The International Conference on Trends for Scientific Information Professionals.

For those in the sci-tech world, sharing best practices, networking and evaluating trends have become matters of considerable importance, and the annual ICIC Meeting & Exhibition is the significant forum for this, attracting over 200 attendees from the main sci-tech companies and information, service or software providers.

Started in 1989…

These exciting and highly respected annual conferences, that started in Montreux in 1989 and were subsequently held in Annecy, Nîmes, Barcelona, Nice and Vienna, have always provided a barometer as to the strengths and frailties of the world of sci-tech and Patent information.

The conference lasts for two and a half days and features approximately 24 formal presentations, panels on topical matters, all interspersed with short new product information presentations. All sessions are plenary. The conference normally begins with a reception on the first evening to enable attendees to begin to network with each other, and has a cocktail party on the second evening. Lunches are taken at the conference venue, and breaks are designed to facilitate networking and interaction. A focused exhibition of approximately 25 stands is integrated within the conference. Attendance at these meetings is highly international, with no one nationality predominating.

This year, the conference is again being organised by Dr Haxel Congress and Event Management, with Infonortics organising the conference programme.

Subject Areas for 2011

The following subject areas are appropriate for this year’s meeting. Presentations should not be product descriptions, nor should they merely describe one vendor’s product or services (there is an exhibition that is appropriate for this). The main consideration in selecting presentations will be their relevance and interest to either users or service providers in the evolving area of scientific, technical and Patent information. The following list of main themes is not exhaustive, and all presentation offers will be considered.

■ Gathering and presenting intellectual property information to decision makers
■ Experiences in outsourcing of search or data compilation
■ Changes in the information environment for innovation and intellectual property
■ New data sources, and software (beta, or just launched — particularly user experiences)
■ Collaboration or data collection via social media (wikis, blogs, etc)
■ Tools for competitive intelligence (e.g, mining tools, visualisation tools, analysis tools, etc)
■ patents as challenges for search / mining / intelligence