Conference Overall Rating    4      

Would you be interested in attending Automotive EMC 2005 in Germany:  YES=19  NO=1 

Would you be interested in attending Automotive EMC 2006 in the UK:     YES=17  NO=0

Total number of reponses=21

Comments Received

All delegate comments are in italics, comments in non-italics are the organisers responses.

Event in General

Practically difficult to find the location of this meeting.

Coffee break mid-morning.

No cold drinks with lunch.

Prefer printed proceedings.

AV equipment limited, bigger screen and sound equipment.

Needs bigger backing & dedicated exhibition at same time.

Happy to have attended, well organised and well managed.

The difficulty in finding the venue was compounded by the co-location with EMC UK 2004 and the venue (Newbury Racecourse) failing to put out our dedicated parking signs as they had indicated they would.  I apologise for any confusion, especially to those who were directed to the EMC UK 2004 event by their staff who were not made aware of our event by the EMC UK 2004 organisers.

The morning coffee break was omitted to keep the conference shorter than last year and to provide time to visit EMC UK 2004 exhibition at lunch.  In hindsight this was a mistake and will be avoided in future.  The lack of cold drinks at lunch will also be rectified at future events, although iced water was available during the conference itself.

Printed proceedings are actually not preferred by many delegates and would have added approximately £25 to the delegate fee.  It is a deliberate policy of the AutoEMC.net team to avoid the use of paper wherever possible, for both environmental and cost reasons.  If we had printed proceedings in black-and-white there would have been complaints about need for colour, colour printing would add another £15-25 to the delegate fee on top of the £25 mono-printing would add.  With PDF files you can print them in colour if you wish, or just view them on screen, you can also just print the papers you are interested in.  Additionally we are able to include much more on the proceedings CD-ROM such as the Automotive EMC Directive 95/54/EC and its' draft update, related technical papers and all the presentations in full colour, the later in particular would all be prohibitively expensive in a printed version. 

The comments on backing and better equipment I will "take on the chin" as organiser, I felt very guilty about the lack of PA System during the first 2 papers, even thought this was an equipment (or lack of instructions) problem.  I am pleased about the request for a dedicated exhibition, this was reiterated to me at the EMC UK 2004 conference by other exhibitors the following day.  Certainly for 2006 when we are back in the UK we are hoping to rectify the exhibition issue and are always looking for backing in the form of sponsorship.

The screen used was smaller than last year and supplied by Newbury Racecourse, although the projector was the same as used in 2003.  I sat at the back and could see all presentations clearly, but some text did loose resolution I must admit.  I think partly this may be due to the use of too small a font and the desire to "cram" into a slide more information than is necessary, but I do take this point on-board and will try to ensure a larger screen for future events.

Content

Particularly keen on real world examples.

Review relevance on some presentations.

I am also very keen on seeing "real" examples and measurements. Simulations are great for investigative work and early development but at the end of the day the test results are all what really matter.  Many thanks for this comment and although I agree strongly we will always try and feature a few simulation papers as this area is one of the more rapidly developing topics in Automotive EMC.

Obviously not all papers will appeal to all attendees, but I felt that everyone gained something from the day, including the speakers and myself as organiser. The fact that every speaker received at least one vote for "Best Paper" suggests that we did get a good mix.  If paper numbers increase it may be more pertinent to split the conference into 2 days with "Testing and Standards" on one day and "Design and Management" on another, but for now there is insufficient submissions for a 2-day conference so the "design" papers are by their very nature going to be of lesser interest to those delegates from the test service supplier field, and vice versa.

Co-Location

Preferred a separate event. 

EMC UK prevented attendees and exhibitors, should have been a joint event.

Shame same time as EMC UK.

Good organisation but EMC UK may have reduced support; separate from other show.

A more detailed view on this is contained in the Organisers Review and I do not want to re-iterate too much of that here.  Suffice to say we will not be looking to co-locate with other EMC conferences in the future.

Summary

In general I was very pleased with the conference and the questionnaire responses obtained.  I also received several verbal comments on the day which reiterated the sentiments concerning the co-location with EMC UK 2004.  I was also surprised, but pleased, with comments about the separate exhibition and how well that had been received in 2003 as this is a topic that we received little feedback on last year.  

We will definitely be taking on-board many lessons from this years event and it is especially pleasing to find that we have managed to avoid repeating any of the negative aspects of the conference from last year (e.g. number of papers, timings and badges). 

I’d like to thank the speakers publicly for their efforts that, in my opinion, made the conference the success it was.

Martin O’Hara

25^th October 2004

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