My Travels with Danny:
25 years of Photographic Memories and EIBA Conferences
By Vitor Corado Simoes
Contribution to the ‘Itinerarium Amicorum Daniel Van Den Bulcke’ that looks back at the history of EIBA through the perspective of the Portuguese travelling companion of a globetrotting photographer (from the Itinerarium Amicorum, edited by Filip De Beule).
“When one travels with Danny, it seems that the probability of having the car breaking down, missing flights, unexpected landings (though not necessarily in the Hudson river) and other odd situations is quite high. This is part of a globetrotter’s charm...
Fortunately, such instances have been absent from my travel experiences together with Danny (I don’t know why, but maybe because I have a moderating effect on him or just by plain chance). Apart from carrying his heavy bag under the Brazilian sun to visit the Contemporary Art Museum of Niterói, a masterpiece of Oscar Niemeyer, with a wonderful view over Rio de Janeiro, I have not experienced the troubles reported by other, very reliable, friends. In fact, I have travelled with Danny in all kinds of situations and conditions such as in turbulent airline flights, boat trips on wonderful lakes, bus rides in snowing countrysides, late-departing trains, random walks, and nothing happened... except, of course, the strengthening of our friendship.
I still have a vivid memory of my first walk with Danny. It was in a superb spot, Villa Serbeloni in Bellagio, overlooking Lake Como, during pleasant Fall weather in 1983. John Dunning had invited us to contribute a chapter to a book he was preparing and we spent a week together at the Villa Serbelloni, at the courtesy of the Rockefeller Foundation, to discuss our work. By that time I was not yet in academia, but John’s invitation sparkeled my appetite for research and made me make the right choice later on. I am not sure, but most probably Danny also told me about EIBA during our stay in Bellagio. What I know is that in early 1986 I received a photo from Danny showing how magnificent the Scottish mediaeval heritage was... at least as portrayed by the EIBA Glasgow Gala Dinner arranged by Neil Hood. The cover letter reminded me that I should show up at the next EIBA conference. The invitation has been so compelling that I decided to attend the EIBA meeting in London. It was my first EIBA conference, a very special one since it was jointly held with AIB.
In December 1987 Danny had agreed to organize the conference in Antwerp, at a time when EIBA was not doing all that well. It was a superb conference, not only by its high academic level, but also because of the fantastic social and cultural events. Three aspects are still very present in my memory, assisted by Danny’s photos, of course. First, there was the pre-conference get-together walk through old Antwerp, and the explanations given about the wonderful masterpieces by well-known Flemish painters. Secondly, there was the chamber music concert in a small chapel from which a lovely Christmas spirit emerged. From then on, I have always associated the EIBA conferences in December with a Christmas atmosphere that is often very typical for the country where the conference takes place. Third, there was the exquisite ‘beer & cheese’ Gala Dinner party. I have a picture, taken by Danny (who else?), with different types of Belgian cheese and several half-liter glasses of beer that brought the spirit of the EIBA members and certainly myself into higher regions...
‘Then, we took Berlin’ (to say it with the words of singer poet Leonard Cohen), with Hans-Günther Meissner at the helm of EIBA. Danny’s pictures of the Berlin Wall, and the armed East German soldiers in front of the Wall, still impress me today. However this was also the conference during which I found out that EIBA had a couple of first-class entertainers: i.e. Roland Schuit, playing Santa Claus, and Danny, with his undercooled sense of humour, acutely remembering comic situations that most of us had failed to fully grasp. Some of us were a little jealous by the way he got the attention of the nice girls of the conference secretariat by thanking them for their hard work during the conference with Belgian chocolates. By this time, Danny had already invited me to become the representative of the (then, tiny) Portuguese chapter, and offered me a seat at the EIBA Board.
One of the most ‘magic’ moments we lived together was a year later in Helsinki, singing in the snow in front of the statue of Sibelius. I still have several pictures of the students’choir from the Helsinki School of Economics, with EIBA President Reijo Luostartinen as the soloist. By that time, Reijo had succeeded to convince me about the economic advantages of small countries. Eventually a study group called SMOPEC was formed.
EIBA records show that between 1979 and 2008, i.e. during a period of 30 years Danny missed only one EIBA conference, i.e. the one held in Madrid by Juan Duran. The reason was that he was starting to experience the Chinese ‘attraction’ and could not interrupt his teaching assignment in Beijing to come to Spain. But even absent, Danny left his fingerprint, or should I call it photoprint, all over the conference. As a matter of fact the wonderful photo on the cover of the EIBA Madrid programme, featuring some of the (then) members of the Board, with a bullfighting advertisement in the backstage had been taken by Danny in Jerez de la Frontera, when the Board met there a few months before for the interim Board meeting.
At the Gala Dinner at the end of the Copenhagen conference, the organizer Harald Vestergaard had hired a professional stand-up comedian to imitate EIBA Board members. Harald contracted a very good entertainer to replace Danny. But the almost unanimous decision of EIBA’s ‘citizens’ was that, although he was really good, he had not been able to match Danny’s quality. Nobody else attempted to contract an entertainer to replace Danny again... until we came back to Denmark many years later to be told stories written by Hans Christian Andersen.
Meanwhile, I had become cognizant of Danny’s efforts to ensure the continuity of EIBA and its mainstay the annual conferences. If this is still a hard task today, it was even more daunting in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Danny was continuously looking for new possible venues and scanning the academic horizon to identify qualified and motivated future organisers. His arguments were compelling, and his ability to convince the still undecided was (and still is) very strong. After one had only tentatively admitted the possibility to organise the conference, he did not lose his ‘prey’ anymore. And it has to be added that after one had succumbed to his charming perseverance he provided enormous advice and support until the very day the meeting was held. That is how, he convinced me to host the EIBA in Lisbon in 1993, the year after the conference in Reading organised by John Cantwell.
The Reading conference was memorable because Danny had succeeded in convincing Peter Buckley, then chairman of AIB-UK to have a joint conference on the occasion of John Dunning’s retirement from Reading University. It was there that John Dunning promised his wife Christine to work less hard after the publication of the impressive volume Multinational Enterprises and the Global Economy. We had a very late dinner at a magnificent palace, some miles away from Reading, after the bus driver lost his way in the woods. Danny could not be blamed for this, however.
As conference organizer in Lisbon, I started to appreciate another facet of Danny’s commitment to EIBA and his devotion to the future of our profession, i.e. the Doctoral Tutorial. The mix of professionalism and welcoming attitude he put in the Tutorial was remarkable. Until then I was not aware of the care, commitment and effort he put in the preparation and the organisation of the Tutorial he was responsible for during no less than 17 years, i.e. between 1987, when he launched this initiative, to 2004, the year of his 65th birthday. I still remember the suggestion he made in Lisbon to have a get-together dinner for the faculty and the students on the evening before the Tutorial to allow them to get better acquainted and thereby improving the quality and efficiency of the presentations and discussions. This tradition has been continued since then and certainly contributed to the success of this important initiative.
From Lisbon to Warsaw... More photos to revive my memories. I remember the visit to Chopin’s home and Gunnar Hedlund and Marina Papanastassiou playing the piano. I think it was also in Warsaw that I carried Danny’s bag for the first time. More photos in Urbino, the wonderful and picturesque city. Apparently this was a fascinating place for Danny judging by the many pictures he took of the typical and not so typical sights as well as Federigo de Montefeltro’s nose, used as a logo for the conference brochure by Roberto Schiattarella.
From Urbino up North to Stockholm, to learn how seriously ill Gunnar Hedlund was. I remember our visit to the room in the City Hall where the Nobel Prize dinners are held after the prizes have been awarded. It was interesting to see how eager Danny was to capture such beauty in his, still analog, camera. Maybe he dreamed that there was also a Photo Nobel Prize, and that he might even win it. I think he would be entitled to it, not just for atmospheric quality of the pictures, but also for the kindness and friendship to send, every January, the photos from the previous EIBA conference to his friends and colleagues.
The next Conference was in Stuttgart, efficiently organized by Klaus Macharzina. After Stuttgart we went to Jerusalem, the first and only time that EIBA left the shores of the European continent. The situation was relatively peaceful at that time, although there was a lot of commotion and enormous traffic jams because it coincided with the visit from the US President Bill Clinton. Yet, Eugene Jaffe and Seev Hirsh ran a successful conference in which the special session with representatives of the different religions in the regions under the chairmanship of John Dunning was quite memorable and showed the wide interests of the EIBA membership.
In Manchester Danny became a ‘red devil’, and enjoyed the opportunity provided by Fred Burton to visit Manchester United’s famous stadium ‘Old Trafford’ and to take photos of the field. I myself was honoured to be able to thank the Mayor of Manchester (in full regalia) on behalf of the EIBA Board for his hospitality during our visit to the City Hall. Danny succeeded in capturing this important moment with his camera, which allowed me to show the picture around later on and impress my family and colleagues.
By that time, Danny had already become a specialist on China. Earlier than most of us he had anticipated the growing role of international business and regaled his EIBA colleagues with the stories of his visits to this newly emerging and intriguing country. He also discovered the charms of a still-Portuguese group of three small islands, but about-to-become part of China, i.e. Macau. Danny’s Chinese connection is still very much alive, and he still follows Sino-European relations closely. Last year he convened a special panel at the AIB Conference in Milan about ‘Europe at Fifty’ in which he dealt with that theme.
I missed the Maastricht EIBA meeting and consequently I did not get any pictures. When we met in Paris the following year, I did not attempt to challenge Danny to speak French, even though he himself spoke the language of Molière at the beginning of his speech during the Gala Dinner held on a boat on the river Seine. To compensate for a nasty picture he took of Juán Durán and me during that trip he allowed me later to pose with two charming Spanish young ladies. I also have an unforgettable photo with two nice Greek girls of the Athens conference secretariat, with the Acropolis in the background. Danny was very proud of the fact that he had succeeded to get a woman IB professor to host an EIBA conference for the very first time in 28 years. And rightfully so, because Marina Papanastassiou did an excellent job. That the so-called ‘glass ceiling’ was broken again a few years later when Grazia Santangelo would host us in Catania and also for the third time in 2010 when Ana Teresa Tavares will do so in Porto, is to a large extent due to Danny’s efforts to do away with the gender barriers.
The following year we were back in Copenhagen. I remember Danny trying to choose the best angle to capture the beauty and architectonic irreverencey of the CBS building. As it happened with Harald Vestergaard a dozen years before, Torben Pedersen decided to challenge Danny by going public with the story about a strange trip from Calgary to Banff for the AIB conference a number of years before and an even stranger night at the hotel in Banff. I must admit that it became extremely mysterious and that I am still wondering what happened. I have never seen the photos. I may say: in Danny’s pictures, I trust.
From North to South, from Copenhagen to Ljubljana. From out-dated technology to digital photography. At last, Ljubljana heralds a new era: we have now Danny’s EIBA pictures at the EIBA website in a photo gallery. This enables us to fully appreciate Danny’s photographic capabilities, and to revive the nice moments of EIBA socialisation after the intensity of the discussions about the papers in the meeting rooms. I especially remember three photos from that conference. The first one, with my good Brazilian friend Carlos Hemais who died one year later and was already very ill when he came to the conference. The second picture, features Danny awarding John Dunning with EIBA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in International Business. And, last but not least, a third photo with the participants, including myself, of the panel session about the book in honour of Danny’s career, edited by Ludo Cuyvers and Filip De Beule, entitled Transnational Corporations and Economic Development – From Internationalization to Globalization. Clearly, Danny’s photos have, to a significant degree, become my memory.
Up North, again: Oslo, in 2005. That wonderful half-village, half-city, where one feels relaxed and close to nature, together with the organizational skills of Gabriel Benito brought us another successful conference. Looking at some 50 photos, out of the more than hundred taken by Danny, and displayed at the EIBA website, one wonders how Danny can do so many things at the same time during a three day conference: EIBA chairman and chairing of the Board Meeting, the General Assembly, the AIB West European Region, organizer and chair of two panel sessions, the Doctoral Tutorial, speaking at the Gala Dinner... and last but not least the unofficial photographer. And there also is EIBA-zine, another product of Danny’s entrepreneurship. During the EIBA conferences many participants respond positively and enthusiastically to Danny’s request to contribute a short article for the next EIBA-zine issue. However, for one reason or other, such good intentions rarely materialise and, time and again, as a result Danny takes it upon himself to write most of the articles. This is another facet of Danny’s multi-variate capabilities: a photographer, a journalist, and an outstanding academic. So many features in just one man!
In 2006, EIBA moved to Fribourg hosted by Philippe Gugler, in order to clarify the vexata questio of which chocolates taste best: i.e. the Swiss or the Belgian ones, corporate ownership notwithstanding? Danny was courageous enough to take Belgian chocolates to Switzerland and claim that they were better than the Swiss, although he admitted that the difference was marginal, in order not to upset his hosts too much. More important, however, was that, we found a rejuvenated Danny, after the back surgery he had undergone at the beginning of the year. A Danny who could carry his bag again. Contrary to what I had expected he did not show up in Fribourg with a brand new, 200-grams light, camera. Against all medical advice he persisted to handle a heavy camera with several lenses. After more than 20 years I was still not able to predict Danny’s moves. Neither did I realise that after the conference he made a trip to Zermatt to see the Matterhorn, a mountain that had fascinated him since his youth. No wonder for someone who was born in a “plat pays”, to recall Jacques Brel.
From Fribourg, we moved to Catania, Sicily, to experience in loco how old Mediterranean societies function, and how surprising baroque architecture can be. And of course, the Etna volcano. I was not successful in convincing Danny to join me for a trip to Agrigento, as he had already been there during the interim Board meeting. I had the feeling that Danny was taking less pictures of the meeting, perhaps because he was too impressed by the snow covered top of the Etna or fearful of the mafia. Looking at the EIBA website I even have the impression that he himself was photographed more often. In retrospect, the most important feature at Catania was a special plenary session organised by Danny about the second edition of John Dunning magnum opus Multinational Enterprises and the Global Economy. Documented also by Danny’s camera, this was the last EIBA venue where John Dunning made a presentation. John Dunning, the man (and dear friend) who made our lives intersect in Bellagio.
Yet, thanks to Danny, I was also asked to be on a panel in June 2008 together with him as well as John Dunning, Juán Durán and Marjan Svetlicic. This heralds another facet of Danny: namely his ability to identify interesting topics and suscitate a lively discussion among the panel members and the audience about the issues involved, such as ‘The European Union at Fifty’. He reserved the top place for himself, however, featuring in the programme twice, with opening and closing addresses on different topics! But this time he lost: we took so long in our presentations that he got no time left for his last one.
My earlier impression of Danny giving up his ‘duties’ as EIBA’s photographer was not confirmed in Tallinn in December 2008, however. Although he informed us that at the end of 2009 he will step down as Chairman of EIBA, I hope he will continue to come to the EIBA meetings to organize panel sessions and to capture the academic sessions and social activities with his camera”.
Lisboa, 3 February, 2009
Vítor Corado Simões
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