Why so? I can already hear the cynical ones amongst you say this man is clearly on something?
Well what is the evidence?
SUBOPTIC 2004 goes from strength to strength by John Horne With the launch of the Preliminary Programme for SubOptic 2004, the planning for this event, the principle International Convention for the Subsea Communications industry goes from - Strength to Strength. SubOptic 2004, which will be held in Monaco, from 29 March to 1 April 2004, will
clearly be the “must attend” Convention of our industry. Despite the dramatic downturn the industry has experienced since Kyoto in 2001, it is becoming clear that Monaco will be a success. This will help to give the industry the launchpad occasion it so clearly has been looking for. 11
At the end of August the SubOptic Programme Committee were inundated with well over 200 abstracts for papers to be submitted at Monaco. This number was almost identical with the number submitted for Kyoto, which attracted an audience of nearly 1200 attendees. These abstracts covered a diverse range of topics and came from well over 60 organisations. So there is an industry out there who have survived or are new entrants and are interested in telling their message to others in the community. The Programme Committee after reviewing these abstracts, a task supported by over 60 referees - another sign of the strength of our community - have decided upon a programme of 60 oral presentations in 12 sessions and one longer sessionof 100 poster presentations. These sessions will cover topic areas such as Market Place, Business and Commercial, Network Architecture and Design, Equipment and Component Technologies, Cable Design and Marine Operation, and Network Operation and Service Level. Our aim at the start was to try to strengthen the programme in the Market and Business/ Commercial areas and I am pleased to say that