In early November the Executive Committee met in Milan to view the facilities and arrangements for the 2005 EMAC Conference. The conference will be held on the campus of Bocconi University and the facilities are excellent. Gabriele Troilo, the conference chair, and his team are doing a great job in putting together a conference which will be both academically stimulating and socially exciting. More details are provided by Gabriele below.

A number of issues were discussed at the Executive that I want to briefly report back to members.

One of them was the cost of conferences. A number of members have expressed concern at the price of attendance and fears that we might be pricing some colleagues out of the conference, especially from countries where conference budgets are particularly tight. I am pleased to report that the conference organiser for Athens 2006, George Avlonitis, has volunteered to reduce the fee he was planning to charge (many thanks George!), and that the price for the following conference, Reykjavik 2007, is under close negotiation. Our thanks to conference organisers for their help and support in keeping prices down.

One further development I want to draw attention to is the creation of an Alumni Association for those who have attended the EMAC Doctoral Colloquium (DC). This was suggested by past students who wanted to use the opportunity to create a network of those who have benefited from the DC to keep in touch and arrange suitable events. Below there is a brief introduction to the DC Alumni by Christian Felzensztein to explain what is intended. The first meeting will take place at Milan 2005.

Finally, EMAC has agreed to collaborate with ELMAR, the electronic marketing newsletter originated by AMA. ELMAR has now been extended to include other international academics including EMAC, ANZMAC, the Asia Pacific Marketing Federation, the Association Latinoamericana de Academicos de Marketing and an African marketing academy (yet to be specified). We will be represented on the editorial board. What this means in practice is that we will have better access to the network, enabling questions to be posted, positions to be announced, research collaborations to be explored etc. Hopefully this will help our networking across the world.

It was an eventful meeting in Milan. The discussions were productive, the company wonderful, the food and wine exquisite! One recommendation, however, to those coming to the conference – extend the credit limit on your plastic cards, the fashion houses of Milan are waiting for you!

That’s all for now folks!