives' and 'Reconnecting' come to mind. Because first and for all our aim with IAME 2021 is to give the IAME community the perspective of truly reconnecting as the basis for further knowlegde exchange and knowledge development. Notwithstanding that we have seen and experienced that we are able to continue our work and our interactions at a distance - IAME 2020 Hongkong was a splendid example of that - it is our believe that the real strength of our community comes forward while coming together for a period of time, having bot formal and informal interactions, sharing experiences, laughing with each other and building friendships.
That is what we are aiming at and that we very much hope we can welcome you to in Rotterdam, coming summer. We are busy planning a highly interesting conference with an attractive program, good content and ample opportunities for interaction between academics and industry. But at the same time we remain flexible as to maximally facilitate 'reconnecting'.
We will keep you posted on all developments in our organizing activities, trusting that we will see each other in good health in 2021 in Rotterdam for another splendid IAME Conference!
On behalf of the whole local organizing team,
Larissa van der Lugt
