Open Forum, the pan-European event scheduled for the week beginning November 23 in Utrecht, Netherlands, is building momentum, according to UniForum chairman Ed Borkovsky and Europen executive director Pierre Scheuer, currently engaged on a European tour to promote the event. Open Forum is to be a conference-led event with both technical and business streams, designed to lead up to 1993 and the establishment of the single European market – and the Commission of the European Communities has been closely involved in its organisation, says Borkovsky, promising more details in the future. The keynote speeches will include a high-level official from the Commission, currently being finalised, along with Nobel prize winner Dr Arno Penzais, vice-president of research at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Doug Michels of the Santa Cruz Operation Inc, Roel Pieper of Unix System Laboratories Inc and Charles Reilly, vice-president for operations at the Open Software Foundation. Unlike the many country-specific shows such as those held in France, Germany, Italy and the UK, Open Forum really is after a Europe-wide audience, and hopes the quality of the conference, from both a business and a technical point of view, will attract a wide geographical spread of attendees. The organisers are also working to attract attendees from other related events, such as the Esprit conference in nearby Brussels, to spend a day at the conference. Europen – which is making a gradual transition from the academic roots of its European Unix User Group days to a more commercially-led organisation, has a long-established record of technical conferences through Europe, while UniForum’s last US show and conference attracted 35,000 attendees. Europen has 6,000 or so members, and UniForum has 7,000. Tutorials make up the first two days, followed by the main conference and the associated exhibition.
