"Cheers to a new year and another chance forus to get it right."  ~Oprah Winfrey

There is about one monthleft to the year 2010. A month that many will spend, happily rejoicing in thesplendour of the fairy lights and Christmas markets, of the special holidaycrackers and the Santas decorating the facade of random buildings, giving thepaths we follow in our daily lives a feeling of wonder, a spirit of magic. Even(or rather, "especially"), the shops will join into the fun,supplying us among others with „special“ outfits to wear „especially“ on NewYear’s eve. New dresses and new resolutions have something in common, afterall.

Yet wise people know betterthan to make resolutions or changes without knowing if something could beimproved upon in the first place; and while the lovely holiday spirit is quiteundeniable, some of us will spend part of the month in introspection, trying tofigure out how we could, in fact, improve.

This is as true forindividuals as it is for organisations; the end of a year is also a time offrantic activity, when companies close the books, or lay out coming budgets. Itis exactly the right time to observe the results of our past works, andexpand them or even develop projects and launch them internally.  With theNew Year and budget, they can receive the proper attention and resources.

But new projects take timeto hatch; they need to brew academically for a while, and then receive theapproval of a panel of experts to incarnate into more than talk. Conversely,when a panel of experts gathers to discuss how things have progressed, how theywill yet, and work out a strategy for possible future developments, it isusually a positive sign: it suggests that this is an organisation ready to usepast mistakes to improve itself, and grow further.

From the perspective of theEco-C, a „positive sign“ of this kind is to be sent out in Vienna on December10th, when Prof. Thomas Bauer, Dr. Willie Kroupa, Dr. Silvia Wolf, Dr. AndreasStoehr, Prof. Torsten Kuehlmann, Prof. Sandor Bordas, Karina Kaiblinger andLeopold Kaiblinger are scheduled to meet and review the year 2010, as well aslook into new trends in the field of communications, including furtherdevelopments that would enable the ECo-C tointegrate those trends.

But this „positive sign“ is preceded by another: the participants of thismeeting have requested that any who might have useful inputs on these topicscommunicate them by email to the following address: eco-c@ipkeurope.org . The purpose of thismove is of course to examine the potential of further ideas, but one cannothelp but see it as an expression of openness, realism and readiness tocommunicate, in accordance with the principle goals of the ECo-C itself.