We are very glad that Inforum is attracting more and more foreign participants every year. We believe that international networking, sharing experience and arranging new contacts is very important for all attendees. Inforum does not claim to be an international event but it is an internationally-attended conference. It is aimed mainly at Czech and Slovak information professionals and librarians. But we are regularly inviting several well-known foreign speakers as keynote and guest speakers, we are organising workshops in English and social events for foreigners, and the simultaneous translation during the conference is arranged. The number of Czech speakers is bigger also because the programme committee receives bigger amount of paper proposals from Czech and Slovak authors. The number of foreign papers and posters is increasing every year. But it is unfortunately not possible to have all speeches in English – we know that it would be difficult for most of the Czech and Slovak speakers to do their papers and presentations in English. But we can motivate them to prepare their slides in Czech and English for the next year - and will see what will happen.
The Infoconcert can be attended only by speakers, exhibitors and other invited guests because the capacity of the Chapel of Mirrors is very limited. All participants can register to the Infoparty but have to register in time because the place is bigger but also limited (especially in case of bad weather when we have to move the event indoors). Inforum was attended by 639 participants this year and it is very difficult to find an appropriate space for this number of people and organise such a big party. We understand that Infoparty is very attractive for foreign attendees and we recommend you to register as soon as possible (the registration usually starts at the beginning of March) to be able to attend it.
We received very different opinions on translation this year, some of them were very positive, the others quite critical. The translators have been usually working for Inforum for many years and we were always satisfied with the service. Simultaneous translation is quite difficult task because the translators receive most of the presentations only few minutes before the session beginning. We promise we will monitor the quality of translation personaly next year.
Poster session at Inforum is growing every year and the number of posters is increasing rapidly. The posters should have been situated in the corridor to the Dinning Hall this year, but it was disallowed by the university. The only possible space was the foyer in the Rajska building. This information cannot be included in the printed programme because we received the oficial decision only few days before the conference.
All posters and fulltexts are now available at Inforum website. We are considering the format of the poster session for the next year because of the space limitations.
We are trying to prepare attractive workshops every year but these can take place only on Monday before the conference’s main programme opening and participants have to choose which one to attend. All workshop materials can be found in the conference proceedings.